Union Reception - Neuroscience news - Part 1

 

I happened to read an article on Neuroscience news and decided to write to the press office.

 

The following day I received the message below:

Union Reception <Union.Reception@brunel.ac.uk>

We at the Union do not know who the author of the article is so unfortunately cannot help with your query.

Sorry about this.

 

I was rather disappointed and replied as follows:

It is kind of you to respond. Thank you.

In 2004, I was cajoled into teaching a smart kid who was unable to read a single sentence despite having gone to school for 2 years.

I was curious and taught more than 80 similar kids on a one-on-one basis from 2004 to 2019 to learn firsthand why many kids were able to read in many languages but not in English.

14 years later I published a book that is popular to this day detailing why many kids are unable to read in English.

You may read the book reviews of my book Shut Down Kids. LINK 

Today, 27.7.2023, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a response from the author of the article in Neuroscience News above.

Professor Taeko Wydell forwarded me 5 Journal papers that I read and have many questions to ask her and will record them here for all to read. Let us all learn from what Prof Wydell has to say. Meanwhile, here is an extract from the article I read.

Why Are Some Bilingual People Dyslexic in English but Not Their Other Language?

One, it would appear, is either born dyslexic or not.

So, how then have we ended up with the phenomenon that some people who speak both English and another language can be dyslexic in one, but not the other?

The answer, it seems, is hidden in the characteristics of a language and its writing system.

“The English writing system is so irregular – print to sound or sound to print translation is not always one to one,” Brunel University London’s Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Prof Taeko Wydell, recently told the BBC radio documentary Dyslexia: Language and Childhood.

Those who have been following my blog know that I do not agree with the above findings. That the English writing system is so irregular is an excuse most researchers seem to give without thinking.