Right from the start of this summer Q. was determined to improve his German. When the holidays started he said he wanted to make an effort to speak in German to me when we go to Germany. He also said he wanted to learn how to read in German. Said and done. Both in speaking and in reading Q. made a great effort and in both areas he improved a lot.

Learning how to read doesn’t come easy to Q. He struggled when he learnt to read in Italian, but then he worked hard and overcame his difficulties. Now he is a keen reader and devours books. Q. also finds writing in Italian difficult. He tries to avoid writing and if he has to he tries to keep it to a minimum. This summer Q. was diagnosed with dyslexia, which explains why he has always found it difficult.

What does dyslexia mean for our trilingual education? In the bilingual school where I work there are many dyslexic children. A lot of them manage to compensate their difficulties, but there is usually a lot of work behind. The problem is that the dyslexia problem is not solved once you master one language. Each new language means new difficulties and learning new compensation strategies. The learning process is bound to become more time-consuming, and time is a precious good in a multilingual upbringing.

When to teach reading and writing in the second or third language is a difficult questions in any multilingual education, dyslexia makes it even more tricky. With Q. we had waited as we didn’t want to put too much on his plate. When he however said he wanted to learn to read in German, we jumped to the proposal.

As expected it wasn’t easy. We used the “First I a piece, then you”-approach, so I read a longer part and then Q. tried to read a little bit. He found it difficult especially when it came to longer words. He often got stuck with the letters h and w, which are hardly used in Italian. One evening Q. felt a bit dejected and complained to his mom that he didn’t understand a word of what he was reading. She had to assure him that this is quite normal, it needs time to move on from reading single letters and sounds to understanding.

In the following weeks Q. improved a lot. His reading became more fluent and he mastered the common words and sound combinations. I usually had to help with longer words though. Often he would read texts quickly, guessing words from the context instead of carefully reading each word to the end: “Er sah der Mann” instead of “Er sah den Mann”. In Italian Q. uses the same strategy, only that one does not notice the mistakes as he fills the gaps properly. In his Italian dyslexia training Q. works a lot on reading slower but more precisely. Something we will have to do in German too, but in all Q.’s first month of reading in German went well.

What concerns speaking Q. made great progress over the summer. As promised he always tried to speak German to me and he also spoke a lot to his grandparents and some friends. Initially he used short sentences after a month they became longer and more complex: “Da ist ein Junge, der ist ein Prinz. Der will aber normal sein und sagt nicht, dass er ein Prinz ist“ (German for: There is a boy who is a prince. He wants to be normal, so he doesn’t say that he is a prince).

Despite the progress there is still a lot of room for improvement. When talking about Harry Potter he said: “Sie machen der Kurs fuer Zauberei, aber Albus hat weggemacht der Schutz, so sind sie jetzt nicht mehr geschuetzt.“ (German for: They do a wizarding training, but Albus removed the protection, so they are not protected any more) Q. often gets grammatical cases wrong, which also showed in his reading, where he misread many grammatical cases: “der Mann” instead of “den Mann”. Maybe training proper reading will help Q. to improve in this area.

Another area where Q. makes quite some mistakes is the use of irregular past tense forms. He says  “Er lieste ein Buch” (German for: He readed a book) or “Er sitzte auf einem Stein” (German for: He sitted on a rock). On the positive side Q.’s vocabulary has become much wider and precise. Some distant family members who hadn’t seen Q. for some time were impressed how much Q.’s German has improved.