Finnish-English Bilingual Learning Difficulties

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Finnish expatriate children may face learning difficulties when families are posted to other countries. International families in Finland may face the same issues in reverse.

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Bilingual home and learning environments are an important, growing segment of the child population in many countries, as in Finland and the expatriate destinations for Finnish families.

English is becoming increasingly one of the languages in such environments, particularly at school. Many immigrants and expatriates prefer English to be the language of schooling for their children. At the same time, achieving complete bilingualism in both Finnish and English may be an important goal.

The valued opportunity to become bilingual either by learning languages from the parents or by living in multilingual environment seems to offer a more effortless way to learn complete fluency. Unfortunately, it can produce less than adequate language skills in both languages and become an obstacle for academic achievement. Bilingualism has to be supported by the home environment and the school to ensure balanced development in both languages.

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I hope to provide a forum to share experiences, lessons, guidance and thoughts to help other families and children.

I also offer counseling and advise services to Finnish expatriate families and international families in Finland. You can call me on 0400-486-920 or email at kerttu@karinen.net.

Bilingualism, language and literacy development and success in school

How does bilingualism affect the child’s language development, literacy development and success at school? If the parents want the child to become fluent in two languages they have to support the child’s learning processes actively in both languages. Since the second language acquisition follows the pattern of the first language acquisition, the children should get specific phonological training with both languages if possible. Often, when children start in classes in a foreign language environment, very little attention is paid to teaching the native language. This might cause learning difficulties in both languages. Ideally, remedial teaching should also include both languages with the goal in giving better understanding of the phonology and of language structure.
Detecting dyslexia when two languages are present is challenging. Inadequate language skill in the second language can mask the real reason for learning difficulties. Testing with both languages can give a more reliable diagnosis but, the testing is lengthier and requires more detailed interpretation of test results than in a case of a monolingual subject. Moreover, the testing might not confirm the presence of dyslexia but it can give a better picture of existing problem areas. These problems can appear in many forms such as a combination of persisting spelling errors, difficulty in pronouncing written words with certain letter combinations or as difficulty in reading comprehension. If problem areas can be determined, remedial teaching program can de designed. The multisensory teaching methods used in teaching dyslexic children are helpful in teaching bilinguals with specific language problems.
Finnish as a written language is more phonetic than English. Even though Finnish grapheme-phoneme system is transparent, learning to read can be difficult to some children. The existence of dyslexia does not depend on language or script because it is neurologically based. The form it takes can vary between languages and depending on the nature of cognitive deficit causing it, appear stronger with one language compared to another. A learning difficulty does not need to stop any child from learning a foreign language. With special help in the form of special teaching or modified learning aids some level of skill can be achieved. Sometimes it is impossible for an individual to learn to write a foreign language but oral skill and auditory comprehension might be possible to achieve. Ideally, all children regardless of their learning difficulty should have an opportunity to get as good an education as possible, even if it takes special resources. Spending on these resources now will pay itself back in the future.

Views of Bilingualism in Children

Before the 1960’s, bilingualism was sometimes seen as a linguistic handicap having mostly negative influence on academic development. In more recent times a more positive view has emerged and bilingualism is even claimed to have a positive influence on cognitive development. Bilinguals seem to have better developed auditory language skills than monolinguals and they acquire earlier skills for linguistic abstraction. (Frost, 2000)

In research conducted on brain activity during language production and comprehension tasks in two languages it has been discovered, that the same areas in simultaneous bilinguals’ brains are active when dealing with both languages. If the second language is learned later in life, the activation site for the second language is spatially distinct from the site represented for the first language. This is true especially with Broca’s area which is involved in production of language. (Robertson, 2000)

This implicates that learning languages is age sensitive and if a child has the opportunity to become fully fluent in two languages, that opportunity should be used to its full extend by providing consistent exposure to both languages.

Research on Early Bilingual Language Development

In an ongoing longitudinal Tampere-Turku research project two groups of children, a group of monolingual children and a group of Finnish-Russian bilingual children are being compared (Silven et al.) In this research the children’s language development has been followed from birth and currently the oldest are four years old. So far it has been established that mono- and bilingual children don’t differ from each other in general language development. Their ability to differentiate between sounds at an early age is similar and their early vocabulary is equally large when the mothers’ native languages are used as comparison. It seems that in bilingual families the father’s language becomes more dominant and mother’s weakens when the child becomes older. This development needs to be researched further to find out why this happens. The results seem to support the idea that being bilingual does not slow down the child’s linguistic or cognitive development. (Frost, 2000 citing McLaughlin 1978)

In the same Finnish study it has been shown that becoming equally fluent in two languages does not happen without effort. If the parents want the child to become fluent in two languages, they have to support the child’s learning processes actively in both languages. They must speak their own mother tongue to the child from early on and agree to keep doing so through the child’s early years of language development. This is not always easy to do because one language becomes dominant in the family, often due to societal influence. If the simultaneous exposure is not maintained, one language becomes dominant. (Robertson, 2000)

Bilingualism in Learning to Read and Write

While studies indicate that bilingualism may have no negative effect on the development of children, it can cause disadvantages if the mother tongue (the dominant tongue) is not well developed before the child enters school, where teaching is continued in another language. This may cause delay in the development of both languages and cause problems in learning other subjects as well. (Frost, 2000). Reaching the level of native speakers in the second language can take years. It has been estimated that it takes about two years for a student to develop peer-appropriate communicative ability and between five and seven years to fully develop age adequate proficiency in reading and writing. (Hutchinson et al. 2000)

Finnish research emphasizes the importance of learning to read and write the mother tongue first, before starting reading and writing in another language. This is highlighted in studies concerning Content and Language Integrated Teaching in Finnish schools. (Merisuo-Storm, 2002; Pitkanen et al. 2004). The parents have a vital role in supporting their child in obtaining literacy skills in the mother tongue, if the school does not have facilities to teach it. In some countries bilingual children are entitled to instruction in their own mother tongue (e.g. Denmark), but even then this cannot always take place due to lack of resources. The parents need to maintain the mother tongue by discussing with the child, by reading to them and by teaching or by arranging supplementary teaching if needed. (Landon, 2000)

Migrant and Expatriate Children

A child ‘dropped’ into an environment where the language is different from what he or she understands is facing a major challenge. This situation happens when the family moves from one country to another as expatriates or as immigrants. This kind of change of environment can be very frightening and might cause behavioral problems as well as delay in academic achievement.

Much depends on the child’s age: If the child is young the learning of the new language happens in more natural way, as in the case of simultaneous bilinguals, and the child has more time to pick up the language before serious schoolwork begins. The older the child is the more structured language training is needed. (Ellis, 1997)

Imagine a situation when a young, pre-school or first grader is put in a class where the language of instruction is completely foreign. He begins to learn through imitation and experience. At first everything the teacher says is completely incomprehensible. He quickly learns to observe what others are doing and imitate them. The challenge to the teacher is to draw this child to the class activities and to teach the basics of the new language. This takes patience and time. Often the child seems to cope very well with the language but when actual literacy skills are tested, the child does not understand much and cannot express himself.

The teachers do not always detect problems because the child seems to function well in class. The child becomes used to observing but not listening which is not a very good pattern of behavior, when trying to learn the new language. It is therefore very important that the new language is taught and the child is not left alone ‘just to pick it up’ from peers. In international schools specialized in teaching multilingual children, supporting language courses are conducted to ease the adjustment process to the normal school work. Local, monolingual schools, on the other hand, might not have such experience and facilities.

As mentioned earlier the parents need to teach the mother tongue or find a way for the child to learn literacy in it, because failing to do so might cause delay in obtaining literacy skills in the new language of instruction. It is better to learn to read and write in the dominant language first. Languages are interdependent so that the cognitive processes that have been developed through one language can be transferred to use in the other (Landon, 2000; Cummins, 1981).

If learning to read takes place in one language there is no need to learn to read again when starting to use another language. Conversely if there are difficulties with the mother tongue there might be problems with the new language as well. (Crombie and McColl, 2000) This is challenged by Smythe (2002) referring to a study made in Gothenberg Sweden where some individuals learned to read and write English better than Swedish, even though Swedish was their native language. This could be explained by the difference in the cognitive processes needed in decoding the script in the two languages.

Since the second language acquisition follows the pattern of the first language acquisition, the children should get specific phonological training in both languages if possible. Phonology and sounds have to be taught directly and the phonological awareness has to be practiced before starting reading and writing in foreign language. The phonological training includes specific teaching of the sound-symbol correspondence by using a multisensory method. Studying syllable construction and morphology enables stepping from phonological level to syntactic level. Syntax, word order, structure and semantics should also be taught explicitly. This kind of teaching would create an awareness of language structure and the differences between languages. (Miller and Gillis, 2000)

When children start their classes in a foreign language environment, very little attention is paid to teaching the native language. It is often hard to find the time and the resources for it. Parents prefer to emphasize the importance of the new language and provide extra tutoring if necessary, to ensure that their children can succeed at school. The responsibility of ensuring an adequate literacy teaching lies with the parents (family): The parents have to make sure that the essential parts of phonological training are included in the school curriculum. In many international schools the ‘look-and-say’ reading program is still in use and teaching phonics is not emphasized. In the school brochures the teachers are often described as being ‘native speakers’ but they might not have much experience of working with bilingual children. The size of the class matters as well, because every child with a bilingual background has individual needs that the teacher has to attend. If the school curriculum and facilities do not provide the phonological training described above, the parents might opt to get extra help either from inside or outside the school. Because the parents carry the main responsibility of teaching the child’s native language, they should find adequate teaching materials and books to help them. E.g. the Finnish education authorities provide material for Finnish families living abroad and in some locations, e.g. in Singapore, the expatriates have organized a supplementary school to teach the language.

Dyslexic in one Language, Non-Dyslexic in the Other

Dyslexia manifests itself in different ways in different languages because the cognitive difficulties that lead to reading and writing problems are dependent on the nature of the script. Transparent or phonetic languages seem to pose different problems to dyslexics than less regular languages, such as English. (Smythe, 2002) This can also mean that it is possible to be dyslexic in one language but not in another or, more likely, learning difficulties do not cause problems clearly with one language but become apparent with the other. The problems go undiagnosed and without special help the child will fall further behind in acquiring literacy. (Smythe, 2002 ) .

Teachers in international schools face such complicated situations with children. It would be ideal to have a one-for-all screening test to detect all children at-risk of dyslexia but such test does not exist. Although it is practically impossible to say whether the child’s reading and spelling problems are caused by inadequate second language skills or possibly by dyslexia, some screening tests can be used to detect the actual level of achievement. If the child is lagging behind, special teaching should be attempted, even though certainty of dyslexia is not possible to determine. It is better to do something than leave the child to struggle. Again, the responsibility to act lies mostly with the parents although the school and the teachers should point the direction.

Monolingual Dyslexia Tests and Bilingual Children

Monolingual dyslexia testing of a bilingual child should be interpreted with caution and additional insight.
The Wide Range Achievement Test -3 (WRAT3) is one of the most widely used English language dyslexia assessment tools, devised and standardized in America. It strives to be “an extremely reliable measurement of the basic academic codes with the norming from a representative sample of individuals from all sections of the United States”. (WRAT3 Administration Manual)

This is likely true when the tested individuals have English as the first language and are, in addition, US natives. However, when the tested child has a multilingual background the results from the test need to be interpreted with more caution.
The WRAT3 single word reading test becomes harder to interpret when unusual pronunciations due to foreign accent are taken into account. If the child only reads about half of the given words, any error pattern might be difficult to establish. There simply is not enough material to draw conclusions.

It is important to view the WRAT3 test result individually. For instance, in a test a child whose English reading and spelling was influenced by Finnish phonology, read the word ‘cat’ as ‘cut’ pronouncing the vowel ‘a’ in the Finnish manner. The next word containing the same ‘a’ sound in this particular test is ‘animal’ and if this was read incorrectly in the same manner, this could mean that this child doesn’t know the difference between Finnish and English ‘a’ sound. If the instructions given in the WRAT3 manual were followed strictly, this should not necessarily be considered an error. It could be considered as an ‘accent related mispronunciation’. On the other hand, if the child can pronounce both words ‘cat’ and ‘animal’ in normal speech correctly, her test pronunciation should be considered an error. The way she reads the words might mean that there is a problem in recognizing letter-sound correspondences in English language.

Based on this one reading test, not much can be said about the reading ability of a multilingual child. More reading tests, including a non-word reading test and a miscue analysis, should be performed to glean some error patterns in the decoding processes. A frequency analysis can be made of certain sounds by calculating how many words contain this sound and how many of them are read correctly.

Often, test results are given as age ability references. What comes to the age and grade level ratings of the WRAT 3 test, it is very hard to say anything of the achievement level of the child without knowing exactly how long the child has been learning English and in what kind of environment. If the result is placed onto the WRAT3 normal curve, all that can be said is that at this given moment the single word reading skill equates to age group X in the American standards. The WRAT3 is not an indicative measure for dyslexia. It measures the bilingual individual’s level of achievement compared to native English speakers, which as such is an interesting result. (Frost, 2000)

Bilingual Dyslexia Assessment

Special assessment procedures have been developed for bilingual learner by Sunderland et al. (1997) for the London Language and Literacy Unit. They include an in-depth diagnostic interview; tests of short-term memory; phonological awareness and sequencing; reading a whole text, single words and non-words; analysis of miscues; spelling error analysis and analysis of a piece of free writing. These assessment procedures contain checklists, interview guidelines, diagnostic tests and cultural and linguistic factors which may affect interpretation.

Another method focusing on psychological assessment of a bilingual student requires collecting background information including details of linguistic development and language use in each language concerned, details of educational history and community experiences. (Landon, 2000)

These two procedures emphasize the need to understand the student’s background thoroughly enough to decide, whether underlying cognitive difficulties exist in that individual case. This means that ordinary monolingual testing battery is not quite enough because a test result by bilingual individual cannot be compared with that of monolinguals in a straightforward manner. The test results need to be modified and examined in more detail to extract error patterns that are customary to or can be traced to the other language. Preferably, somebody fluent in both languages should perform the testing.

Assessing Reading and Writing Skills Between Finnish and English

Finnish written language is more phonetic than English. This means that there is a standard correspondence between letters and sounds: a letter is always sounded out in the same way. This also means that learning reading and writing skills in Finnish can be more straightforward than learning the same level of skills in English. In the same logic, learning the English sound-letter correspondences and spelling patterns can be a daunting task to a Finnish speaker. (Smythe, 2002)



The influence of Finnish language in English spelling of this bilingual child can be seen particularly well in errors made with short vowel sounds. The table here represents some (not all) of the short vowel sound spellings in Finnish and English.

Dyslexia or "Natural" Language Learning Difficulty?

Finding out the reason underlying a learning difficulty in a second language environment is a challenging task and involves avoiding two errors (Frost, 2000). The first potential error is diagnosing dyslexia where none is present, which is called the false positive labeling. The second potential error is missing the signs of dyslexia and failing to propose special teaching when it is needed, which is called the false negative labeling. (Frost, 2000) Misdiagnosis happens because the difficulty is thought to derive from the delay in second language acquisition. The assessment tools are designed and calibrated for monolingual population and the possibility of multilingual subject has not been taken into account. Such assessment tools might give a misleading result. (Deponio et al., 2002)

The reason for persisting learning difficulties might be simply a limited knowledge in the second language. This kind of problem requires special remedial teaching but it can be resolved by an understanding and motivating teaching program that brings the child’s skills up to the age level. For this purpose international schools have special ESOL (English as Second Language) programs to newcomers. These programs run alongside the normal curriculum and it is important that the child takes part in them to learn the language within each school subject.