As I indicated in my opening message, distinguishing LD in ESOL 
learners has been my focus and specialty since about 1985--the more I 
learn about this, the less I know. What I know at this point, as my 
article was intended to illustrate, is that there are many other 
legitimate issues that impede learning progress in adult ESOL learners 
( and younger ones, too, for that matter.) These issues are given short 
shrift by inexperienced or unaware ESOL teachers and other teachers who 
do not know about second language acquisition, low literacy 
implications, cultural differences and their impact, etc. 
 
Where once I felt that LD issues were rather common among ESOL 
learners, I now think they are no more common than they REALLY are in 
adult learners in this country-- though there is now a strong belief 
that the incidence is high, my experience and recent work has led me to 
believe there are many other issues causing difficulties for adult 
learners: vision, visual stress syndrome ( difficulty with light 
sensitivity and looking at black print on white paper), hearing, 
health, attention problems, etc. 
 
In the ESOL learners, what emerged as signficant barriers to learning 
were weaknesses in core phonological skills, as mentioned in an earlier 
post, and problems with actual discrimination of sounds in English. It 
is perfectly normal for the adult brain to have more difficulty 
perceiving sounds of a new language accurately--and those who are 
monolingual may have even more difficulty than those who are already 
multilingual ( though I do not wholly agree with the contention of some 
in linguistics that speaking multiple languages automatically precludes 
difficulty in hearing a new language accurately--again, I have ample 
anecdotal evidence to know that, like any other generalization, is not 
true--though may be true more often than not) 
 
When I have put heavy emphasis in my teaching on the drilling of 
hearing fine differences in sounds -- minimal pairs such as bit/bet or 
sheep/cheap or feet/ Pete--- or tap/tab -- I find that my students' 
aural comprehension soars and then their ablitiy to hear and remember 
the language accurately also soars--and then reading comes along much 
better, too. 
 
I use a book called Pronunciation Contrasts in English, by D L. F. 
Nilsen and A. P. Nilsen. To my knowledge, it has been recently 
reprinted-- it is a book of all the minimal pairs in English-- and each 
page includes a diagram of the mouth for each sound, plus a list of all 
the languages for which that contrast is a a difficulty. I cannot 
recommend it enough. If you contact me off-list, I can forward my 
handout on drilling these pairs.--thge book does not have drills per 
se. 
 
As for phonological skills, as mentioned in that earlier post, I find 
it is essential that core phonological awareness be strong before 
literacy is attempted. I cannot recommend enough screening this skill ( 
can the learner hear rhymes ( once the concept is explained) ?) Can the 
learner count the number of words in a sentence s/he hears? If these 
skills are weak, they must be addressed. People with true dyslexia have 
great difficulty hearing and producing rhyme and have been repeatedly 
shown in studies to have significant weaknesses in phonological 
awareness in general. This skill PRECEDES phonemic awareness--which in 
English comes later, as literacy begins to develop.  Just bear in mind 
the progression of skills that children go through before they begin to 
read. Children are not aware of single sounds in words until they are 
first aware of the larger chunks of language. ( And don't forget that 
many language on the planet are NOT alphabetic, and therefore do not 
have phonemes per se. If your learner's language is like this, then the 
very concept of phonemes and letter sounds has to be approached quite 
differently than it would be for a learner from an alphabetic language. 
) 
 
Phonological MEMORY supports the learning of new vocabulary and 
language strings-- idioms and syntax, etc. If your learner cannot 
repeat a sentence of more than 3 or four words completely accurately, 
this skill should be targeted through activities in counting words in 
sentences and saying them accurately-- gradually increasing the length 
of sentences repeated, etc. I am constantly challenged in this by 
people saying that if you know the language you can repeat the 
sentences. But actually, a person with good phonological memory can do 
this relatively easily without any idea of what s/he is saying. This 
skill is tested in the native language by using nonsense words (see a 
test like the C-TOPP --Comrpehensive TEst of Phonological Processing 
Skills) for example. ) It is irrelevant to test nonsense words for ESOL 
learners, since a foreign language is ipso facto nonsense words until 
one learns a lot of vocabulary. Just try it with low frequency words-- 
words we rarely use in conversation. 
 
This skill can be so weak as to constitute a learning 
disability--though it is not classified as such. Phonological awareness 
weaknesses, on the other hand, are known to be at the heart of 
dyslexia--and so ARE LD-- except that we need to have attempted to 
strengthen awareness in a new language before deciding that it is a 
disability---. It is possible to determine in first language that there 
is a reading disability, but it requires having the correct tools to do 
it-tests of reading nonsense words in that language and other tasks 
that test core phonological awareness and speed of decoding. The usual 
tools for diagnosing LD in English do not work with non-native English 
speakers, except those tests of phonological awareness, and then we 
have to be careful that the tests are not weighted to English speakers. 
 
This is getting long-- sorry for so much information-- I guess this 
will overload a lot of people. But since these are the core skills 
needed for language learning and reading, it seems awfully important 
that teachers know about them and understand what challenges are likely 
plaguing their adult learners who are stuck. 
 
More tomorrow on reasons why those readers may plateau at 3rd or 4th 
grade. Robin