This article reports a case of a native
speaker of Spanish who has severe reading
and spelling difficulties in English. These
difficulties resemble those found in surface
dyslexia. It is argued that he also has the
same difficulties in Spanish, but the regular
spelling system of Spanish prevented his
difficulties from becoming apparent. We
consider the possibility that the writing system
of a speaker's L1can strongly influence
the way he/she habitually handles words
both in the Ll and in an L2, and the implications
of this view for teaching English as a
second language are discussed.
In a recent paper, Masterson, Coltheart and Meara (1985) reported a
case of a native speaker of Spanish with unexpected dyslexic symptoms in
English. That case raises some important issues for teachers of ESL, and
the purpose of this paper is to bring these implications to the attention of
people working in the profession. The paper is organised into two sections.
Part one summarizes the clinical data from the case. Part two
discusses the implications of the case in some detail.