121. Dyslexia or Language Acquisition? Getting It Right for Multilingual Learners with Karina Cruz (Dyslexia Awareness Month)

What does dyslexia look like across languages? How can educators distinguish between the challenges of learning a new language and an underlying reading disability?

In this special Dyslexia Awareness Month episode of Literacy in Color, I’m joined by Karina Cruz, a speech and language specialist, reading interventionist, and Orton-Gillingham-trained educator from Puerto Rico, to explore dyslexia through a multilingual lens.

We unpack how dyslexia can manifest differently in Spanish and English, why understanding a student’s language and literacy history matters when assessing reading difficulties, and how educators can recognize patterns that go beyond typical second-language acquisition.

Karina shares practical strategies for supporting multilingual learners through structured literacy, including leveraging connections between languages, building phonemic awareness, incorporating oral language, and making intentional instructional decisions – even when teachers don’t speak their students’ home languages.

We also explore the realities of dyslexia identification and access to intervention in Puerto Rico, along with Karina’s powerful reminder that literacy is not a privilege – it’s a human right.

Key Takeaways:

  • How dyslexia can present differently across languages and writing systems
  • The differences between Spanish and English orthographies and what they mean for reading development
  • Distinguishing language acquisition from a reading disability
  • The importance of language history, family history, and cross-linguistic assessment
  • Why oral language provides valuable information beyond reading scores
  • How to leverage phonemic awareness, morphology, and sound-spelling connections across languages

Resources and References Mentioned:

This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting the podcast!

Connect with Karina Cruz:

This podcast is brought to you by Reading Science Academy, where our friend Stephanie Stollar is giving Literacy in Color listeners an exclusive, free grouping resource bundle designed to help you spend less time figuring out what to do with screening data and move more quickly into purposeful, skill-based groups.

Get your FREE grouping resource bundle here.

Or, become a member of Reading Science Academy to learn in community and receive research-backed support alongside over 1,600 literacy educators.

Connect with Michelle:

Want to Support the Podcast?

Interested in Learning More about Morphology?