Apraxia and Gemara

miami85

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 10:02 am

My 7th grade son has Apraxia and has always struggled with oral reading in both Hebrew and English--even though he can otherwise "talk". He is now learning gemara and my husband is concerned that if he doesn't improve his ability to read the gemara he will struggle and he won't get into a good high school--even though he is intelligent. He gets kriah tutoring, speech and voice lessons. He is preparing for his bar mitzvah. I spent several months with him just reading through the parsha before he even learned a note of tropp--and he's getting it. Any other advice?

amother

Dodgerblue

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 10:11 am

I have a high schooler who is has apraxia At this point she really sounds like she has some sort of accent. When we were going to High School’s I did explain it to the administration before the interview and Surprisingly they really knew what it was and no one made a big deal. so I would say as long as his learning is otherwise OK I would just mention it before. You can also ask the speech therapist to do oral reading with him.

miami85

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 10:20 am

amother Dodgerblue wrote:

His English is much better than Hebrew--because most of his English reading is "sight" words at this point, but he has a hard time with phonetics and longer/grade words.

I may be wrong but I feel like a girl would be different than a boy where SO much of boy's high school is reading and titching gemara. His speech therapist is amazing, but he isn't Jewish. So he won't be able to do the Hebrew reading.

mha3484

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 10:25 am

I would ask a frum male speech therapist. I can give you a name of someone in Chicago if you want or you can ask around for someone else. They would have the speech therapy experience combined with actually learning gemara themself experience.

miami85

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 12:30 pm

mha3484 wrote:

that might be helpful. Please send me his information.

amother

Stone

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 12:37 pm

Funnily enough, I was just talking about this yesterday with my son who struggles with Gemara learning. He said that he wishes he would have memorized the basic words in gemara that come up again and again so it would have made it easier later on. I know they had a program like that in his elementary school for chumash words, but not sure about gemarra. Do you think that would be helpful to him? Admittedly, I am not familiar with apraxia and how it would manifest in terms of gemarra learning, but just wanted to mention it. If applicable, perhaps there is already existing materials or a tutor could put something together in a list?

mha3484

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 1:02 pm

amother Stone wrote:

My son did this in 5th grade when they started learning gemara. The rebbe would send home a list of millim and this cute standing frame so you could see the paper while you learned. I assumed that was standard.

miami85

Wed, Sep 20 2023, 2:21 pm

amother Stone wrote:

Apraxia affects the motor planning of the mouth meaning new words/sounds are more challenging, long words with lots of syllables are more challenging as well. There's a theory that a child with Apraxia needs to hear/practice a word "1000 times" before s/he can say the word. English is our native language thus he hears the words much more frequently. Hebrew davening there's enough repetition for him to get most of the words he uses more frequently. In English the way our brains read is that eventually words become sight-words so we don't use phonics on a regular basis. Hebrew is much more phonetic with shorashim and different nekudos so it's a lot more for the brain to process and "plan" so he's struggling especially with now throwing in aramaic into the mix.