What does President Obama have in common with David Cameron? Good looking? Intelligent? Well maybe, but one thing they do have in common is that their are both left-handed. That is along with 4 of the last 6 US Presidents (Bush sr, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton) and other such famous people as Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Beethoven, da Vinci and Gandhi.
The Independent today reports on an initiative by one of the most famous UK public schools – Malvern College, in organising a conference to look at suggestions that right handed children have advantages over left handed children at school, and it’s perhaps time things were 
balanced up. The Head of Malvern College (Anthony Smith) suggests left handed students even have more difficulties in physically writing because of having to push against the paper instead of pulling. (The article goes onto say that the ball-point pen was one of the great liberating inventions for left-handers as it was difficult ot write with a fountain pen!)
According to Chris MacManus,(professor of psychology and medical education at University College, London) there is support for the idea that language development (and therefore learning a language) is a right-brained activity and hence it is natural that there would be more right handed people than left (maybe around 11% of the population are left handed). But he suggests there is evidence that left handers are perhaps more articulate and therefore should be given a chance to learn and be examined orally.
We are not aware of there being any research into whether good 2nd language learners (as opposed to first language learners) are more or less likely to be left handed – perhaps that would be a good subject for some doctoral research! In dealing with learning styles and preferences (and learning difficulties like dsylexia) it’s not clear what the best strategy is for learning a 2nd language – but it would seem to make some sense to allow people who have preferred learning strategies (like giving an emphasis to oral learning as opposed to reading and writing) the opportunity to learn in a way (and be tested in a way) that is most comfortable for them. Put it another way – why put obstacles in people’s way if they want to learn something?
When we teach languages at UICthere is an emphasis on oral communication (estimates 70-80% of the time is oral/aural) so there is no issue if reading (for example) is a problem. The class is also significantly delivered in the target language – so if you are trying to learn French, the majority of the language used in the class (including instructions and so on) will be in French. So,, if your experience at school did nothing except put you off learning languages – why not give it another try!
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