1. /kæt/ or /sæt/? This is the question!
Yiota Koufopoulou, EFL Teacher – Psychologist, MEd candidate in TESOL, Hellenic Open University
Fotini Polychroni, Assistant Professor of Learning Difficulties, University of Athens, Ph.D., MBPsS
BACKGROUND METHODS
Letter identification
Learning a foreign language entails several difficulties related to the special characteristics of each language. Both groups partially identified the letters of the alphabet. This means that errors in letter identification
2. Participants had to identify either by name or sound both upper case and lower
Firstly, according to Contrastive Analysis (Melby- Lervåg & Lervåg, 2011) the similarities and difficulties between should be treated with caution and not invariably attributed to dyslexia.
case letters of the alphabet (Clay, 1993).
L1 and L2 play a role in the level of difficulty involved. The fewer the similarities between L1 and L2 graphemes
the faster the discrimination between them and the rarer the confusion (Porpodas, 2002). Secondly, regardless of RESULTS Students’ questionnaires
the L1 the writing direction, the nature of written symbols as well as the degree of transparency of each Silent reading is preferred over reading aloud by dyslexic students. Besides, the latter opt for games with
language pose severe difficulties to beginners. In a transparency scale ranging from 1 to 5, English is placed in Table II. Mean analysis of reading test scores words more than their peers and they enjoy writing on the board.
position 1 while Greek in position 3 (Elley, 1992, as cited in Helland & Kaasa, 2005). In shallow orthographies, Table II Group 1 Group 2
a phonemic approach to reading can be employed, while in languages with deep orthographies, like English, the Mean SD Mean SD t- p English Teachers’ perceptions vs. Greek Teachers’ perceptions
morphological information of words have to be taken into consideration. As Seymour (2001) suggests English is score Teachers were asked to assess all participants and give them a mark from 1-5 where 3 represents
one the most complex orthographic systems and asks for “a dual (logographic-alphabetic) foundation” which can average performance and 5 excellent performance in reading. The vast majority of dyslexic students
develop in double-time in comparison to learning to read in shallow orthographies (Seymour et al., 2003) and Reading words 21,57 12,21 36,35 11,75 -4,01 0,000 (73,3%) were given 1 or 2 in reading English , while almost half of them (47,8%) were placed in the
requires the cooperation of several parts of the brain (Paulesu et al, 2000, as cited in Spencer & Duncan, 2001). same position along the scale in reading Greek.
Deficits in phonological awareness and grapheme decoding are evident in dyslexic students. The latter do Percentage of 43,13 26,43 72,70 23,50 -4,01 0,000
correct answers
worse than their classmates in shallow orthographies, let alone in deep orthographies (Goswami, 2002). Learning Recommendations
Letter 29,83 16,51 38,74 14,28 -1,96 0,06
to read in L2 has not been explored in literature as much as learning to read in L1. However, language identification Teachers should respect students’ desire to read silently and involve them in chorus repetition of difficult
learning is executed by the same processing system irrespective of the language which is being taught Percentage of 55,17 30,62 71,65 26,40 -1,95 0,57 words. Since oral reading fluency is supposed to be a predictor of reading comprehension (Kim et al., 2011)
(Cummins, 1991, cited in Melby- Lervåg & Lervåg, 2011). correct answers a step-by-step approach is advisable for dyslexic students to achieve the ultimate purpose of fluency in
reading.
HYPOTHESIS
Types of errors
Greek students diagnosed with dyslexia who learn English as a Foreign Language will make more
reading errors in English. Type of errors will differ between students with
Words with regular spelling were read successfully by both groups. The most common error for both
dyslexia and typical peers.
groups was phonemic reading. However, Group 1 excelled in omission of phonemes and syllables,
confusion of letters with other letters of the English Alphabet and substitution of English phonemes with
CONCLUSIONS
METHODS
Greek ones in the cases where the grapheme was the same (ex. v/n/ instead of /v/). Besides, other
Sample less frequent errors were additions, transpositions and mirror letter reversals.
Group 1
Instruction and systematic training are prerequisites for students to realize their potential (Polychroni, 2011) and
23 dyslexic Errors of Omission Substitution of English with Greek develop their cognitive and metacognitive skills. The errors that the dyslexic participants made are mostly
students related to the visual perception of letters and words as well as phonemic reading. Since the word reading and
7 State Primary phonemes for the same graphemes
Schools (Athens, reading comprehension skills that someone has developed in L1 can be transferred in L2 (Sparks et al., 2008)
Greece) Greek students are prone to apply their strategies in reading English and faill due to the different degree of
46 participants GROUP L1
transparency of the two languages. Finally, it is advisable that teachers not only teach students the pronunciation
GROUP L2 GROUP 1
26 boys & 20 girls of graphemes at the beginning of words but also in different positions in the word s (Table IV).
Group 2 GROUP 2
Control
group Pie chart 1
23 students
Pie chart 2
Table III. The words read less accurately by each group
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Materials Group 1 Group 2
Dyslexic Students Control Group
Reading
Questionnaires • talk • hour
Test Clay, M. (1993). An Observation Survey of literacy achievement. Heinemann: Auckland.
• shirt • jungle
50 words in Helland, T., & Kaasa, R. (2005). Dyslexia in English as a second language. Dyslexia,11, 41-60.
order of difficulty • lunch • pea
Students' Kim, Y. S., Wagner, R. & Foster, E. (2011). Relations among oral reading fluency, silent reading fluency, and reading comprehension: A
• behind • page
preferences latent variable study of first-grade readers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15 (4). 338-362.
• question • talk Melby – Lervåg, M. & Lervåg, A. (2011). Cross-linguistic transfer of oral language, decoding, phonological awareness and reading
Letter comprehension: a meta-analysis of the corelational evidence. Journal of Research in Reading,34 (1), 114-135.
Teachers' identification Table IV. The most difficult position of graphemes in the words based on the Πολυχρόνη, Φ. (2011). Ειδικές μαθησιακές δυσκολίες. Αθήνα: Πεδίο.
perceptions (Clay, 1993) errors of both groups Πόρποδας, Κ. (2002). Η Ανάγνωση. Αθήνα: αυτοέκδοση.
Table IV Graphemes / Difficult Position in Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M. & Erskine, J. in collaboration with COST Action A8 network (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in
European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 96, 143-174.
1. Twenty two criteria were chosen (14 consonant graphemes, 8 vowel graphemes) and based on them the word
Seymour, P. H. K., & Duncan, L. G. (2001). Learning to read in English. Ψυχολογία, 8 (3), 281-299.
50 words were selected mainly from the Cambridge Young Learners English Test Handbook (2006). -c- /k/ middle Sparks, R. L., Patton, J., Ganschow, L., Humbach, N., & Javorsky, J. (2008). Early first-language reading and spelling skills predict
later second-language reading and spelling skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 162–174.
Table I. Selected words appearing in ESOL Handbook for YL categorized according to level -c- /s/ middle
Spencer, K. (2001). Differential Effects of orthographic transparency on Dyslexia: Word reading difficulty for common English words.
Table I Words per level -x- /ks/ middle Dyslexia, 7, 217-228.
. University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations (2006). Cambridge young learners English tests: Starters, Movers, Flyers. Handbook for
Starters 37 -g- /g/ initial teachers (updated for 2007 tests). Cambridge: University of Cambridge.
Movers 8 -ph- /f/ initial
-ck- /k/ middle
Flyers 4
-ch- /tʃ/ initial
Other 1
-th- /Ɵ/ initial
Total 50
-ea- /i:/ final