Learning a foreign language entails several difficulties related to the special characteristics of each language.

Firstly, according to Contrastive Analysis (Melby- Lervåg & Lervåg, 2011) the similarities and difficulties between

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

the L1 the writing direction, the nature of written symbols as well as the degree of transparency of each

language pose severe difficulties to beginners. In a transparency scale ranging from 1 to 5, English is placed in

position 1 while Greek in position 3 (Elley, 1992, as cited in Helland & Kaasa, 2005). In shallow orthographies,

a phonemic approach to reading can be employed, while in languages with deep orthographies, like English, the

morphological information of words have to be taken into consideration. As Seymour (2001) suggests English is

one the most complex orthographic systems and asks for “a dual (logographic-alphabetic) foundation” which can

develop in double-time in comparison to learning to read in shallow orthographies (Seymour et al., 2003) and

requires the cooperation of several parts of the brain (Paulesu et al, 2000, as cited in Spencer & Duncan, 2001).

Deficits in phonological awareness and grapheme decoding are evident in dyslexic students. The latter do

worse than their classmates in shallow orthographies, let alone in deep orthographies (Goswami, 2002). Learning

to read in L2 has not been explored in literature as much as learning to read in L1. However, language

learning is executed by the same processing system irrespective of the language which is being taught

(Cummins, 1991, cited in Melby- Lervåg & Lervåg, 2011).

BACKGROUND

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RESULTS

METHODS

.

1. Twenty two criteria were chosen (14 consonant graphemes, 8 vowel graphemes) and based on them

50 words were selected mainly from the Cambridge Young Learners English Test Handbook (2006).

2. Participants had to identify either by name or sound both upper case and lower

case letters of the alphabet (Clay, 1993).

Table I Words per level

Starters 37

Movers 8

Flyers 4

Other 1

Total 50

/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

Table I. Selected words appearing in ESOL Handbook for YL categorized according to level

Students’ questionnaires

Silent reading is preferred over reading aloud by dyslexic students. Besides, the latter opt for games with

words more than their peers and they enjoy writing on the board.

English Teachers’ perceptions vs. Greek Teachers’ perceptions

Teachers were asked to assess all participants and give them a mark from 1-5 where 3 represents

average performance and 5 excellent performance in reading. The vast majority of dyslexic students

(73,3%) were given 1 or 2 in reading English , while almost half of them (47,8%) were placed in the

same position along the scale in reading Greek.

Letter identification

Both groups partially identified the letters of the alphabet. This means that errors in letter identification

should be treated with caution and not invariably attributed to dyslexia.

Table II Group 1 Group 2

Mean SD Mean SD t-

score

p

Reading words 21,57 12,21 36,35 11,75 -4,01 0,000

Percentage of

correct answers

43,13 26,43 72,70 23,50 -4,01 0,000

Letter

identification

29,83 16,51 38,74 14,28 -1,96 0,06

Percentage of

correct answers

55,17 30,62 71,65 26,40 -1,95 0,57

Errors of Omission

GROUP L1

GROUP L2

METHODS

Sample

Group 1

23 dyslexic students

Group 2

Control group

23 students

7 State Primary Schools (Athens,

Greece)

46 participants

26 boys & 20 girls

Students'

preferences

Teachers'

perceptions

Questionnaires

50 words in order of difficulty

Letter identification

(Clay, 1993)

Reading Test

Materials

HYPOTHESIS

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

dyslexia and typical peers.

Table II. Mean analysis of reading test scores

Types of errors

Clay, M. (1993). An Observation Survey of literacy achievement. Heinemann: Auckland.

Helland, T., & Kaasa, R. (2005). Dyslexia in English as a second language. Dyslexia,11, 41-60.

Kim, Y. S., Wagner, R. & Foster, E. (2011). Relations among oral reading fluency, silent reading fluency, and reading comprehension: A

latent variable study of first-grade readers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15 (4). 338-362.

Melby – Lervåg, M. & Lervåg, A. (2011). Cross-linguistic transfer of oral language, decoding, phonological awareness and reading

comprehension: a meta-analysis of the corelational evidence. Journal of Research in Reading,34 (1), 114-135.

Πολυχρόνη, Φ. (2011). Ειδικές μαθησιακές δυσκολίες. Αθήνα: Πεδίο.

Πόρποδας, Κ. (2002). Η Ανάγνωση. Αθήνα: αυτοέκδοση.

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.

Seymour, P. H. K., & Duncan, L. G. (2001). Learning to read in English. Ψυχολογία, 8 (3), 281-299.

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.

Spencer, K. (2001). Differential Effects of orthographic transparency on Dyslexia: Word reading difficulty for common English words.

Dyslexia, 7, 217-228.

University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations (2006). Cambridge young learners English tests: Starters, Movers, Flyers. Handbook for

teachers (updated for 2007 tests). Cambridge: University of Cambridge.

CONCLUSIONS

Group 1

Dyslexic Students

• talk

• shirt

• lunch

• behind

• question

Group 2

Control Group

• hour

• jungle

• pea

• page

• talk

Table III. The words read less accurately by each group

Table IV Graphemes / Difficult Position in

the word

-c- /k/ middle

-c- /s/ middle

-x- /ks/ middle

-g- /g/ initial

-ph- /f/ initial

-ck- /k/ middle

-ch- /tʃ/ initial

-th- /Ɵ/ initial

-ea- /i:/ final

Words with regular spelling were read successfully by both groups. The most common error for both

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

Greek ones in the cases where the grapheme was the same (ex. v/n/ instead of /v/). Besides, other

less frequent errors were additions, transpositions and mirror letter reversals.

Substitution of English with Greek phonemes for the same graphemes

GROUP 1

GROUP 2

Instruction and systematic training are prerequisites for students to realize their potential (Polychroni, 2011) and

develop their cognitive and metacognitive skills. The errors that the dyslexic participants made are mostly

related to the visual perception of letters and words as well as phonemic reading. Since the word reading and

reading comprehension skills that someone has developed in L1 can be transferred in L2 (Sparks et al., 2008)

Greek students are prone to apply their strategies in reading English and faill due to the different degree of

transparency of the two languages. Finally, it is advisable that teachers not only teach students the pronunciation

of graphemes at the beginning of words but also in different positions in the word s (Table IV).

Pie chart 1

Pie chart 2

Table IV. The most difficult position of graphemes in the words based on the

errors of both groups

Recommendations

Teachers should respect students’ desire to read silently and involve them in chorus repetition of difficult

words. Since oral reading fluency is supposed to be a predictor of reading comprehension (Kim et al., 2011)

a step-by-step approach is advisable for dyslexic students to achieve the ultimate purpose of fluency in

reading.