Foreign language reading and spelling in gifted students with dyslexia in secondary education

A few studies suggest that gifted children with dyslexia have better literacy skills than averagely intelligent children with dyslexia. This finding aligns with the hypothesis that giftedness-related factors provide compensation for poor reading. The present study investigated whether, as in the native language (NL), the level of foreign language (FL) literacy of gifted students with dyslexia is higher than the literacy level of averagely intelligent students with dyslexia and whether this difference can be accounted for by the difference in their NL literacy level. The sample consisted of 148 Dutch native speaking secondary school students divided in four groups: dyslexia, gifted/dyslexia, typically developing (TD), and gifted. All students were assessed on word reading and orthographic knowledge in Dutch and English when they were in 7th or 8th grade. A subsample (n = 71) was (re)assessed on Dutch, English, French, and German literacy one year later. Results showed that Dutch gifted students with dyslexia have higher NL literacy levels than averagely intelligent students with dyslexia. As in the NL, a stepwise pattern of group differences was found for English word reading and spelling, i.e., dyslexia < gifted/dyslexia < TD < gifted. However, it was not found for French and German literacy performance. These results point towards compensation: the higher English literacy levels of gifted/dyslexic students compared to their averagely intelligent dyslexic peers result from mechanisms that are unique to English as a FL. Differences in results between FLs are discussed in terms of variation in orthographic transparency and exposure.     

Language and reading development in children learning English as an additional language in primary school in England

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) are a growing population of learners in English primary schools. These children begin school with differing levels of English language proficiency and tend to underperform in relation to their non-EAL peers on measures of English oral language and reading. However, little work has examined the developmental trajectories of these skills in EAL learners in England. EAL learners and 33 non-EAL peers in Year 4 (age 8–9 years) were assessed at three time points over 18 months on measures of oral language (vocabulary, grammar and listening comprehension), phonological processing (spoonerisms and rapid automatised naming) and reading skills (single-word decoding and passage reading). At t1, EAL learners scored significantly lower than non-EAL peers in receptive and expressive vocabulary (breadth but not depth), spoonerisms and passage reading accuracy. Contrary to previous research, no significant group differences were found in listening or reading comprehension skills. With the exception of passage reading accuracy, there was no evidence for convergence or divergence between the groups in rate of progress over time. After three years of English-medium classroom instruction, EAL learners continue to underperform relative to their non-EAL peers in breadth of English vocabulary knowledge. This discrepancy in vocabulary knowledge does not appear to narrow as a result of regular classroom instruction in the run up to the final stages of primary school, pinpointing vocabulary as a key target for intervention.     

浅谈阅读对于小学生语文学习的重要性

阅读是小学生语文学习课程中最重要的环节之一,也是学生理解和掌握新知识的基础,笔者就阅读在小学生语文学习中的重要性结合工作谈谈自己的认识。     

The roles of cognitive and language abilities in predicting decoding and reading comprehension: comparisons of dyslexia and specific language impairment

This study aimed to (a) explore the roles of cognitive and language variables in predicting reading abilities of two groups of individuals with reading disabilities (i.e., dyslexia and specific language impairment) and (b) examine which variable(s) is the most predictive in differentiating two groups. Inclusion/exclusion criteria applied to categorize the two groups yielded a total of 63 participants (n = 44 for the dyslexia; n = 19 for the specific language impairment). A stepwise multiple regression approach was conducted to examine which cognitive and/or language variables made the largest contribution to reading abilities (i.e., Phonetic Decoding Efficiency, Word Attack, Sight Word Efficiency, and Passage Comprehension). Results revealed that there were significant differences in which measures of cognitive and language ability predicted individuals with dyslexia and speech and language impairments reading ability, showing that the cognitive and language variables underlying their difficulty with reading abilities were not the same across the two groups. A discriminant function analysis showed that a measure of Verbal Comprehension, Phonological Awareness, and Phonetic Decoding Efficiency can be used to differentiate the two groups. These findings support the tenet that dyslexia and specific language impairment are two subgroups of reading disabilities and that thorough diagnostic evaluations are needed to differentiate between these two subgroups. Distinctions of this nature are central to determining the type and intensity of language-based interventions.     

Lessons from the reading brain for reading development and dyslexia*

The purpose of this study was to examine Australian learning difficulties specialists’ knowledge about, and the use of, the term dyslexia. An online survey was constructed based on a current definition of, and evidence about, dyslexia and distributed to members of relevant professional associations. A total of 179 participants responded to the survey. Statistical tests were used to identify significant differences in questionnaire scores between a number of demographic subgroups which included special professional interest group, professional discipline, years of experience and engagement in reading-related university study. Results indicated that these Australian professionals all possess a similar and generally high level of accurate research-based knowledge about dyslexia and how to support individuals with significant reading issues. However, while affirming the relevancy of the term dyslexia in their professional work, most participants preferred another term and favoured a combination of words including reading, learning and the less pejorative term difficulty as opposed to disability. As the term dyslexia is commonly used by Australian educators, policy-makers, support organisation and parents to make decisions about the support individuals receive, an understanding of what is currently understood by this label is critical.     

A critical reading of multiculturalism in English language teaching and learning

Multiculturalism becomes the buzzword in educational fields. The implication of multiculturalism is critically examined to appreciate its relevance to English language teaching. Critical multiculturalism is advocated whereby L2 learners need to examine how social and historical discourses construct their identities and have a critical reflection about the discourses＇ power/knowledge and social impact. Viewing language and culture as artificial systems with ideological dominance, critical multiculturalism leads to a critical pedagogy to negotiate, reverse and resist such ideological dominance. Critical multiculturalism enables L2 teachers and learners to create, maintain and transform language uses, hence their identities and social realities.     

Early literacy and comprehension skills in children learning English as an additional language and monolingual children with language weaknesses

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80 monolingual English-speaking peers with language weaknesses were assessed at school entry (mean age = 4 years, 7 months) and after 2 years of schooling in the UK (mean age = 6 years, 3 months). The EAL group showed weaker language skills and stronger word reading than the monolingual group but no difference in reading comprehension. Individual differences in reading comprehension were predicted by variations in decoding and language comprehension in both groups to a similar degree.     

Phonological and lexical reading in Italian children with dyslexia

In this study we explore the development of phonological and lexical reading in dyslexic children. We tested a group of 14 Italian children who have been diagnosed with dyslexia and whose reading age is end of grade 1. We compared this group with a group of 70 typically developing children who have been tested for reading at the end of grade 1. For each dyslexic child we also selected a participant who was attending the same grade, was close in age, and showed typical reading development when tested with a narrative passage reading task (Cornoldi, Colpo, & Gruppo MT, 1981) for correctness and reading speed. Children in this group are “same grade controls.” We used a reading task consisting of 40 three syllables words. A qualitative and quantitative method of coding children’s naming allowed us to distinguish several components of their reading performance: the grapheme and word recognition, the size of orthographic units involved in the aloud orthography–phonology conversion, the reading process used to recognize words. The comparison of the dyslexic group with the reading age and the same grade control groups reveals different trends of delayed reading processes. Considering dyslexic children’s chronological age, lexical reading is greatly delayed. Considering dyslexic children’s reading age, the type of reading process that is more deeply delayed is phonological reading. The rate of fragmented phonological reading (i.e., a type of syllabized phonological reading) is much higher in dyslexic children compared to the reading age group, suggesting that some factors undermine the possibility of internalizing the orthography–phonology conversion and the blending processes.     

Computer frequency control of vocabulary in language learning reading materials

Vocabulary is one of the major obstacles to attaining reading fluency in a second language. The major European literary languages have vocabularies of many tens of thousands of items. For efficient learning, the vocabulary systems must be structured in terms of frequency groupings so that the more frequent items are mastered before the less frequent ones. The learner, however, has no way of determining the relative frequency of the words in his text. The solution involves: 1) the establishment of various word frequency groups and 2) marking the words in the reading text so that the learner has a clear set of rational priorities. Statistical studies suggest that approximately the most frequent 5,000 words constitute a minimum vocabulary for liberated reading and account for about 90% of the different words in an average text. The learning of the less frequent items should be deferred until these are mastered. Further, the presentation of the higher frequency words within the 1,000–5,000 range should be sequenced by groups in terms of their relative frequencies. Each group might correspond to a particular level of language proficiency. This goal can be attained by means of a system in which the frequency category of each text word is marked so that the learner knows its relative importance and can structure his vocabulary acquisition accordingly. A marking procedure by frequency is integrated with a marginal translation or glossing routine. The article proposes a set of frequency groups and describes an algorithm for the implementation of a frequency identification and marking procedure on an IBM 360 computer. A sample page of a Russian text book utilizing the technique is given and several other potential utilizations are described.     

The role of sentence recall in reading and language skills of children with learning difficulties

The present study explores the relationship between sentence recall and reading and language skills in a group of 7–11-year-old children with learning difficulties. While recent studies have found that performance on sentence recall tasks plays a role in learning, it is possible that this contribution is a reflection of shared resources with working memory. In order to investigate whether sentence recall was uniquely associated with reading and language skills, differences associated with IQ and working memory capacity were statistically controlled. A sample of 72 children was tested on measures of verbal complex memory, verbal short-term memory, sentence recall, expressive vocabulary, verbal and performance IQ, reading and language skills. Both sentence recall and verbal complex memory shared unique links with reading skill, and sentence recall was uniquely associated with language skills. This finding indicates that resources in long-term memory also play an important diagnostic role in reading and language abilities. The implications for educational practice are discussed.     

多媒体辅助语言学习中的认知负荷阐释

多媒体辅助语言学习的多样性、交互性和集成性在呈现给学习者大量信息的同时,也造成了学习者的认知超负荷状态.言语信息加工中的认知负荷根据其认知需求可分为：内在认知负荷、外在认知负荷和相关认知负荷.多媒体外语教学软件制作应尽量减少学习者认知负荷,具体可采取卸载技术、分解技术、演练技术、清除技术、标记技术、调整技术、消除冗余技术、同步技术、个性化设计等.     

Sound-symbol learning in children with dyslexia

This study evaluated the effect of sound-symbol association training on visual and phonological memory in children with a history of dyslexia. Pretests of phonological and visual memory, a sound-symbol training procedure, and phonological and visual memory posttests were administered to children with dyslexia, to children whose dyslexia had been compensated through remedial training, and to age- and reading level-matched comparison groups. Deficits in visual and phonological memory and memory for sound-symbol associations were demonstrated in the dyslexia group. For children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been remediated, the sound-symbol training scores were significantly associated with word and pseudoword reading scores and were significantly lower than those of the comparison groups. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated showed significantly less facilitation of phonological memory following the training than did typical readers. Skilled readers showed some reduction in accuracy of visual memory following the training, which may be the result of interference of verbalization with a predominantly visual task. A parallel decrease was not observed in the children with dyslexia, possibly because these children did not use the verbal cues. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated seemed to have difficulty encoding the novel sounds in memory. As a result, they derived less phonological memory advantage and less visual memory interference from the training than did typical readers. Children in the compensated dyslexia group scored lower on sound-symbol training than their age peers. In other respects, the scores of these children were equivalent to those of the typically reading comparison groups. Children in the compensated dyslexia group exhibited higher phonological rehearsal, iconic memory, and associative memory scores than children in the dyslexia group. Implications for the remediation of dyslexia are discussed.     

Patterns of inverted reading and subgroups in dyslexia

Reading performance of 46 poor readers was compared with that of 20 normal control readers. All subjects were second grade children. In Experiment 1 two matching word lists were presented under two conditions: one version of the test was read in the upright position and the other inverted. In Experiment 2 the eye movements of all subjects were recorded during reading of two meaningful sentences in the normal and inverted position. While the controls were negatively influenced by inversion of the text, the poor readers showed a variety of responses. Overall, the poor readers showed a slight tendency to be better at reading in the inverted position when the text must be scanned from right to left. An individual analysis of the data revealed that in 28.3% of the poor readers inverted reading improved performance at least 15 %, a phenomenon found in none of the controls.     

Visual-motor integration and reading Chinese in children with/without dyslexia

Reading and Writing - Visual-motor integration is an ability to coordinate the visual information and limb movement, which has direct relevance to Chinese handwriting ability. Interestingly...     

An interaction-dominant perspective on reading fluency and dyslexia

The background noise of response times is often overlooked in scientific inquiries of cognitive performances. However, it is becoming widely acknowledged in psychology, medicine, physiology, physics, and beyond that temporal patterns of variability constitute a rich source of information. Here, we introduce two complexity measures (1/f scaling and recurrence quantification analysis) that employ background noise as metrics of reading fluency. These measures gauge the extent of interdependence across, rather than within, cognitive components. In this study, we investigated dyslexic and non-dyslexic word-naming performance in beginning readers and observed that these complexity metrics differentiate reliably between dyslexic and average response times and correlate strongly with the severity of the reading impairment. The direction of change in the introduced metrics suggests that developmental dyslexia resides from dynamical instabilities in the coordination among the many components necessary to read, which could explain why dyslexic readers score below average on so many distinct tasks and modalities.     

Second language learning in the zone of proximal development: A revolutionary experience

In this paper we provide empirical support from L₂ learning for Vygotsky's claim that development and performance in mental systems is not a smooth linear process, but simultaneously entails forward movement and regression, or what some L₂ researchers refer to as backsliding. After considering the specifics of Vygotsky's argument, we show that because learning arises in “zones of proximal development”, regression is manifested not only in the linguistic features of the second language produced by learners, but also in the frequency and quality of help as other-regulation negotiated between learners and experts. Although other L₂ researchers have recognized the appearance of regression among learners, we propose a different theoretical status for the phenomenon than is currently the case.     

The Universal and the unique in dyslexia: A cross-linguistic investigation of reading and reading fluency in Hebrew-and English-speaking children with reading disorders

Cross-linguistic studies provide a unique tool for the identification of universal processes in oral and written language, both in development and in breakdown (Annual Review of psychology, 52, 369–396). Examining the differential strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia in contrasting orthographies can help illumine both the more universal aspects of reading disabilities, as well as their individual language-specific attributes. The aim of this study, was to investigate the shared and distinctive characteristics of readers with dyslexia on reading and reading fluency across Hebrew and English orthographies. Differences between 60 Hebrew and English-speaking children with dyslexia on a battery of cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures will be discussed along with theoretical implications.