Identifying dyslexia in bilingual children: a phonological approach with inner London Sylheti speakers

Abstract

In an initial validation study a random sample of 89 children identified by their Local Education Authority as having specific learning difficulties (SpLD), a category that overlaps with dyslexia but refers to a wider range of learning difficulties, participated in standardized reading and phonological tests. A random sample of 50 10–12-year-old children educated in English from age 5 years, whose first laguage was Sylheti, were tested on the same battery. While the majority of SpLD children showed considerable degrees of phonological impairment compared with age- and IQ-matched controls, the bilingual children performed on phonological tests as well as monolingual children of the same age. Both groups showed impaired reading accuracy relative to chronological age controls. While single-word reading was superior to text reading in the bilingual children, the opposite held for the SpLD children. This is consistent with the view that semantic knowledge can be used by children with SpLD to enhance their poor decoding skills. In contrast, bilingual children can develop competence in decoding while their semantic knowledge may still lag behind. Implications for the definition of dyslexia as a phonological disorder and for the diagnosis of dyslexia in bilingual children are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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