Psycholinguistics Perspective on Dyslexia The case of the First Year Middle School Students (2018/2019)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to approach dyslexia in terms of psycholinguistics and analyze the learning disabilities of dyslexic students in a language class. Dyslexic children have problems in recognizing phonemes in reading and due to that they are unable to understand what they read or write. Thus, the study aims at investigating the impact of multisensory applications in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to first year middle school student who might be at risk of being dyslexic, and what effect it causes in the student’s performance regarding the three skills; reading writing and spelling. This study employed a descriptive qualitative method since it emphasized on describing the phenomena of dyslexia. The study took a quasi-experimental action in order to investigate the influence of multisensory techniques in dyslexic’s intervention. By using an observation in order to identify the children at risk of dyslexia, hence, a pre- and post test were designed including an intervention program for one hour and half per session for a sample of 16 first year middle school students. And it further seeks to explore teacher’s awareness of the learning disability of dyslexia. Moreover, the findings were presented in narrative or textual description. However, number was also used to support the analysis of the data. Some steps in analyzing the data were: identifying the raw data, classifying, analyzing and interpreting the data based on its contexts, reporting the findings, and drawing the conclusion. The results showed evidence supporting language deficits such as dyslexia in the children tested. Moreover the findings revealed that multisensory techniques have great impact on dyslexic’s intervention. These results suggest that children with reading and writing difficulties have lower language skills than that of typically developing children.