Dyslexia in English as a second language

This study focused on English as L2 in a group of Norwegian dyslexic 12 year olds, compared to an age and gender matched control group. Norwegian school children learn English from the first grades on. The subjects were assessed with a test battery of verbal and written tasks. First, they were given a comprehension task; second, a model sentence task; third, two pragmatic tasks, and fourth, three tasks of literacy. The verbal tasks were scored according to comprehension, morphology, syntax and semantics, while the literacy tasks were scored by spelling, translation and reading skills. It was hypothesized that the results of the control group and the dyslexia group would differ on all tasks, but that subgrouping the dyslexia group by comprehension skills would show heterogeneity within the dyslexia group. The data analyses confirmed these hypotheses. Significant differences were seen between the dyslexia group and the control group. However, the subgrouping revealed minor differences between the control group and the subgroup with good comprehension skills, and major differences between the control group and the subgroup with poor comprehension skills. Especially morphology and spelling were difficult for the dyslexia group. The results were tentatively discussed within the framework of biological and cognitive models of how to interpret L2 performance in dyslexia, underlining the importance of further research in L2 acquisition in dyslexia.