Investigations of Literacy Difficulties in English-, Arabic- and Turkish-Speaking Children Aged 9-11

Abstract

The study investigates whether equivalent characteristics of dyslexia manifest in all languages learned by multilingual children aged 9-11 years, whose L1 is Arabic, L2 is English, and L3 is Turkish. t sheds light on the relationship between different impairments in reading skills and the properties of the orthography in which the individuals learn. This study's multi-language situation and context allow it to contribute to understanding multilingualism as a worldwide linguistic phenomenon and examine relations among languages and reading skills and difficulties across multiple languages. The study's design is a multiple case study using a modified t-test to compare the results of a single participant with those of a control group. The purpose is to compare word reading times and nonword accuracy for each child and each language separately to obtain detailed profiles. Then, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and vocabulary scores were looked at to see whether any deficits in these variables were associated with reading profiles.