Phonological Awareness in Young Bilingual Dyslexics in Malaysia

Abstract

Research on dyslexia in Malaysia is still lacking. As a result, the general understanding of dyslexia is relatively low among teachers and parents who are not equipped with the necessary skills to provide assistance for dyslexic children. This study aims to add to existing research and the understanding of dyslexia in Malaysia. We conducted our study on two groups of children: dyslexic and unimpaired. We tested them on phonological awareness and reading tasks in Malay and English. Our results indicated that the dyslexic group performed poorer in accuracy and speed on all tasks compared to the unimpaired group. We also found a tentative effect of orthographic depth on reading performance because the unimpaired group performed far better than the dyslexic group in the English reading task despite their similar knowledge of English vocabulary. Furthermore, our results support previous findings indicating speed as a better predictor of dyslexia than accuracy in shallower orthographies.