| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation focuses on two groups of grade 3 (9 year old) children in Pakistan: those
with a reading deficit, and those who are developmentally unimpaired. The main objective of the
study was to establish what the predictors of reading in Urdu might be and whether tasks that
have proven useful in screening for reading deficits in other languages might also be useful in
Urdu.
There is little awareness of dyslexia in Pakistan and there are no tasks available to screen for
children with such deficits in public schools. The sample in this study consisted of children
studying in both Urdu and English medium schools. In order to design a test battery for
screening purposes, some standard tests, such as the Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) tasks
(Denckla & Rudel, 1976), were borrowed in their original form. Certain tests were adapted for
content and grade, such as the English 2 Dyslexia Test (Kaasa, Sanne, & Helland, 2004),
while others were designed from scratch, such as a RAN task in Urdu, a non-Word Repetition
task, and phonological awareness tasks, also in Urdu.
This experimental study began with interviews with school teachers whose knowledge of the
children’s abilities helped to divide them into 2 groups (a control group, and a reading deficit
group).
In the first stage of the study, the children were tested on standard RAN and NWR (Non-
Word Repetition) tasks, Urdu dictation, and the reading of a short Urdu text. On the basis of
their scores, the children were put into more clearly distinguished control and reading deficit
groups for further testing. The statistical analyses revealed that RAN and NWR scores were
reliable predictors of reading skills in Urdu. These tasks were thus shown to be capable of
differentiating between typical children and children with a reading deficit.
In the second stage, both groups of children were controlled for non-verbal IQ differences.
The results for children in Urdu medium schools were analysed independently of those for
children in English medium schools. This was done in order to avoid any confounds based on
differences of socio-economic status (SES) or the fact that children in English medium
schools are exposed to a great deal of educational extra-curricular activities, unlike children in
Urdu medium schools. Furthermore, all children were tested using the English 2 dyslexia test
(Kassa et al., 2004). This test was also shown to be capable of differentiating between the L2
performance of typical children as compared to children with a reading deficit on all tasks in the
test. The children from English medium schools from both groups performed better than their
counterparts in Urdu medium schools. These results demonstrate that increased exposure to a
language helps even the reading deficit group to learn that language better. Additionally, the
study showed that the typology of the L1 (morphology, orthography, syntax etc.) might be
critical in L2 acquisition.
In the second stage, the children were also tested on phonological awareness (PA) tasks, but
none of the tasks was able to differentiate between the groups. This raises questions about the
suitability of traditional PA tasks for the screening of reading deficits in Urdu.
This thesis is based on a collection of research papers.
The first paper is about the validation of NWR and RAN tasks a s predictors of reading for
screening purposes in Urdu. Paper 2 and paper 3 are about the validation of the English 2
dyslexia test (with content and grade adaptation) in a Pakistani context. The original English 2
dyslexia test is intended to test children at grade 6 in Norway, but for this study it was adapted
for grade 3.
Paper 4 discusses the validity of phonological awareness tasks as r e a d in g deficit screening
tools in Urdu. | nb_NO |
