Language education for special needs - Supporting learners with dyslexia
Our ability to communicate verbally is based on the faculty of language and the use of concrete linguistic
systems that allow us to achieve our goals in the world. However, language and speech are not the same thing.
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Language = The human faculty to develop, process, and communicate verbally. Language is therefore a
psychological faculty that enables us to learn a language.
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Speech = The idiom of a country.
The Five Key Points for Reading Acquisition:
Language is central, as it enables humans to achieve their objectives. Even from early childhood, children are
familiar with many linguistic aspects of their first language without having formally studied them.
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Vocabulary: The number of words children learn through conversation influences their development
towards reading acquisition. A word can be decoded more quickly when associating its written form with
its oral counterpart. However, even children with reading difficulties can memorize new words through
reading.
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Phonological Awareness: Refers to the ability to focus on the sounds of words, separate from their
meaning.
Cognition in Early Reading:
Beginner students must use a variety of cognitive resources to decipher a written text. Attention is one of the
crucial aspects, divided into three types:
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Sustained Attention: The ability to focus on one topic for an extended period.
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Selective Attention: Enables the student to remain focused, avoid distractions, and select important
information. Clinical studies have examined the relationship between selective attention and dyslexia.
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Divided Attention: The ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, focusing on both form and
meaning.
Memory also plays a crucial role:
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Working Memory: Allows a reader to retain an input for a short period before transferring it to long-term
memory. It helps store visual and phonological information.
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Explicit Memory: Helps voluntarily memorize facts and concepts.
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Implicit Memory: The type of memory children start using from birth "without thinking"; these processes
become automatic.
Technical Reading Skills:
These cover various processes such as:
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Recognizing connections between sounds and letters
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Memorizing spelling patterns
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Syllabic division
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Combining letters or syllables to pronounce a word, enabling recognition of common letter combinations
Strategic Reading Skills:
These help readers understand the meaning of a passage using their knowledge. Skilled readers use context to
hypothesize about a text's potential content, applying facts and personal knowledge, such as:
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World knowledge and context: Applying experiences and facts to interpret specific actions in a given context.
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Knowledge of the text's language: Using familiarity with the topic, culture, text type, and setting while applying
grammatical rules at all levels.
Metastrategic Abilities:
These involve understanding how written comprehension works and which strategies are most effective in achieving
reading goals. They depend on experience, learning styles, and do not develop sequentially.
Linguistic needs can be connected to the four specific properties of language identified by Freddi (1994):
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Communicative function: The primary function, allowing humans to connect with others and interpret
messages.
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Pragmatic function: Enables people to act (promise, swear, advise, order), affecting social reality.
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Expressive function: Allows individuals to express emotions, fears, expectations, and preferences, revealing
their inner world.
