English text reading assessment of francophone dyslexic students.

Abstract

Dyslexia persists in adulthood, despite speech therapy interventions (Abadie & Bedoin, 2016). It concerns 3-4% of students at University. The deficits the dyslexics have (i.e. slow reading; bad research of information in a text ; phonological, visuo-attentional and memory deficits) bring on, according to many authors, a difficulty in learning foreign languages. Yet at University, a majority of courses teach English, and obtaining a Master’s degree requires the mastery of at least one foreign language. Therefore, students must read scientific literature predominantly in English, or Master’s degrees have a large proportion of lectures in English. This is an issue for certain dyslexic students, we observe that the usual adjustments suggested to them aren’t necessarily the most appropriate. One of the aims of this study was to assess the speed in reading and reading comprehension in English of dyslexic students, by comparing their performance with that of typical readers. We also tried to determine if these reading difficulties are more important in English than in French. In that purpose, we did an assessment of the level of English and proposed reading tests in both languages. The results show : slow reading and decreased text comprehension in English for the dyslexics ; a reading comprehension in French better than in English, that not being the case for the typical readers, which indicates an augmented handicap for the dyslexics ; a level of English with the dyslexics inferior to that of the typical readers, but the studied groups were heterogenous. This study leads us to think about the variety of adjustments that need to be implemented for the teaching and assessment of English of dyslexic students, according to the level of reading and their knowledge of this language.