[senco-forum] Why do Italians with dyslexia have an inbuiltadvantage compared with English children?

The evidence from brain scanning and histology (Gallaburda)could be a result 
not a cause of readinig difficulties.  There is also the problem in these 
studies of determining the 'diagnosis' of dyslexia in the absence of 
information on what methods were used to teach reading.   We still do not 
know what separates good readers from bad in any consistent way.  When are 
we going to get rigorous in our thinking  and empirical in our research?

Philip EP
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Maggie Downie" <maizie2004 at yahoo.co.uk>
To: "senco-forum" <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Why do Italians with dyslexia have an 
inbuiltadvantage compared with English children?

>
> Professor Diane McGuinness has commented on the Goswami article here:
>
> http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?t=2999,
>
> and there is discussion of it on the RRF board, here:
>
> http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?t=2995
>
> Just in case anyone is interested in an alternative view.
>
> Maggie
>
> On 8/18/07, Jean Hutchins  wrote:
>>
>> Times Educational Supplement. Friday 17 August, 2007.  Magazine. Pages 24
>> & 25.
>>
>> brain & behaviour.
>> The language barrier.
>>
>> Why do Italians with dyslexia have an inbuilt advantage compared with
>> English
>> children?
>> Usha Goswami explains.
>>
>> The neural inefficiencies which result in dyslexia are shared across
>> languages,
>> with a similar prevalence of 5 to 7 per cent. Dyslexics in Chinese, 
>> French
>> and
>> Italian show similar characteristics. Nevertheless, its manifestation
>> differs
>> according to language. This is because of syllable structure and spelling
>> systems.
>>
>> Children with dyslexia learning to read languages such as Italian and
>> Greek are
>> best off developmentally. Syllable structure is simple: mostly
>> consonant-vowel
>> pairings, as in mama. There is a consistent, one-to-one correspondence
>> between
>> letters and sounds. In these languages, dyslexics show slow, effortful 
>> but
>> accurate reading and poor spelling.
>>
>> Children with dyslexia find it more difficult learning to read in
>> languages such
>> as English. The syllable structure is complex. Correspondence between
>> letters
>> and sounds is inconsistent (for instance, "a" makes a different sound in
>> make,
>> man, mark and mall). English dyslexic children show inaccurate reading,
>> slow
>> decoding and poor spelling characteristic of dyslexia in other languages.
>>
>> Usha Goswami is Professor of Education and director of the Centre for
>> Neuroscience in Education at the University of Cambridge.
>>
>> Jean
>> -----------------------------------------
>> Jean Hutchins, SE Surrey DA.
>> RSA Dip SpLD, AMBDA, retired.
>> E-mail: jeanhutchins1 at ntlworld.com
>> British Dyslexia Association Web: www.bdadyslexia.org.uk
>> Also into spelling reform: www.simplifiedspelling.org
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>
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