Dyslexia. Symptoms, Causes and effective Treatment in the early EFL- Classroom

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Pedagogy - Orthopaedagogy and Special Education, grade: 2,3, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: Especially in the context of inclusion, teachers might be confronted with a heterogeneous student body. This means that students may have different levels of education and bring distinctive preconditions into school. It may also be the case that some children are suffering from one of the most frequent developmental disorder: dyslexia. This phenomenon hampers the successful literacy acquisition primarily due to neurobiological maldevelopment and may have a significant impact on the children's academic evolution and their future life opportunities. Disregarding this disorder or improper handling would lead to future deficits in reading and understanding written material as well as issues with correct spelling and writing. Also, the successful learning of a foreign language such as English would nearly be impossible as the neurobiological deficits prevent the child from processing language properly. But because English is embedded in most of the school curriculums in Germany, the dyslexic child needs to be equipped with necessary prerequisites for learning languages. For this reason, early intervention needs to be implemented. Various (pre-) school training programs are particularly useful for approaching written language. Once the child has internalized necessary language structures in their mother tongue, the way for learning another language is paved. Methods teachers use in their EFL- classroom significantly influence the learning outcome of the (dyslexic) students. Therefore, respective teachers should intensively familiarize themselves with the dyslexia disorder.