Phonological Abilities of Children with Dyslexia in Jordan: A Whole-Word Approach
Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan
Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan
Abstract
Dyslexia is a learning disability mostly evident in inaccurately recognizing a word, mainly because of the deficit of the phonological components of a language. This research aimed to investigate the phonological abilities of Jordanian Arabic (JA) speaking children with and without dyslexia using whole-word measures. Data from Jordanian dyslexic children were compared between three reading groups (poor readers, typical readers, and advanced readers) through three tests: (i) phonological mean length of utterance (pMLU), (ii) the Percentage of Consonant Correct (PCC) and (iii) the Proportion of Whole-Word Proximity (PWP). Findings show that the typical and the advanced readers had a relative score in pMLU, PWP and PCC, which were significantly higher than those registered by dyslexic and poor readers. Additionally, three phonological processes were found in Jordanian dyslexic children’s readings: omission, substitution, and metathesis. Omission was the most frequent process employed by Jordanian dyslexics, particularly in di- and polysyllabic nonsense words. The study concludes that whole-word measures can reflect the phonological abilities of children using both real and nonsense words.