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- abstract below
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Early Identification and Intervention to Prevent Dyslexia in Children who have English as a Second Language

Linda Siegel

University of British Columbia, Canada Linda.siegel@ubc.ca

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test a system designed to identify children in kindergarten who are at risk for dyslexia and to develop an intervention to help reduce the incidence and severity of dyslexia.A brief screening battery was administered when the children were in kindergarten; the screening battery involved tests of phonological awareness, letter recognition, verbal memory, and syntactic skills. Of the 132 ESL children, 40% were at risk and of the 762 children with English as a first language, 25% were at risk. After interventions stressing phonological awareness, vocabulary and reading strategies, the children were assessed at the end of grade 4. The percentage of children with dyslexia was 3% for the native English speakers and 3% for the ESL group. This study shows that is it possible to identify children at risk for dyslexia early in their school career and provide interventions to prevent dyslexia in most children.

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