Competence of Croatian pre- and in- service teachers of foreign languages in teaching students with dyslexia

Fišer, Zrinka. (2019). Competence of Croatian pre- and in- service teachers of foreign languages in teaching students with dyslexia. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature.
(PDS glotodidaktike) [mentor Mildner, Vesna and Lenček, Mirjana].

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Abstract

The most widely accepted theory of the cause of dyslexia is the one that explains dyslexia as cognitive difficulties. According to this theory dyslexia is manifested as difficulties in recognizing and processing of voices and syllables which then affects the acquisition of a language. Reading and writing are complex cognitive activities which include decoding and understanding a language through phonological awareness. Although measuring phonological awareness was confirmed to be the most efficient way of predicting future difficulties in acquiring language skills, there is no universal test which could be applied to speakers of different languages. Croatian language is a very transparent one due to its shallow orthography, meaning its phoneme-grapheme relationship is mainly unambiguous. English language, on the other hand, has a very deep orthography with very complex phoneme-grapheme relationship. Dyslexia is in Croatian legislation acts considered as a special education need or developmental difficulty but it is not specifically addressed in any of the educational rulebooks. It is safe to conclude that EFL teachers in Croatia lack opportunities for developing holistic competence to teach students with dyslexia due to limited number of relevant mandatory courses during their post secondary education as well as relevant seminars and workshops during their professional development. The direct consequence of such teacher training system is the lack of positive attitudes towards implementing adjusted teaching methods and techniques which benefit students with dyslexia striving to successfully complete their primary school education. There is also an issue of differences between teacher training courses of post secondary institutions which also have a negative impact on the competences of future EFL teachers and an issue of teachers’ motivation to further enrich their knowledge of dyslexia-friendly practice in teaching. Some of the subgroups consisted of a moderately low number of participants, therefore the conclusions based on the findings of this research might need to be confirmed on a larger number of participants. The findings of this research may be used as a ground point in discovering which areas of teacher training program and professional development opportunities might be improved.

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