Investigating Dyslexia Among Iraqi EFL University Students

To achieve the aim of the research, a sample of (122) first year students of English language Department / College of Education for Humanities/ Diyala University are considered to be the subjects of this research. A scaled questionnaire as an instrument of measurement is used in this research to be an investigatory tool. The results of this research prove that the hypothesis of this study is verified and accepted which reads that some Iraqi EFL students have dyslexia and undiagnosed by teachers and can be manifested in reading, writing and speaking learning difficulties they have.


1.1The Problem and its Significance:
The International Dyslexia Association (IDA,2000:2) proposes that "15-20% of the population has a reading disability; of those 85% has dyslexia. Dyslexia occurs in people of all backgrounds and intellectual levels". Some people are identified as dyslexic early in their lives, but for others their dyslexia goes unrevealed until they get older. People who are very bright can be dyslexic. They are often gifted in areas that do not require strong language skills, such as art, computer science, design, drama, electronics, math, mechanics, music, physics, and sports. (Ibid: 3).
Many students come to university without any diagnosis of dyslexia by specialists, though academic teachers can observe symptoms of dyslexia in some students through direct observation of their activities inside the classroom. This usually means that there is an indication of dyslexia in the student's levels of attainment in literacy skills.
Students are likely to have been late in learning to read, to have had difficulty reading aloud, to have been slow and inaccurate readers, to have been unsuccessful in learning to read and write through phonic teaching methods and to have a history of poor spelling. It is necessary to assess literacy skills, phonological processing ski i.e. a weakness in processing speech sounds and other aspects of cognitive functioning such as shortterm memory ( Jamieson and Ellen,2008:8).
The most frequent effects are problems with reading, spelling, and writing. Some dyslexics do not have much difficulty with early reading and spelling tasks but do experience great problems when more complex language skills are required, such as grammar, understanding textbook material and writing essays.
Students with dyslexia can also have problems with spoken language. They may find it difficult to express themselves clearly, or to fully understand what others mean when they speak.
The problems displayed by students in the classroom with dyslexia involve difficulties in acquiring and using language reading and writing letters in the wrong order is just one sign of dyslexia and does not occur in all cases. (Jamieson and Ellen 2008:4). Other problems experienced by dyslexics include: 1. Learning to speak 2. Organizing written and spoken language 3. Learning letters and their sounds 4. Memorizing number facts 5. Spelling 6. Reading 7. Learning a foreign language. (Malmkjaer,1995:155).
In addition to these problems, the Task Force (2001), Gathercole and Baddeley, (1989); Crombie, (1992); Rack, Snowling and Olson, (1992); Sparks et al., (1992) ;Miles,(1993) noted that "learning difficulties arising from dyslexia: 1. occur across the lifespan, and may manifest themselves in different ways at different ages; 2. may co-exist with difficulties in the area of number; 3. may be associated with early spoken language difficulties; 4. may be alleviated by appropriate intervention; 5. increase or reduce in severity depending on environmental factors; 6. occur in all socio-economic circumstances; 7. co-exist with other learning difficulties such as Attention Deficit Disorder, and may or may not represent a primary difficulty.

Aim of The Study:
The present study aims at identifying the learning difficulties Iraqi University students in the light of Dyslexia i.e. reflecting on the challenge of reading, spelling and writing skills in the regular classroom environment.

: 1.3 Limits of the study
This study is limited to first year students of English Department in College of Education for Humanities\ University of Diyala. :

The Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that Iraqi university students in English language department may have dyslexia and undiagnosed by teachers and can be manifested in reading, writing and speaking learning difficulties they have. :

Procedures
To attain the aim of the present study, the following procedures will be adopted by the researcher to collect data: 1. Choosing a number of (120) student from Department of English, College of Education for Humanities (at random) to represent the study sample. 2. Preparing an elicitation tool (rating scales questionnaire) under the supervision of a number of specialists who examine its validity and make any comments, suggestions and modifications if necessary. 3. Interpreting the results in the light of the hypothesis by using the proper statistical means that suit the study.

Definition of the Basic Terms:
Dyslexia : "a language difficulty in acquiring literacy and fluency in alphabetic and phonetic scripts". (Newton etal, 1985: in Malmcjaer1991:153).
Students : A person whose work is to study, especially in a school or college.

: 2.1 Definition of Dyslexia
In the field of language teaching, various definitions of dyslexia are currently in use. These can be described as descriptive definitions, working definitions and operational definitions.
Dyslexia comes from two Greek words: "dys (here means ‗difficulty with') and lexicons or lexis (means ‗words' or languages)". (Doyle 1996: 69;BPS 1999: 18). This description takes into account written words of a language, whether related to reading, spelling and/or writing. Crombie (2002: 223) refers to dyslexic people as those "who have a intricacy with literacy which results in requiring a set of accommodations to be made to enable them to show their abilities".
The British Dyslexia Association (in Peer 1999:45) points out that "dyslexia is a mixture of abilities and difficulties which affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling and writing skills. This may be identified in areas of speed of processing, short-term memory, sequencing, auditory and/or visual perception, spoken language and motor skills, mastering and using written language, which may include alphabetic, numeric and musical notation".
The definition of Adult Dyslexia Organization is a descriptive one, suggesting that "Dyslexia may be caused by a combination of phonological, visual and auditory processing deficits. Word retrieval and speed of processing difficulties may also be present. Despite the fact that the dyslexic individual may exhibit difficulties in the acquisition of reading, writing and spelling, they can be taught strategies and alternative learning methods to overcome most of these and other difficulties. Every dyslexic person is different and should be treated as an individual. Many show talents actively sought by employers, and the same factors that cause literacy difficulties may also be responsible for highlighting positive attributes such as problem-solving which can tap resources which lead to more originality and creativity". (Reid, G. 2005:9).
In the Republic of Ireland, a Government Task Force on Dyslexia (2001:28) proposed that "Dyslexia is manifested in a continuum of specific learning difficulties related to the acquisition of basic skills in reading, spelling, and/or writing, such difficulties are being unexpected in relation to an individual's other abilities and educational experiences. It typically includes difficulties in phonological processing, working memory, rapid naming and automaticity of basic skills. Difficulties in organization, sequencing, and motor skills may also be present".

Types of Dyslexia:
According to Field (2004:98-100) and (Caplan, 1987:225), dyslexia has been traditionally divided into two types: 1. Peripheral dyslexia, where there is impairment of the system which permits visual analysis, and 2. Central dyslexia, where the processing of the signal is affected.
Peripheral dyslexia include: 1. Attentional dyslexia, where the reader is distracted by adjoining words (or sometimes adjoining letters). GLOVE and SPADE seen together might produce the response glade. There is apparent damage to the reader's attentional filter, so that they are no longer able to focus on one piece of visual evidence at a time. 2. Neglect dyslexia involves a failure to attend to the onsets of words: a reader might interpret GROSS as cross. 3. Letter-by-letter reading, where words are decoded letter by letter but the letters are given their alphabetic names: BED=Bee-Eee-Dee. Central dyslexia covers: 1. Surface dyslexia, where students can read words with regular spellings but regularize those with irregular. One view is that they suffer from impairment of the lexical (whole word) route but continue to use the sub-lexical (letter-by-letter) one as in ‗castle' as 'cast-le' . 2. Phonological dyslexia, where students can pronounce familiar words, both regular and irregular, but are incapable of suggesting pronunciations for non-words. This suggests an intact lexical route but an impaired sub-lexical one. This type affects roughly 75% of the dyslexic population. It is claimed phonological dyslexics have difficulties dividing and blending the smallest units of speech sound (phonemes). 3. Deep dyslexia, where there is disruption not just to the processing of form but also to the processing of meaning. Like phonological dyslexics, deep dyslexics find non-words impossible to read aloud. But they also make semantic errors where the word produced is different in form from the target but similar in meaning (APE read as monkey, ARTIST read as picture). They substitute function words (HIS read as in) and suffixes (BUILDER read as building). They also have a greater success rate with concrete than with abstract nouns. This condition may provide valuable information about the distribution of information in the lexicon. 4. Non-semantic reading, where the processing of meaning seems to be affected but not that of form. Student can read the words aloud and but has difficulty in attaching meanings to them.

Characteristics of Dyslexia:
According to West (1991: 79), Reid and Peer (2003:9-13) Some of the specific characteristics can be noted as difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.
The most commonly held view and perception of dyslexia is how it relates to difficulties with reading and spelling. These difficulties are in fact readily observable characteristics of dyslexia. Many Students, however, display such difficulties in literacy, but not all are dyslexic. Difficulties can therefore be oral, auditory, kinaesthetic and visual. In short, dyslexia generally affects the oral and written language skills that are essential for success in learning a foreign language (Gerber 1993;Lerner 1997). It is important, therefore, to present a comprehensive view of the characteristics of dyslexia as shown below.

Reading:
"It is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning". (Gavin and Shannon, 2007:11). Students with dyslexia will usually, but not always, have a difficulty with reading. This could be with fluency, that is speed of reading; or accuracy they may hesitate over words or make a guess based on the anticipated meaning of the word or through utilizing the visual features of the word. There may also be a difficulty in reading comprehension, but this is not due to lack of understanding, rather a result of the difficulties in fluency and reading. Indeed the research suggests that fluency is an important factor in the development of comprehension.

Spelling
Difficulties are often an obvious characteristic of dyslexia. Quite often the misspelled word is a commonly used one, and often there is a pattern of errors, perhaps the ‗er', ‗ar', ‗or' ending of a word or the double vowel sound ‗ee', ‗ea', ‗ei'. Often the sequence of letters can be jumbled.

Writing
Students with dyslexia may also have difficulties in both expressive writing and their actual handwriting style. Expressive writing is an important element in examinations, whether it is factual writing, descriptive or imaginative, the dyslexic student may not perform to his/her real ability. In handwriting, letters may be poorly formed with no distinctive style. Also there may be inconsistent use of capital and lower case letters. This type of difficulty is likely to deteriorate in, for example, examinations, which is why examiners should always be alerted to the presence of a dyslexic difficulty. In expressive writing the actual writing piece may not reflect the imaginative ideas and creativity of the dyslexic student. Often dyslexic students can be very creative, but their grammar and perhaps even lack of access to an extended vocabulary may minimize the presentation of the piece of writing. Reid (2005:6) indicates that students with dyslexia often have difficulties in both short-term and long-term memory. This may not always be the case as often they can develop reasonably efficient methods of retaining and recalling information. More often than not, however, the bulk of information to be remembered in some subject areas can prove challenging.

Memory
It is the ability to hold information in mind long enough to work with it and act on it (working memory); the recall of information recently presented (shortterm memory); and retrieving information that has been stored in long -term memory. Students with learning disabilities generally have memory problems to some degree (mild to severe), which can cause difficulty with the following: a. Remembering words and names learning rote information by heart (facts or other data for a test) b. Remembering reading and spelling words, especially phonetically irregular or -sight words ‖ such as was, said, because . The child may approach these like new words each time they are seen. c. Remembering and following through the teacher instructions by keeping ideas in mind long enough to remember what one wants to say. d. Memorizing lines for a play or performance e. Remembering to bring materials needed for homework. f. Written composition for instance holding ideas in mind long enough to manipulate them mentally and get them down on paper. ( Reid 2005:6) 2.3.5 Sequencing: Sandra (2008:20) states that "the ability to perceive and control a series of information. Students with learning disabilities often have problems with learning or recalling at an automatic level a sequence of letters, sounds, numbers, and other information. Students with this weakness may have difficulty with the following: a. Reading words accurately with sounds in correct sequence. b. Following a series of verbal directions c. Sequencing letters or syllables correctly in a word when spelling (for example, writing -gril ‖ for -girl ‖ or -aminal ‖ for -animal‖) d. Skip counting (3,6,9,12) e. Learning sequences such as the alphabet, months of the year, counting forward or backward f. Confusing the order of events (for example, summarizing stories in the wrong order) g. Learning phone numbers and series of numerals h. Writing in sequence, for example, writing 319 instead of 931 i. Following procedures that involve a sequence of steps and directional order (for example, long division) j. Writing letters and numbers without a model to refer to (recalling the sequence of pencil strokes needed to form letters or numerals correctly)".

Coordination
Although not all dyslexic individuals have difficulties in coordination, some have, and this can have implications for practical work in some subjects. The coordination difficulties may be seen in handwriting, other fine motor activities, such as using scissors, and sometimes in general coordination, such as in sport, running, skipping, jumping, physical coordination (clumsiness) rhythm and balance. It is worth stressing, however, that this is not always the case, and some dyslexic students may well have a talent for art and crafts as well as subjects such as physical education and sport. Fine motor skills: skills that use small muscles in the hands and fingers. Students with fine motor weaknesses often have difficulty with: Holding and manipulating a pencil handwriting. (Sandra 2008:20)

Organizational Difficulties
Organization is important for all stages of learning, and the material to be learnt has to be organized in the brain the new material has to be connected to previous learning and concepts should be developed on the topic being learnt and related to previous learning and existing knowledge. This requires a degree of organization, and very often this activity takes place in the brain without the learner being aware of it. Students with dyslexia, however, may not be able to relate new learning to that already learnt and often the connections between new and previous learning have to be clearly displayed by the teacher. This cognitive organizational difficulty may not be too obvious to the teacher, but it emphasizes the view that dyslexia is more than a reading difficulty; it is associated with learning and information processing. (Reid, 2005:7)

Information Processing
This relates to how we learn new material. Basically there are three overlapping stages: input; cognition and output. The dyslexic learner may have difficulties at any, or all three stages of this sequence.
The input stage relates to how the information is presented when we are learning new information the material to be learnt must make some impact on the learner at the crucial initial stage of learning. Material can be presented in a number of ways: a. auditorythrough the oral explanation of the teacher or the student listening to a specific tape; b. visuallythrough diagrams, videos or some other visual means; c. tactile methods, where the student is involved in touching, such as in practical experiments or in technical subjects; and d. kinestheticallythis involves the students experiencing learning, for example, through drama, fieldwork, group work and role play. (Reid, 2005: 8) There is some evidence that dyslexic learners may learn more effectively through the visual and kinesthetic modalities as well as through the tactile mode. The main point is that the auditory mode, which is probably the modality used most in colleges is the weakest mode for effective learning for dyslexic learners. (West,1997: 18).

Phonological difficulties
Perhaps one of the main reasons for the difficulties dyslexic students display in reading and spelling is that of phonological difficulties. This relates to an awareness of sounds and the characteristics of these sounds in words; where in a word sounds appear; and the general rhythm of words. For example, students may have difficulty remembering rhymes and identifying particular sounds in a word. Since the English language is an irregular language with 44 sounds and only 26 letters, it can be valued that knowledge of these sounds is important for reading and spelling.
On the other hand, many students with dyslexia have good language experience and can often use contextual cues to predict a word rather than read it through a decoding process.(Ibid) Even when dyslexic students have good intellectual ability, they may not be able to notice similarities and differences between: 1.print symbols and their related pronunciations (phonological orthographic processing); 2. grammatical and syntactical structures in the FL compared to their native language (syntactic-grammatical processing).( Schneider 1999:6).

Visual difficulties
There is also a growing body of evidence indicating that visual factors are associated with dyslexia. This can take the form of visual distortion of letters, blurring, letters merging into each other and missing lines or words when reading. This can have implications for accuracy in reading instructions, for example in laboratory subjects. This difficulty may also be noted in numbers, for example in tables and other forms of data such as graphs. ( West,1997: 9)

Discrepancies
One of the defining factors that can be associated with dyslexia is the discrepancies which can be noted in different curricular areas. Students with dyslexic difficulties can have considerable difficulties in some subject areas, particularly those which are heavily literacy based. However, at the same time, they may display considerable skills in some other subjects, such as art, music or perhaps even English Literature. These discrepancies can sometimes be quite marked and emphasize that dyslexia is a specific difficulty that applies to learning in specific situations. This can result in a dyslexic profile in which significant discrepancies between students' performances in different subject areas are very marked. (Weedon and Reid, 2001:29). Claire and Ellen (2008:27) states that there are many strategies of dyslexia such as the following:

2.4Strategies of Dyslexia
1. The dyslexic student must be shown as: a. the big picture and then how the details fit into it b. From parts to the whole c. From the easy to the more difficult d. From the simple to the complex e. From the concrete to the abstract f. From the visual to the auditory g. Always showing students how new information fits in with what they have learned h. With much review and practice at every step of the way 2. The dyslexic student is NOT: a. an incidental learner. He must be directly taught (educated)everything. b. Lazy! He is doing his best. It takes many times more energy for the dyslexic student to get through the day and to do even average work, than it does the average student. 3. The dyslexic student needs the following: a. a quiet, calm, structured, orderly, consistent and fair environment b. one or two verbal instruction at a time c. short and simple instructions with few words. d. a simultaneous multi-sensory structured approach to his language learning that uses all three pathways of learning: Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic-Tactile e. to be given every opportunity to use his creativity in his learning. f. time to process what he has heard. g. time to respond. h. time to complete assignments. 4. The dyslexic student does not appear to pay enough attention. In fact he experiences an auditory overload and may even get a -glazed‖ look on his face and by giving him the gift of time".

Procedures 3.1 Population & Sample 3.1.1 Population
In general, the population is defined as "any set of items, individuals, etc. which share some common and observable characteristics from which a sample can be selected" (Richards et al, 1992: 282). The population of the study is (120) students of the first year grade, College of Education for Humanities, University of Diyala during the academic year (2014-2015).

Instrument of the Study
In order to fulfill the aim of the study, a questionnaire has been constructed and distributed to English language students of English language department as a statistical instrument. The questionnaire is a set of questions on a topic or group of topics designed to be answered by a respondent (Richards & Schmidt, 2002: 438). It consists of (21) items which students must agree or partially agree or disagree on as shown in the questionnaire of this study.

18
Do you have problems with oral language? Poor recall of nouns?

19
Do you hesitate in writing the alphabet on ruled paper?

21
When you say a long word, do you sometimes find it difficult to get all the sounds in the right order?

3.3Face Validity:
Face validity refers to "the surface credibility or public acceptability" (Ingram, 1977: 18). Or as Harris (1969:7) defines it "the way the test looks to the examinees, test administrators, educators and the like.
To achieve face validity, the questionnaire is distributed to a jury consisted of experts in the field of EFL and linguistics. They were asked to give their viewpoints and remarks as well as suggestions concerning the adequacy of the items of the questionnaire. The jury has agreed that the items are adequate and appropriate to achieve the aim of the study after some slight modifications.

Final Administration of the Questionnaire
After achieving face validity, the questionnaire in its final version was administrated to students of English language department from College of Education for Humanities. They were asked to either agree or partially agree on the difficulties they might face in reading, writing and spelling skills. The administration came out with the following results:

Table (7) The Weighted Mean of the Questionnaire Items
to the page?, 13. Do you take longer than you should to read a page of a book? ". 5. Two items (11,5) have got a weighted mean of (72%) which reads as :" 5. Are you easily distracted when reading?, 11. Do you dislike reading long books?
6. The item number (8) has got a weighted mean of (65%), which reads as " Do your eyes become sore or water?". 7. The item number (7) has got a percentage 59% which is: "3. Do you tend to misread words? 7. Do you get headaches when you read?
Do you find difficulty telling left from right? 18. Do you have trouble with -critical symbols?‖ (d-b-p-q / m-w / u-n / 6-9 / h-y) 9. The item (17) have got the lowest percentage of (40%), it reads as " Do you have difficulty copying from the blackboard?".

Pedagogical Implications and Recommendation
In the light of the findings achieved and conclusions derived, the following pedagogical implications and recommendations are drawn: 1. It is recommended that all students study foreign language initially. 2. At minimum this will give all students a flavor of the language, introduce them to at least some of the common phrases and should communicate to the students some cultural information. 3. Dyslexic learners have to work harder, they must actively participate in all learning and teaching activities of the classroom. 4. For the teacher in the classroom, the priority is to enable curricular access for any dyslexic student in more than physical terms.