Developmental Dyslexia and Reading in Spanish as a Foreign Language

Abstract

This paper deals with developmental dyslexia and the influence reading disabilities exert over the process of foreign language learning, placing a special emphasis on development of reading skills in Spanish as a foreign language. While trying to explain the aetiology of developmental dyslexia, one usually starts with cognitive reading processes and various reading disorder manifestations which depend on the characteristics of a foreign language. Reading disabilities are also observed in the context of a predominant communication-oriented language teaching paradigm. Further, and starting with the approaches to reading disorders applied nowadays, the elaborated exercises are oriented towards an additional stimulation of phonological, morphological, syntactic and orthographic awareness in learners of Spanish whose first language is Croatian.