Examining the English spelling patterns among Chinese-English bilingual children with developmental dyslexia

Abstract

This study examined the English cognitive-linguistic profile and spelling patterns among Chinese-English Bilingual children with and without dyslexia in Hong Kong. Ninety-six Hong Kong Chinese primary school bilingual children – 30 with developmental dyslexia, 34 chronological age (CA) controls, and 32 spelling-level (SL) controls – participated and were administered with three cognitive linguistic measures and two English literacy tasks. Despite the poor spelling accuracy found in the dyslexic group, they showed similar performance in the cognitive-linguistic skills as compared to the CA and SL controls. Results from the spelling error analysis suggested a distinctive error profile found in the dyslexic students when compared to the CA controls. They tended to make the most with unspecified errors, followed by similar level of phonological and orthographic errors, and least with semantic errors. Such error profile was found similar to the SL controls, suggesting a developmental lag in their spelling ability.