The evidence of phonological dyslexia and technology intervention: Preliminary study in special schools in South Africa

Teaching learners with learning disabilities in general and dyslexia in particular has become a complex task in the education sector across the globe; it is even more complex when the language of education is not the first language spoken at home. Learners with learning disabilities, especially those with dyslexia, are facing greater challenge in reading and writing in schools, because they have acquired insufficient phonological awareness. The aim of this study was to investigate and examine the level of phonological skills in learners with dyslexia in primary special schools in Tshwane municipality in Gauteng province in South Africa. Our study sample group consisted of 24 learners aged between 10 and 19 years, who most of the time speak their mother tongues, but use English as the language of education. Different literacy skills assessments were carried out in the following phonological awareness components: syllable awareness, onset-rime awareness and phoneme awareness. Our findings show that there is some evidence of dyslexia in our target group and their learning levels were below average for their age. Because of this evidence we therefore propose a new integrated assistive model that is able to improve the phonological skills of dyslexic learners.