Psychology
2012. Vol.3, No.8, 595-600
Published Online August 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/psych) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/psych.2012.38089
Phonological and Spelling Mistakes among Dyslexic and
Non-Dyslexic Children Learning Two Different Languages:
Greek vs English
Georgia Andreou*, Julie Baseki
Department of Special Education, University of Thessaly, Thessaly, Greece
Received May 22nd, 2012; revised June 20th, 2012; accepted July 15th, 2012
The aim of our study was to examine the phonological and spelling errors made by dyslexic and
non-dyslexic children in two different languages, one (Greek, L1) much more transparent than the other
(English, L2). For these purposes, our subjects (poor spellers officially diagnosed as dyslexics) composed
two picture elicited narratives, one in Greek and one in English with the aid of Script Log, an online re-
cording tool for experimental research on the process of writing. Our results showed that dyslexics gener-
ally made statistically significant (p < .05) more mistakes in both languages in comparison to non-dyslexics
and statistically significant more phonological mistakes in English than in Greek. In addition, dyslexics
made a great number of spelling mistakes in both languages, though of different nature depending on the
language in which they occurred. Thus, the dyslexics in our study presented different error profiles in
English and in Greek and implications are made that instruction methods should be language specific.
Keywords: Dyslexia; Poor Spelling Skills; Transparent Language; Language Learning
Introduction
It is generally accepted that not all languages are equal in
terms of their complexity in phonology, spelling/orthography or
grammar and the more complex a language system is the harder
it is to acquire for both normally developing and dyslexic chil-
dren. The regularity of orthographic and phonological repre-
sentations in a language is a linguistic factor that can affect
both the nature and degree of reading and spelling difficulties
(Caravolas & Bruck, 1993; Georgiou, Parrila, & Papadopoulos,
2008; Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003; Wimmer, 1993; Wydell,
2003).
A language with a “perfect” spelling is one that has no alter-
native spellings for the same sound and no overlap in the code
where one spelling pattern stands for different sounds (Spencer,
2000: p. 155). This means that in a perfect orthography each
phoneme (sound) would be represented by just one letter and
each letter would represent just one phoneme so, the number of
sounds would exactly match the number of letters. According to
Spencer (2001), transparent orthographies are very efficient
because they do not make heavy demands on memory and re-
quire a much more limited activation of brain regions, making
them more accessible to dyslexic children; deeper orthogra-
phies being more memory dependent and requiring greater
activation of the brain may actually prevent dyslexic children
from achieving reading and writing fluency.
According to Miles (2000), it is the inconsistencies in repre-
sentation in opaque languages that make it difficult for dyslex-
ics to acquire the code. Many studies have clearly suggested
that complex, “deep” orthographies hinder children’s progress
in spelling and reading and the assumption is that reading and
writing in other languages that are more regular will not be
inhibited to the same extent (German: Landerl & Wimmer,
2000, Italian: Barca, Burani, Di Filippo, & Zocolotti, 2006;
Cossu et al., 1995; Turkish: Oney & Goldman, 1984, French:
Alegria & Mousty, 1994, 1996 in Spencer, 2000, 2001; Cara-
volas & Volin, 2001; Miles, 2000; Greek: Georgiou, Parrila, &
Papadopoulos, 2008; Hatzidaki et al., 2011).
For example, the German dyslexics’ success in learning their
native language efficiently is ascribed to two main factors:
learning the relatively transparent German orthography and
learning to read and spell by a phonics method (Landerl &
Wimmer, 2000). More specifically, it is argued that when the
grapheme-phoneme correspondences of an orthography are
highly consistent and regular, as they are in the German language,
and when they are taught via a systematic phonics method, chil-
dren can resolve their early phonemic awareness and pho-
nological spelling difficulties. Besides, Landerl and Wimmer
(2000) argue that dyslexic children using transparent orthogra-
phies via a special phonics method of instruction can and do
spell with phonological accuracy but they appear to have per-
sistent “orthographic” spelling deficits in that many of their
spellings continue to be unconventional. This means that in
more transparent languages “phonemic unawareness” does not
appear to be the core deficit in dyslexic children.
Most of the studies comparing the development of literacy in
different orthographies have been concerned with reading de-
velopment. This does not mean that the serious and persistent
spelling problems dyslexics face should be underestimated
(Harris & Hattano, 1999). According to Miles (1993), many dys-
lexics learn to read with reasonable success, but their spelling
regularly remains weak.
The present study focuses on spelling development of Greek
poor spellers and children with normally developed spelling
skills, in their first language (Greek) and in English (foreign
*Corresponding author.

G. ANDREOU, J. BASEKI
language). We compare phonological and spelling errors made
by the two groups of students in these two languages to detect
similarities and differences between the two groups’ error pro-
files and draw conclusions about the nature of the problem and
more effective teaching methods.
The Greek Orthography vs the English
Orthography
In the Greek language spelling is based on historical orthog-
raphy. This means that, as far as possible, Greek words or
morphemes that derive from ancient Greek are spelled as they
have been since ancient times. Through the centuries the pro-
nunciation of some phonemes has changed while the letters
which represent them have remained the same. Thus, Greek
writing system has lost some of its phonetic character and re-
flects the etymology of words rather that their phonetic compo-
nents (Mavrommati & Miles, 2002: p. 87). This is what Miles
(2000: p. 198) means when he says that “although pronuncia-
tion of Greek vowel graphemes has been simplified in modern
times, the old spelling has been largely retained”.
Thus, in the Greek orthography every letter consistently
represents the same sound, but the same sound can be repre-
sented by different letters or pairs of letters. This makes spell-
ing more difficult than reading (Mavrommati & Miles, 2002;
Miles, 2000). According to Protopapas and Vlahou (2009), the
grapheme-phoneme correspondences are as high as 95.1% in
reading and 80.3% in spelling. The Greek alphabet has 25 let-
ters and a small number of digraphs (where two graphemes
represent a single sound). There are regular correspondences
between graphemes and phonemes so that all letters consis-
tently represent the same sounds (apart from very few excep-
tions that we will mention later); the problem is, therefore, that
there are several sounds which can be represented by more than
one letter or digraph.
Moreover, the stability that Greek language retained in its
written form is not matched by a similar stability in its spoken
form. This divergence has led to the occurrence of a number of
inconsistencies in the way sounds are represented. For example,
different letters or digraphs can be used to represent the same
sound:
/i/ is represented by five graphemes: ι, η, υ, ει, οι;
/o/ is represented by two graphemes: ο, ω;
/e/ is represented by two graphemes: ε, αι.
The reverse situation (where the same letter can represent
different sounds) is very rare in Greek, but it can also be found.
Hence, t can be sounded as t in some instances and d in others.
If t follows v in the middle of a word, a simple rule is the
grapheme /nt/ to sound it as nd (“εντάξει” (endaksi)) but not in
“exception” words such as “αντίο” (adio) where it should be
sounded as d. Double consonants are normally pronounced as if
they were single consonants; an exception is gg which is pro-
nounced as /g/ instead of g which is the normal sound of the
letter g. Furthermore, there are examples of letters within words
which remain more or less silent (e.g. the letter υ in
“Εύβοια”-/evia/). Of course, we should say that although Greek
has not an entirely transparent orthography (since in the oral-
to-written direction it is somewhat opaque (Miles, 2000)), it is
much less obscure in its sound-spelling correspondences in
comparison to other alphabetical systems, such as English or
French.
Furthermore, Greek orthography is considered to be difficult
to acquire since Greek is a very heavily inflected language
containing (three) different genders, cases, declensions and
conjugations. Thus, in many words the writer has to be aware
of the (complex) grammatical rules or the historical derivation
of a particular word (etymology) in order to use the right
grapheme. This is the main reason why many Greek children
find spelling such a hard task and not because of inconsistencies
of grapheme-phoneme correspondence that cause the main
difficulties in deep orthographies such as English.
English, on the other hand, is known to be a deviant language.
According to Spencer (2000, 2001), recent evidence has shown
that normal English-speaking children have reading and spelling
deficits in the range associated with same age dyslexic Ger-
man-speaking children for less frequently used words, and Eng-
lish orthography has been identified as a contributing factor.
Two main factors have been identified (apart from the fre-
quency of occurrence of the word): consistency of sound repre-
sentation and inclusion of redundant letters in English words
(ibid. 2000, 2001). Actually, the system of association between
the sounds of speech and the written symbols is indeed a com-
plex one.
Research has shown that different characteristics of orthographic
structure of languages affect the developments of literacy skills
(Beaton, 2004; Landerl & Wimmer 2000; Nikolopoulos, Gou-
landris, & Snowling, 2003). Of course, English is not a lan-
guage as heavily inflected as Greek, so the orthographic feature
that mainly affects the litery skills development is the lack of
transparency of grapheme—phoneme relations (Landerl, Wim-
mer, & Frith, 1997). This is what Spencer (2000: p. 161) means
when he mentions that “if English pupils are so damaged by
their orthography that their performance is worse than dyslexic
pupils” performance in other more orthographically transparent
languages, then English can trully be said to be a dyslexic lan-
guage.
However, since the bulk of the research into problems dys-
lexics face has been conducted mainly among those whose first
language is English, only assumptions have been made about
the nature of dyslexia, which are depended on the complex
features of this language.
In view of the above, we conducted a research in order to
find out the kind of errors made by Greek dyslexics and Greek
non-dyslexics in two different languages, Greek (L1) and Eng-
lish (L2), the former (Greek) much more transparent than the
latter (English), how significant the difference is between the
number of errors made in L1 and in L2 and how different the
subjects’ error profiles are in each language. More specifically,
our hypotheses are 1) that dyslexics make much more errors
than non-dyslexics and 2) that dyslexics make more phono-
logical errors in English (L2) than in Greek (L1).
Method
Subjects
Our study included eight subjects, four dyslexics and four
non dyslexics. All of the subjects had Greek as their first lan-
guage (L1) and learnt English as a foreign language (L2) and
they also had good typing skills since computers were part of
their everyday life as they were encouraged to compose written
texts on the computer both at school and at the specialist centre
they attended, as far as the dyslexics are concerned. Dyslexics
were all diagnosed with mixed dyslexia and they were poor
spellers. Concerning their first language (Greek) dyslexics had
596

G. ANDREOU, J. BASEKI
serious spelling problems according to their school teachers and
their special instructors’ reports. As far as L2 is concerned our
dyslexic subjects were poor spellers according to South Austra-
lian Spelling Test—they all attained a low (above average) score.
Our subjects were between 12 and 14 years old at the time of
the data collection. Non-dyslexic children were about two years
younger than dyslexic children so that the control group would
remain closely matched to the dyslexic group concerning their
L1 (Greek) and L2 (English) proficiency (Bourassa & Treiman,
2003; Hoeft et al., 2007). Regarding L1, even the younger chil-
dren had been taught the main grammatical and syntactic rules
at school according to the School Curriculum in Greece. As far
as their L2 level (all the subjects had a language proficiency of
Level A2 according to the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages). This means that all the subjects had
been tested and matched on the basis of standardized spell-
ing-writing, listening, speaking and reading test scores.
Dyslexic participants came from a specialist center in Greece
and they were diagnosed with mixed dyslexia at KEDDY
evaluation centres (Differential Diagnosis, and Support for
Special Educational Needs Centres) which provide and coordi-
nate services for children with special educational needs at the
local level, operating as decentralised units of the Ministry of
Education. They participated in mainstream education while the
specialist centre provided structured intervention. The four of
them had been in the particular private institution for two years
and had been attending English classes for about four years.
The non-dyslexic subjects were matched for socio-economic
background with dyslexics participated in mainstream education.
They had also been learning English as a foreign language for
about four years. Furthermore, all our subjects’ overall IQ was
within normal range and they were free from any gross physical
disability and free, in the judgment of their teachers and ac-
cording to their parents’ report, from any severe psychiatric or
emotional problems.
Materials and Procedure
Each subject undertook two writing tasks, one in Greek and
another one in English. It should be mentioned that we had our
subjects do the activity in Greek before the one in English. This
happened since we wanted our subjects to start with the less
demanding task (the one in their native language) because a
difficult activity could inhibit them from continuing with a
second activity. Besides, we tried to eliminate the possibility of
direct transfer and translation between the two languages since
the writing activity was not the same in Greek and English.
Our subjects composed two picture elicited narratives on the
computer. We thought that the production of a picture elicited
story would be more interesting and motivating than a simple
personal narrative, a description of a single picture or a compo-
sition based on a composition topic. For this purpose we chose
a series of pictures taken from one of Greek teenagers’ comics,
Asterix. All the subjects were based on the same series of pic-
tures (cartoons without text) to produce their story, a fact that
would lead to the production of more “similar” texts in terms of
content, structure and vocabulary so that the similarities and
differences among the texts would appear to be more striking
(Thomson, 1982).
Through a “free writing” task we had the chance to examine
our subjects’ spelling skills in real time. We preferred this task
to a simple spelling test because as Moats (1996) argues “sam-
ples of spontaneous writing are a natural expression of stu-
dents’ linguistic processing and linguistic knowledge, and are
less contrived than dictated spelling tests which may include
words not in the students’ writing vocabularies”.
For these purposes, we used ScriptLog which is an on-line
recording tool for experimental research on the process of writing.
By means of ScriptLog you can record a writing activity that
takes place on a computer (word processor). ScriptLog keeps a
record of all events on the keyboard (i.e. the pressing of alpha-
betical and numerical keys, cursor keys, the delete key, space
bar etc., and mouse clicks), the screen position of these events
and their temporal distribution. From a ScriptLog record, you
can then derive not only the finally edited text from a writing
session but also the “linear” text with its temporal patterning,
pauses and editing operation (Wengelin, 2002). It has two kinds
of output: you can “replay” a writing session in real time (or by
fast forward), and several different analyses files can be gener-
ated (Final Edited Text, Log Text, Linear Text, Editing Dis-
tance, Pause Time Data, Statistics, Transition Times, Transition
Times-Pause Interval, Transition Times-String Context, Dele-
tion List-Linear and Deletion List-Data) (for more details see
Wengelin, 2002 and Stromqvist & Karlsson, 2002). In this pa-
per we examine the participants’ written texts as final prod-
ucts since we have initially been interested in the participants’
error profiles, while ScriptLog’s other module results remain to
be examined and presented in future papers.
Our error analysis focused on 1) phonological errors and 2)
spelling/orthographic errors. Phonological errors included gra-
pheme omissions (i.e. omissions of single consonants, consonant
cluster reductions and vowel omissions), grapheme additions,
grapheme transpositions and vowel or consonant alterations.
Besides, our phonological error category included misspellings
where the error is a word in its own right but is not homophonic
(e.g. can (kind)), on the assumption that these are instances of
phonological confusions in short term memory (Conrad, 1964;
Sterling et al., 1998).
Spelling/orthographic errors included firstly, errors that are
defined as violations of spelling/etymological rules (violation
of etymological rules is a serious cause of errors especially in
Greek that its orthography is a historical one), e.g. if a writer
writes “μορό” instead of “μωρό” (baby) an etymological rule
has been violated since the word “mwro” derives from the an-
cient Greek adjective “μωρός, -ή, -ό” (naïve, silly). This error is
counted as the same type of error if the writer wrote “laidies”
instead of “ladies” in English. Secondly, they included errors
defined as violations of (intra-word) grammatical rules e.g. if
the writer writes “σκύλως” instead of “σκύλος” (dog) a gram-
matical rule has been violated since in Greek all masculine
nouns in -ος are spelled with “o” (όμικρον). It would be the
same if someone writes “partys” (as the plural noun for “party”)
instead of “parties” in English.
For the statistical evaluation of our data, independent sam-
ples t tests were performed on the number of errors made by
dyslexics and non-dyslexics in order to detect possible statistic-
cally significant (p < .05) differences between the errors made
in the two different languages (L1 vs L2) and between the two
different types of errors (phonological vs. spelling/orthographic).
The analysis was done with the SPSS statistical programme.
Results
Statistically significant (p < .05) differences were found in
both languages in almost all types of errors made by dyslexics

G. ANDREOU, J. BASEKI
in comparison to non-dyslexics (Table 1). In addition, dyslexics
made statistically significant (p = .018) more phonological
mistakes in English than in Greek (Table 2).
Discussion
In our study dyslexics generally made more errors, both
phonological and spelling/orthographic, than non-dyslexics in
both the Greek and the English text as it was expected. More
specifically, our data showed that dyslexics made a great number
of phonological errors in English in comparison to the very
small number of phonological mistakes they made in Greek,
something that could be of great importance and could be due
to difficulties inherent in the English phonological system.
These possibilities should be further investigated so that we
could get a clearer picture of the nature of dyslexic difficulties.
In addition, we cannot underestimate the fact that non dys-
lexics also made more phonological mistakes in English. We
should mention though that the difference between the number
of phonological mistakes non dyslexics made in Greek versus
English is not a statistically significant one. However, their
mistakes in English are still more than the mistakes they made
in Greek something that can be partly due to the opaque Eng-
lish language and should initiate further research on the effect
of different languages’ features on learners’ linguistic per-
formance.
On the other hand, dyslexics made spelling/orthographic er-
rors in both their Greek and English texts which means that
spelling seems to be a core problem not only in L2 but in their
L1 as well. We should mention though that their orthographic
mistakes were of different nature depending on the language in
which they occurred. When it comes to Greek, both groups of
subjects and especially dyslexics made orthographic mistakes
after having violated etymological (γιτονιας, πίραζαν, γηνέκα etc.)
or grammatical/morphological rules (αγνοί, μιλάι, τσακόθικαν etc.)
they had already been taught. On the other hand, in English es-
pecially dyslexics (and sometimes non-dyslexics) appeared to
over-rely on a “spelling-by-ear” strategy that resulted in the
correct pronunciation but in unconventional spellings (pix for
picks, solgers for soldiers, heits for hates, tok for talk etc.). It is
Table 1.
Mean scores of errors made by dyslexics and non-dyslexics in their L1
and L2.
Dyslexics Non-dyslexics p value
L1 spelling 7.75 .75 .027
L2 spelling 7.00 1.75 .019
L1 phonology 1.50 .25 .067
L2 phonology 8.50 1.25 .015
Table 2.
Mean scores for dyslexics and non-dyslexics’ phonological and spelling
errors in L1 vs L2.
L1 L2 p value
Dyslexics’ phonology 1.50 8.50 .018
Dyslexics’ spelling 7.75 7.00 .792
Non-dyslexics’ phonology .25 1.25 .114
Non-dyslexics’ spelling .75 1.75 .382
very interesting to see that spelling mistakes in English lead to
the production of almost “new”-phonologically plausible-words
something that is far different from spelling mistakes which
occur as one or more incorrect graphemes in a word and should
be further investigated as a possible characteristic of dyslexics’
spelling in deep orthographies.
Focusing on dyslexics’ errors we laid emphasis on the dis-
tinction between their phonological and spelling/orthographic
errors. According to Snowling (1982), the distinction between a
spelling/orthographic error, a phonetic error, which correctly
preserves the sound sequence of a word (e.g. speshull for spe-
cial, trafick for traffic) and a phonological error (a nonphonetic
error), in which the sound sequence is not preserved (e.g. deter
for doubt, heyou for hay) is an important one since it has been
shown by many investigators to be of diagnostic significance
and shows the impact of different orthographic systems on
spelling ability (Boder, 1971; Caravolas, Bruck, & Genesse,
2003; Frith, 1979; Nelson & Warrington, 1974). Spelling/orth-
ographic errors are usually assumed to be less serious than pho-
nological errors because they are easily deciphered. A more
liberal approach to spelling would regard these versions as
acceptable. Furthermore, an individual who makes primarily
spelling errors shows evidence of the ability to segment the
target words into appropriate speech units (phonemes) and of
being able to translate these units into letters using pho-
neme-grapheme rules (Frith, 1980). In contrast, an individual
whose errors are primarily phonological may have difficulties
at either or both of these initial stages.
Thus, it is important to distinguish these two basic error
types because they might point out the need for different sorts
of remedial intervention. Whereas individuals who make pri-
marily spelling errors may require only a systematic introduction
to conventional spelling patterns and spelling rules, individuals
whose errors are primarily phonological may require more spe-
cialized auditory skills training.
In our study, dyslexics made a great number of both phono-
logical and spelling mistakes in both languages. However, there
are two reasons why we think our dyslexics’ spelling mistakes
are the ones we should mainly focus on. Firstly because it was
in more difficult words they tended to make spelling mistakes
since they resorted to “spelling by ear” method while they
tended to make phonological mistakes in easier words confus-
ing simpler letters such as b-d, ful-flu, far-fra, ts-st etc. This
means that they have the ability, even though not fully auto-
mated (errors in easier/shorter words), to break up words into
phonemes and turn them into graphemes (letters) (Nikolopoulos,
Goulandris, & Snowling, 2003) but they are lacking in the abil-
ity to retrieve and implement spelling, grammatical and etymo-
logical rules. The second reason why remedial intervention
should focus on spelling mistakes is that when it comes to the
Greek language there are hardly any phonological mistakes but
there are still spelling mistakes resulting from the violation of
spelling and grammatical rules. This is something that dictates
the dyslexics’ need for a well structured teaching method that
concentrates on repetition, practice and phonics not because
they necessarily suffer from a lack of ability to represent the
phonological skeleton of words (Alegria & Mousty, 1994; Ni-
kolopoulos, Goulandris, & Snowling, 2003) but because they
find it so hard to retrieve rules (grammatical/etymological/ pho-
nological) and correspondences (for example, sound-letter) and
get them automated.
In conclusion, we can say that dyslexics generally made
598

G. ANDREOU, J. BASEKI
more spelling/orthographic mistakes in both languages in com-
parison to non dyslexics as we had expected. They also made
more phonological mistakes in English but there was no statis-
tically significant difference between the number of phonologi-
cal mistakes made by the two groups in Greek, something that
confirms our assumption that the orthographic transparency of
the Greek language and the phonics-based instruction of read-
ing and spelling at the schools in Greece facilitate the develop-
ment of literacy skills in comparison to the inconsistent English
orthographic system that poses difficulties for young learners.
Furthermore, the English orthographic system seriously affects
the kind of spelling/orthographic mistakes our subjects made.
Their tendency to spell “by ear” made them come up with
really weird spellings which nevertheless preserved the word’s
pronunciation something that requires further research that
could shed light on the nature of the problems dyslexics ex-
perience. On the other hand, they made many spelling mistakes
in Greek as well but these mistakes were not of the same type.
They were spelling mistakes that confirm the subjects’ prob-
lems with the particular language’s really complex and de-
manding historic orthography and grammatical rules.
According to Pierson (1989), spelling studies have determined
that Greek children use phonological strategies at the phoneme
and syllable level from the earliest stages (Porpodas, 2001),
gradually augmented with morphological strategies to allow
spelling of grammatical morphemes (Nunes, Aidinis, & Bryant,
2006), and are sensitive also to morpheme frequency in apply-
ing such strategies (Diakogiorgi, Baris, & Valmas, 2006). Dys-
lexics find it hard to apply and automate such strategies. This
does not mean that instruction in etymology would not be of
great help. Even in the foreign language curriculum it could
offer meaningful linguistic information and principles to the
students. As Pierson (1989) states, etymology, the study of word
origins, has all the attributes of what educational psychologists
term meaningful learning. This is a type of learning connected
to prior learning, more highly retainable and generalizable,
making it superior to simple rote learning of vocabulary. This
“meaningful learning” (Ausubel, 1968, 1967), connecting new
information to something already learned, is more likely to be
remembered and generalized to other contexts. These known
words serve as a reference point for new words with the same
forms met later in the lesson.
Based on our dyslexics’ error profiles in the foreign language,
we could say that these students need structured and systematic
direct instruction in the rule systems of an L2 that would ap-
parently run contrary to the “natural” communicative’ approach
(Krashen, 1982; Krashen & Terrel, 1983) that has dominated
L2 instruction since 1980s. Our question, though, is if this kind
of method is similarly appropriate for dyslexics’ spelling in
various languages. If we think about the errors made by our
dyslexics in L1 and L2 we will see that they were of different
types. The most striking difference among these mistakes is that
when writing in English our subjects made many phonological
errors while they made very few phonological errors in Greek.
It is obvious thus, that instruction methods should be language
specific. In our case, English uses a “deep” orthography so that
an explicit, structured, multisensory teaching method would be
more appropriate than it would be in Greek that is a more
transparent alphabetical system (Mavrommati & Miles, 2002)
as far as phonology is concerned. Of course, we should not
underestimate the difficulties that the Greek language poses for
learners in terms of morphology and grammar, something that
dictates the need for an explicit and well-structured teaching
method when it comes to Greek grammar and spelling.
Therefore, further research on different aspects of languages
and their apparent effect on dyslexics is needed to widen our
understanding of the nature of dyslexic difficulties (Miles,
2000). We should bear in mind that some of the features that
we now associate with dyslexia seem to be particularly influ-
enced by the very complex phoneme-grapheme correspondence
of the English language.
For these reasons, more research studies should be carried
out with more subjects, maybe better matched in terms of their
level of proficiency in the languages under investigation, sever-
ity of dyslexia, and reading age. It would be useful if we could
have two control groups, one at the same chronological age and
with the same time spent on learning their L2 and another one
at the same reading age so that the comparison would be more
interesting. More than one writing tasks could also be used in
both languages so that the effect of the task would come out.
Also, phonological awareness was not assessed so phonological
awareness or processing difficulties cannot be necessarily ruled
out because of phonologically accurate spellings (Landerl,
Wimmer, & Frith, 1997). Besides, other ScriptLog applications
(pause analysis, revision analysis, editing analysis, statistical
analyses etc.) remain to be exploited and presented in future
papers. Finally, some research on bilingual dyslexics could also
lead to reliable findings about the complex syndrome of dys-
lexia.
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