Do Chinese dyslexic children have difficulties learning English as a second language?

The aim of the present study was to examine whether Chinese dyslexic children had difficulties learning English as a second language given the distinctive characteristics of the two scripts. Twenty-five Chinese primary school children with developmental dyslexia and 25 normally achieving children were tested on a number of English vocabulary, reading, and phonological processing tasks. It was found that the Dyslexia group performed significantly worse than the Control group in nearly all the English measures. The findings suggest that Chinese dyslexic children also encounter difficulties in learning English as a second language, and they are generally weak in phonological processing both in Chinese and English. However, phonological skills were found to correlate significantly with English reading but not with Chinese reading in the dyslexic children. It is evident that there are both common and specific causes to reading difficulties in Chinese and English.