Dyslexia and English Language Acquisition: Supporting Pupils with Dyslexia in Learning English Vocabulary

Abstract

The thesis elaborates on dyslexia - a specific learning disability which affects many cognitive functions such as reading, writing, memory, automatisation, etc., and can be caused by hereditary or neurological factors. Dyslexia also greatly influences vocabulary acquisition in the English language; therefore, strategies, techniques and teaching aids that could alleviate the problems that pupils with dyslexia face daily at school are discussed in the thesis. The practical part includes educational design-based research focusing on evaluating a textbook based on criteria drawn on the theoretical part. Consequently, a teaching aid was designed to complement the textbook and to support the pupils in efficient vocabulary acquisition.