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A dissertation subnitted to the Faculty of Education in Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Education in the Department Educational Psychology and Special Education at the University of Zululand, 2007. / The current investigation consisted of three aims. The first aim was to assist educators identify learners who experience learning difficulties. The second aim was to investigate empirically the nature of learning difficulties most prevalent in the primary schools of the Mthatha District. The third aim was to determine appropriate intervention strategies that educators can employ to deal with learning difficulties. The researcher constructed and validated her own scale to meet the aims of the study. A questionnaire was administered to educators of ten primary schools in the Mthatha District. A sample of four teachers per school was selected. Results indicated that educators may identify learners with difficulties with the support of specialist staff, by involving parents, through the process of screening, observation and assessment, and by checking both intrinsic and extrinsic sources of barriers to learning. The most prevalent learning difficulties in Mthatha District are those related to poverty, overcrowded classrooms, and dependency of families on welfare grant as the main source of income. The appropriate intervention strategies that educators can employ include having access to and support of specialist staff and parents. The investigation proved conclusively that with the necessary support, for learners, educators and the education system at large, learning difficulties could be overcome.

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This thesis comprised an investigation of literacy development and literacy difficulties in the context of bilingualism involving 479s ix to thirteen year old children bilingual in two languages The children in this study were required to learn literacy in two writing systems namely Filipino and English.' Me context of concurrent earning and a bilingual background provided a unique context for studying biliteracy development and difficulties. Additionally variations in the orthographio complexity between e two scripts( Filipino is transparent, whilst English is complex) allowed an assessment of current cross-language perspective ins literacy difficulties. The main aim of the research was to investigate cognitive and linguistic factors that are related to literacy difficulties in a bilingual population. This was achieved via two additional ims:i e, to understand the development of, and the skills involved in , literacy acquisition. This required assessment of the impact of processes within and between the languages of literacy. 'Me results in dicate that the predominant theories on literacy developmengte nerated on the basiso f monolingual English-speaking cohortd o not explain literacyp rocesses amongt he bilingual-biliterate children in this study. Although predictions base do n these theories found some support in the English based data, the were inconsistent with the data produced by the same children in Filipino. The second main conclusion asserttsh at the central processing hypothesis and the script dependent hypothesis are complementary explanations of bilingual reading. Although development seems to progressa t different rates underlyings kills in literacys how a high degree of crosslanguage interdependence Finally, in examining literacy difficulties a mongth e children in this study, it was found that group c omparisondsi d not provides ufficientb asisto characterise ingle word literacy difficulties Howevert he analysiys of single cases indicated different manifestations of literacy difficulties across the two languages These findings1 )indicate that illiteracy resents a fundamentally different context in which to investigate and assess literacy difficulties2, ) highlight the importance of assessments in all languages of literacy and3 ) demonstrate the need to assesm sore than single word processing deficits, particularly when dealing with a highly transparent writing system.

This study explored the relationship between working memory (WM) deficits and reading difficulties using secondary data analysis on data collected from 63 English speaking students in two urban school divisions in Saskatchewan participating in a larger SSHRC funded study (Marche, McIntyre, Claypool, 2013). First, this study addressed whether the WM profiles of individuals with reading difficulties were different from those of individuals without reading difficulties. The results showed that individuals with reading difficulties scored lower than individuals with average reading ability on measures of verbal short-term memory (STM), verbal WM, and visuospatial WM. Second, this study looked at the differential effects of computer-based WM training on the WM profiles of children with and without reading difficulties. The results showed that after WM training, there was a difference between the visuospatial STM scores of individuals with and without difficulties, when reading ability was determined by the combination of a decoding and comprehension task. Furthermore, a difference was also noted between the visuospatial WM scores of individuals with and without word decoding difficulties, and the visuospatial STM, verbal WM, and visuospatial WM scores of individuals with and without reading comprehension difficulties. Additionally, the verbal STM scores of individuals with reading comprehension difficulties were marginally different than the scores of individuals without. No differences were found between individuals who did not participate in WM training. The limitations of the study, as well as the implications for practice and future research, are discussed.