Abstract:
Dyslexia is a phonological problem, which causes problem in reading and writing. It
affects throughout the life; however its effects can change at various stages. It exists
from mild to severe. Hence, not every dyslexic student needs a special treatment from
specialist. At-risk or mild student can depend on skilled teachers.
A dyslexic’s brain is wired differently that affects processing of receiving and
decoding of information. Due to different connectivity, conventional teaching
practices are not enough to deliver the information in a way that would make it easy
for at-risk dyslexic student to understand and make sense. Even stagnant graphics,
pictures and diagrams cannot do justice to their learning.
Multisensory instruction benefits at-risk dyslexic students to learn using five senses. It
involves the use of visual, auditory and kinesthetic pathways, simultaneously, to
enhance memory and learning of reading and written language (Richard & Rebecca,
2005). Creative teaching methods, using more than two senses, can affectedly
improve academic outcomes and language skills of students at-risk of dyslexia (Birsh,
2005).
At-risk dyslexic students learn more effectively in a regular inclusive classroom
setting where they are not labeled but given an importance as everyone else. In an
inclusive classroom teacher uses multiple approaches (i.e. multisensory instruction) to
deal with at-risk dyslexic and with no-risk of dyslexia students; for support in their
learning.
In this study, a quasi-experimental research was conducted to check the impact of
multisensory instructional approach in learning of grade 1 at-risk dyslexic Pakistani
students. This study involves 51 at-risk dyslexic students. The pre-experimental: one
group pretest-post-test design was employed.
The resulting effect size was 0.88, therefore a strong effect was found and it was
concluded that use of multisensory instruction in a Pakistani context considerably
increases learning of ‘at-risk’ dyslexic students.
