This thesis investigates dyslexia and the cognitive-linguistics skills, namely phonological awareness,
orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness and rapid naming, of bilingual learners in
Singapore whose first language is English and second language is Chinese. The two main research aims
are to investigate whether the English-Chinese bilingual learners with dyslexia diagnosed only in
English are weaker than their typical counterparts in reading and all cognitive-linguistic skills in both
languages or either language, and to investigate which cognitive-linguistic skills are strong predictors
of reading in each language. Results show that the bilingual learners with dyslexia performed
significantly poorer than their typical counterparts in reading and all cognitive-linguistic skills in both
languages, although their dyslexia were diagnosed only in English. Results also found all English
cognitive-linguistic skills predictive of English word reading, especially the unique predictive roles of
morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge after rapid naming and phonological
awareness were controlled. However, only rapid naming and morphological awareness were found to
be predictive of Chinese word reading. The results suggest that dyslexia may manifest differently in
reading and cognitive-linguistic skills of English and Chinese languages in the English-Chinese bilingual
learners, based on the two different predictive models with different empirically and theoretically
supported orders of cognitive-linguistic skills as predictors for reading development in the two
languages. The difference in the unique contributions of the four cognitive-linguistic skills underlying
the reading development of both languages may suggest the difference lies in language structure and
instruction.
Keywords: dyslexia, bilingualism, English reading, Chinese reading, cognitive-linguistic skills