Effectiveness of Phonological Awareness Training for Students with Dyslexia in Kuwaiti Schools

Abstract

Dyslexia affects approximately 6.3% of primary school students in Kuwait, and Arabic diglossia (the linguistic distance between Spoken Kuwaiti Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic) together with an opaque orthography intensifies phonological awareness (PA) deficits. This quasi-experimental study evaluated a 12-week explicit PA training program (36 sessions of 45 minutes, three per week) delivered in small groups with progressive syllable-to-phoneme scaffolding, multisensory activities, and diglossia-sensitive adaptations. Thirty students with dyslexia (Grades 4–5, aged 9–11 years) in Kuwaiti public schools were assigned to an experimental group (n = 15) or a control group (n = 15) following the standard curriculum. Pre- and post-assessments used Arabic-adapted versions of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing-2 and the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement. The experimental group showed large gains in PA (d = 1.92) and reading proficiency (d = 2.12), including phoneme-level skills, word reading accuracy, and pseudo-word decoding (ps<.001), while controls changed negligibly. Interviews (n = 20) indicated improved fluency and confidence. The findings support the phonological deficit hypothesis in diglossic orthographies. Limitations include the small sample and the absence of long-term follow-up. Implications include integrating explicit PA instruction into the curriculum and teacher professional development.