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health psychology report • volume (4), 4 original article background From the perspective of dyslexia, familial risk is the issue most researched worldwide. The familial risk has never been studied in Poland. Results of many studies conducted in Europe, the U.S. and Australia show that children who have a close family member with dyslexia are at greater risk of this disorder than children in the control groups. This conclusion is backed up by the results of research on the genetic aetiology of learning disorders. In the presented study on Polish 1 st grade students, the Adult Reading History Questionnaire by Lefly and Pennington (2000) in the Polish adaptation (ARHQ-PL) was used. The connections between the familial risk and the level of reading, spelling, phonological abilities and other cognitive functions were analysed.

Although developmental dyslexia is frequently diagnosed in Poland, little knowledge of effective treatment for this disorder is available in Polish society. Remedial teachers for many years have applied traditional methods aimed at correction and compensation for affected cognitive functions and academic skills. Otherwise, although western therapies are regularly advertised in the media, their effectiveness has rarely been subject to scientific investigation. Since the assumptions underlying some approaches are not consistent with current understanding of cognitive function, they may attract negative expert appraisal. Unfortunately, it seems that fashion in dyslexia therapy is resistant to rare expressions of criticism from the scientific community. The purpose of this article is to promote awareness about effective treatment for specific reading disorders. Teachers’ greater understanding in this area should help Polish dyslexic children and their parents, who may be confused by offers of misguided therapy and sharp business practise. It is hoped that this article will clarify the situation. In this review of modern English journal articles, focus is on remedial teaching of reading, and more specifically, support for dyslexic students experiencing difficulties in decoding. Here we are concerned only with therapy in alphabetic languages in which individual speech sounds correspond to letters. Analysis of articles from the last six years leads to the conclusion that the most effective therapy for the reading disorder is training in phonological awareness and consolidation of letter-sound knowledge. However, these skills should be practised in the context of reading.

It is reported in literature (Nippold et al.., 2001; Qualls, Bodle et al., 2001, Levorato, Nesi, Cacciari, 2004) that reading ability is associated with figurative language competence. The assumption is that good reading ability enhances lexical development, which, in turn, increases knowledge of figures of speech. On the other hand, studies on the metaphorical use of language by children primarily provide information on the interpretation and understanding of figurative language forms, to a lesser extent, on the ability to recognize them in the text. The aim of presented study was to investigate the relation between reading comprehension and figurative language recognition in 8-to 9-year-old children . In a preliminary phase two standardized tests was used, to assess the reading comprehension skills. Study involved 60 children attending 2 and 3 grades at primary school, divided into 3 groups: poor, medium and good comprehenders. The group of skilled comprehenders was compared to less skilled groups on two tasks: : metaphor recognition task and metaphor comprehension task, that include figurative expressions derived from school textbook. The study brings interesting results concerning the relationship between the ability to recognize metaphors with reading comprehension level, indicating that children with low levels of reading comprehension in less use context, making it difficult for them to differentiate literal from metaphorical expressions.

There is a need for research concerning visual features of student friendly foreign language textbooks. Most dyslexia experts agree that dyslexic students experience problems in both their mother tongue and in foreign languages they study. Since the prevalence of developmental dyslexia ranges from 10 to 15%, this problem concerns a significant percentage of foreign language textbook users. As a result, dyslexic students may learn from textbooks which are not suitable for them. The primary goal of our project is to answer the question about the relationship between the level of performance in tasks used in dyslexia identification, English decoding and eye tracking with the use of English language textbooks. In the first (psychological) part of our research we have assessed our subjects' literacy skills 1 Tekst powstał w ramach realizacji drugiej części projektu "Kształtowanie kompetencji językowych u uczniów z dysleksją rozwojową" sfinansowanego przez MNiSW dotacją Nr 206428/E-343/S/2017-1 z dnia 12.12.2017 r. na pilne wykonanie badań naukowych lub prac rozwojowych szczególnie istotnych dla realizacji polityki naukowej, naukowotechnicznej lub innowacyjnej państwa. Drugą część projektu zrealizował zespół w składzie: prof. Sambor Grucza (kierownik), dr Agnieszka Andrychowicz-Trojanowska, dr Katarzyna Maria Bogdanowicz, dr Katarzyna Wiejak, dr hab. Monika Płużyczka. Katarzyna Maria BOGDANOWICZ i in. 118 Applied Linguistics Papers: www.alp.uw.edu.pl as an introduction to further research leading to conclusions about the ability to learn a foreign language based on foreign language textbooks.