Please send the completed forms or reports to us, either at unicom1@dyslexia-international.org or to Dyslexia International asbl, rue Defacqz 1, B–1000 Brussels, Belgium.

We are hoping that, by all working together, we can use this Forum to really improve the way that dyslexic children are educated around the world. Your help in achieving this goal will be greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Rachel Warfield
Principal Researcher for Dyslexia International

Reporting Good Practice from regions where Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish is spoken at the
World Dyslexia Forum, 3-5 February 2010 at UNESCO Paris
Le Forum mondial sur la dyslexie à l’UNESCO Paris du 3 au 5 février 2010

in Arabic

Dr. Sana Tibiis an Associate professor at the department of Special Education at the United Arab Emirates University, with a doctorate in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Florida, USA. She is a consultant to the World Bank and UNESCO on Arabic reading assessment, dyslexia and other learning difficulties. She has given several presentations in international and regional conferences and workshops on issues pertaining to children’s literacy. Dr. Tibi has published several articles in international and regional journals, served as a reviewer for some international scientific journals and panels and written two books on reading difficulties. She is also interested in issues related to children’s speech and language disorders, language acquisition, and literacy development.

in Chinese

Professor Alice Cheng-Lai was educated at the Universities of Taiwan, Michigan and Hong Kong. She is the Associate Professor in Educational Psychology at the Manulife Centre for Children with Specific Learning Disabilities at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Director of the Joint Centre for Child Development and Learning in Peking University, Beijing. She has been conducting research into children with developmental dyslexia and specific learning disabilities for more than 15 years. This includes identification and intervention of children consequently at risk for school failure and how the deficits are best addressed in Chinese-speaking communities.

in English

Dr. Jenny Thomson, Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology (CCC-SLP), is Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses upon the developmental pre-cursors of reading difficulties. Following training and experience working as a Speech and Language Pathologist, her doctoral research was the first study to find highly significant relationships between children’s auditory rise-time sensitivity and their phonological and literacy skills (Goswami et al., 2002; Thomson & Goswami, in press). Her current research continues to explore the role of rhythm sensitivity in both the identification and remediation of reading difficulties using behavioural and neural measures

in French/en français

Le professeur José Morais a mené sa carrière à l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, où il a enseigné la psychologie cognitive, la psycholinguistique, et la psychologie en rapport avec l’aptitude à lire et à écrire. Ses sujets principaux de recherche sont les conséquences cognitives de l’alphabétisation, l’acquisition de la lecture, et les mécanismes de reconnaissance des mots oraux. Il est Président du Comité national des Sciences psychologiques de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, et a été membre du Comité scientifique de l’Observatoire national de la lecture (France), pendant 12 ans.

Professor José Morais made his career at the Free University of Brussels, where he taught cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics and psychology of literacy. The cognitive consequences of literacy, reading acquisition, and the mechanisms of spoken word recognition are his main research topics. He is President of the National Committee of Psychological Sciences of the Royal Academy of Belgium and was member of the Scientific Committee of the French ‘Observatoire national de la Lecture’ for 12 years.

in Russian

Dr. Elena Grigorenko is Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, USA, and Moscow State University, Russian Federation. Her current research includes studies of genes involved in learning disabilities and cognitive processing, with special emphasis on studying minority samples. She has also studied genetic and environmental risk factors for behavioural problems

in Spanish

Dr Jesus Alegria Iscoa is an Honorary Professor at the Free University of Brussels. He has spent his entire academic career in the laboratory for cognition and language development. His areas of interest include literacy acquisition with a special emphasis on dyslexia, cross-linguistic comparisons, and reading acquisition in deaf persons. In collaboration with colleagues in both Belgium and Spain he has worked on setting up tools for evaluating phonological processing and for the basic mechanisms of reading and spelling.