Dislessia e bilinguismo: qualcosa in comune?

Claudia Cappa
Torino I
Sara Giulivi
Locarno

The authors present some considerations on the relationship between dyslexia and bilingualism, based on a comparison between the main areas of difficulty of the former and the numerous linguistic and cognitive advantages that are mentioned in the scientific literature of the latter. Dyslexia is a Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) that involves the ability to read. It manifests itself particularly in the problems individuals encounter in decoding written texts. This is due to the fact that the process of grapheme-phoneme association has not become automatic. In addition, dyslexia involves deficits in the storage and retrieval of the lexicon and in meta-phonological skills as well as deficits in executive functions and the working memory. Strangely enough, bilingual individuals seem to have a more distinct phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic awareness, and, consequently, generally greater metalinguistic abilities. This leads to better executive functions and has positive effects on both the working memory and the long term memory. Therefore, it may be legitimate to hypothesize that promoting bilingualism in education may have a “preventive” and/or “habilitative” function in the sense that it may strengthen the cognitive and linguistic areas that may manifest deficits in an individual with SLD.

Questo contributo nasce da riflessioni scaturite dalla collaborazione tra Svizzera e Italia all’interno di un progetto europeo su dislessia e multilinguismo. Il progetto (www.dyslang.eu) ha come scopo la progettazione di un corso di formazione per insegnanti di lingue (ma anche per altre figure di riferimento in ambito educativo) volto a fornire indicazioni utili per il supporto a studenti con dislessia e/o con background plurilingue, nell’apprendimento delle lingue moderne. La progettazione del corso e la stesura dei contenuti hanno creato l’occasione per mettere a confronto le caratteristiche linguistico-cognitive di chi si trova in una condizione di bilinguismo con quelle di soggetti con Disturbo Specifico di Apprendimento (DSA), in particolare con dislessia.