Sythetic Phonics for Bilinguals

[Surendranath Nishanimut]

Dear Sir,

I am researcher in the field of Learning Disablity for
the past 10 years. I am also a practicing remedial
teacher, teaching ESL to children with Learning
Disability(dyslexics). Most of my students'(past and
present batch-usually children above the age of 10
years)L1 happens to be Kannada( a Dravidian Language
with a transparent, semi-syllabic script). Over the
years I have been teaching sythetic
phonics(English)using or supporting the lesson plans
in Kannada. Recently, I tried to develop some sort of
symbols to reprasent English sounds in Kannada. In
other words, I have written Kannada transcription to
English sounds which helps a non reader of English to
begin to catch up with the English sounds taking the
cue from the Kannada transcription. Though the Kannada
support exists for many initial lessons, it decreases
and finally stops. By then the student will have
picked up English vocabulary and will have started
making/understanding sentences.

At this stage I feel I should look into research
papers where the researchers have tested this
methodology. Here, in India, I am searching but if you
are aware of any such papers, I sincerely request you
to send the copies of the same. As I am not a full
time researcher in the field of linguistics, my
reading and knowledge is limited. So, I am worried
whether my work is principally accepted or not. Though
I have seen exemplary results using this methods( most
Dyslexics trained under me read well after two/three
years of training), I am quite uncomfortable to
publish my work unless it is properly commented and
peer reviewed. Or atleast some expert has to say JUST
GO AHEAD.

Please help.

with regard,
truly,
Suren

[Tdol]

Synthetic Phonics for Bilinguals - Google Scholar
http://www.usingenglish.com/cgi-bin/...thetic+phonics