| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to look closely at the way Norwegian adolescents with dyslexia coped with learning L2 (English) during their secondary school years, and what coping strategies they used in the regular English language classroom. Another goal of the study was to investigate possible differences between the genders in the way dyslexic males and females coped with their L2 challenges. The data were gathered through a semi-structured interview with six Norwegian students (three males and three females) from the 8th to the 10th grades, 14-16 years old, from three lower secondary schools. The participants had been formally assessed as having dyslexia by their schools. The results showed that both male and female learners had generally little knowledge about their diagnosis and had difficulty with self-regulating their L2 learning and assessing their strengths. In terms of types and range of strategies, there were no striking differences in the extent to which the male and female learners knew about various learning strategies and engaged in dealing with different tasks in the English classroom. There were, however, some differences in the way the Norwegian males and females viewed the software tools, teacher’s support and practice in the classroom. The females appeared to demonstrate a more negative attitude towards the English classroom environment blaming their English teacher for not giving them more support, lack of adjustments on assignments and their teacher’s limited understanding of their challenges. However, they tended to accept their failures in English more positively than the males and tried to deal with challenging assignments first by themselves before they asked for help. A considerable variation in terms of self-regulating of language learning was documented among the male participants. The present research has provided further evidence that dyslexic learners’ capacity to self-manage L2 learning depends on several variables: learners’ self-awareness, knowledge of their diagnosis and effective learning/coping strategies, positive beliefs that lead to language development, teacher’s role, the learning environment, learners’ individual characteristics and motivation. | eng |