Naturally enough, ensuring access to information in various fields of knowledge, literacy skills exert considerable influence on our personal growth and professional development. Thus, researchers have been intensively investigating the phenomenon of reading and spelling disorders and, even more importantly from the practitioner's standpoint, ways of helping reading-impaired individuals.

Perceived as a significant commercial asset as well as a good investment in children, the ability to speak foreign languages constitutes another prerequisite of success in our fast-developing, multilingual society. Not only does it equip a person with a useful tool for international communication, but it also enhances an individual's chances of getting a position on the professional ground. The necessity of possessing the command of a foreign language has been well recognised by the authorities, which resulted in a foreign language requirement becoming a compulsory part of educational systems. Viewed as an advantage, recently bilingualism has become a social necessity, allowing people to face the challenges thrown up by the united, frontier-free Europe.

The foreign language requirement forms an integral and compulsory part of educational systems. Apparently, fulfilling this requirement seems to bring about considerable difficulties in many students with dyslexia. This is because the specific reading and spelling problems they encounter frequently prevent them from accomplishing this social and educational demand. Weaknesses such as poor decoding and remembering, slow processing and retrieving linguistic information, mainly on the phonological level, are believed to be salient features of individuals with dyslexia, leading to educational achievements much below their intellectual potential and requirements posed on them.

Students with dyslexia tend to face difficulties in foreign language learning (FLL) and, in fact, the problem is associated with native language learning. Ganschow and Sparks (Ganschow et al., 1998; Sparks, 1995; Sparks et al., 1989, 1998a) plausibly show that for individuals with dyslexia, native language learning poses variable difficulties, which then translate into similar problems in foreign language learning. It follows that the skills of an individual in the native language components of linguistic coding form the cornerstone of successful foreign language learning.