First, speech therapists were contacted to see whether they could aid us in our search for French writing tests appropriate to this study as speech therapists often work with dyslexic children and have had a lot of contact with dyslexia material. Secondly, parents of dyslexic children, écoles fondamentales as well as school superintendents and school teachers of the école fondamentale were contacted in search for suitable subjects. The students were expected to have dyslexic symptoms and to pertain to one of the aforementioned language groups. Furthermore, they were expected to be in cycle 4.1. as they would have had two years of French teaching and thus, an adequate level where dyslexia could be detectable using spelling tests.

The students took the writing tests and participated in a short interview to establish a personal profile concerning their language use, their attitude towards the different languages, studying and their school career. One parent of each child was also interviewed, using similar questions about themselves and their child. If the parents were not available for an interview, the teacher was interviewed about the parents and the child. The personal profiles were used during the analysis of the data to find possible interpretations for the results. The results of each subject were then compared to the results of the other subjects on an individual level, as well as grouped according to their language backgrounds.