WHY IS IT HARD TO LEARN TO READ?

Summary from: The Brain and Learning May 2001" and "Why Our Children Can't Read" by Dr. McGuinness

Experts in the field of literacy have reported several reasons why its difficult to learn to read English. One problem cited is that it has origins from too many countries resulting in dual spellings for the same sound and spellings based on the words origin. Another reason given is that there are too many sounds represented by only 26 letters making it difficult for many young readers to learn.

In the May 2001 issue of The Brain and Learning they discussed how the English language is comprised of words borrowed from all over the world. For example the "ch" pronunciation is unique based on its origin. We have the word "chemical" from the Greeks, "gnocchi" from the Italians, and "chalet" from the French. The "ch" spelling is pronounced as /k/, /sh/ or /ch/.

Around the 14th century scribes began tracing words to their origins and used spellings that reflected it. Because words were originally pronounced differently they were spelled differently. For example, "ee" and "ea" use to be pronounced differently until the end of the 17th century but eventually evolved into the same sound and both spellings were kept.

In the 15th century the "Great Vowel Shift" began in which long vowels shifted from their continental pronunciations to their present day ones. So that resulted in vowels that have at least 2 pronunciations (long and short). The letter "O" depending upon the letter next to it can make up to 9 different sounds. Such as in the words: tot, vote, toot, book, ton, town, boy, pour and lesson.

According to Dr. McGuinness, English has 43 phonemes or individual sounds represented by only 26 letters. It also has 25 consonants, 18 vowel sounds and 27 consonant clusters.

We can combine our consonants and vowels to make 15 different syllable patterns such as: CV,CCV, CCCV, CVC, CCVC, CCCVC, CVCC, CVCCC, CCVCC, CCVCCC, CCCVCCC, VCCC, VCC,VC, V

Then those 25 consonants and 18 vowels can combine and create over 55,000 phonetically legitimate syllables. Dr. McGuinness wrote " too many sounds chasing too few letters creates major roadblocks for the young reader".