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It's a tragedy that children often struggle with reading unnecessarily. Often it is derived from a misunderstanding of how to read. The warning signs are easy to spot if you know what to look for.

However, this problem has proved easy to fix.

The Pattern of Failure

Things often start out well. A child will learn most of the alphabet fine and then even a few words without seeming to have a problem.

As the child starts reading simple books, a habit of guessing develops. Usually the guess will make sense, but will be nothing like the actual word on the page.

As the child moves up to higher levels of books, it can seem that his or her reading ability is actually going the other way.

Eventually the child's confidence can collapse and you will see massive resistance to any further reading.

This can become a permanent situation, without the right help. That will destroy the child's changes of reaching anything like his or her full potential. And yet we find it can usually be fixed in a few weeks.

The Underlying Issue

Reading is a complex task and it is natural for a child to use whatever approach seems easiest. If your child has a good visual memory, then remembering words by sight seems the best option.

At the moment, most children are given phonics tuition in the classroom. But to a non-auditory child, it can seem baffling. And in a group setting it is very hard for a teacher to know that or to have time to fix it with one-on-one help.

The design of early reading books usually feeds this very situation. They use a small number of words and repeat them a lot. That makes them easy to read for a child who is memorising the words by sight.

But, in reality, the child is not reading at all, but using a shortcut. And is travelling down a blind alley with no exit.

The child needs guidance out of this situation and onto the right path.

The Simple Fix

The first thing is to give the child a method by which to remember all the different phonemes. For instance, in the Easyread Coaching System we do that by using bright and active visual images which are very easy for the child to remember. They become the hooks by which the child can remember all the different sounds. This is a classic memory enhancement technique first developed by the Ancient Greeks.

The next goal is to move the child away from the shortcuts being employed of memorisation and guessing. In Easyread we have developed games and exercises specially for this.

Once the child is redirected onto the right path, you need to make it easy to travel. Confidence is further built by steady reading practise. In Easyread we allow the child to read text unaided each day, by floating the images connected to each phoneme over the text. In that way, the child always has support when puzzling over a word.

The result of these changes of approach is that we regularly see children who have been completely stuck after years of effort, become enthusiastic readers in just a few weeks.