ABSTRACT
How do we learn to read? Unlike speaking and listening, reading and writing are clearly not easy tasks to learn, as shown by the large number of people who find them difficult, and the amount of explicit tuition apparently necessary. The complexities of English spelling make the task facing the learner a difficult one. Here we will concentrate on the most fundamental aspect of reading development, that of how we learn to read words. Reading development is closely associated with skills such as spelling, and we will also examine this. Finally, disproportionate difficulty in learning to read and spelldevelopmental dyslexia and dysgraphia-are relatively common, and we will examine these in the context of a model of normal reading development. Developmental dyslexias can be categorized in a similar way to acquired dyslexia, which has been used as further justification for a dual-route model of reading.
