ABSTRACT
When children and adults learn the English writing system, they are essentially faced with all the complexities of English detailed in the previous chapters. To recap, among many other things they have to learn to use:
the phonological route for relating letters and sounds, so that they can link written <bus> to spoken /bΛs/ and vice versa
the lexical route to deal with individual words and meanings, so that they can link <does> with /dΛz/
the forms and functions of written language, so that they can use the appropriate words and grammar for, say, writing an e-mail rather than making a phone-call
the orthographic regularities and lexical spelling that distinguish content and function words (‘in’/‘inn’), that divide English into three spelling systems (‘mock’, ‘baroque’, ‘amok’), and that show the underlying form of the word (‘sign’/‘signature’)
the punctuation marks that show different structural relationships in the sentence (‘John’s book?’) and the use of typographic features such as line division and hyphens.
Some of these features are common to all languages, some peculiar to English, some ‘obvious’ and giving little trouble, others leaving problems that persist throughout people’s lives.