ABSTRACT
I think . . . indeed, I am almost sure . . . but memory is a notoriously deceitful witness . . . that I could read by the time I started infant school. Most teachers would probably say the same. Indeed, one problem that besets the teaching of reading, especially to reluctant readers, is that hardly any teacher has ever been in that poor, word-frightened child’s predicament when he or she is ordered to stare at small black shapes on white paper and to try to decode them.
