Can synthetic phonics overcome dyslexia?
There is no doubt that there is a biological basis to dyslexia, and some culprit genes have been identified. However, with synthetic phonics, it is normally possible to teach even the most dyslexic child to read. Indeed, the symptoms of dyslexia are often aggravated by other teaching methods, particularly the ‘whole language’ approach. In particular, the teaching of a large number of sight words actually hinders the development of the pathways in the brain that allow rapid decoding.
