WHY IS LEARNING TO READ A HARD TASK FOR SOME CHILDREN

In this brief review of some of my research on reading disability, I a rgue that a child's development into literacy has two major ontogeneti c roots, one involving early informal literacy socialization and one r elated to phonological awareness. Although failure in reading acquisit ion might be a question of cultural deprivation, the dynamic interacti on between genetic dispositions and environment must be acknowledged, especially in a society providing rich sources of print exposure. The crucial transition in literacy development involves a step from implic it to explicit control of the phonemic units of language. When the cip her of the alphabetic system is understood the child is equipped with a powerful instrument for self teaching. A primary source of reading d isability is then related to problems of segmenting the speech stream into phonemic units. The poor functioning of the phonological module s eems to be a circumscribed deficit not related to general cognitive ab ility. The causal and reciprocal relationship between phonological awa reness and learning to read has been demonstrated in my research over 20 years. Some of these studies are briefly reviewed in this article. The preventive and remedial implications of the findings are rather ob vious.