Recent studies show a startling trend in China: reported dyslexia prevalence has jumped from roughly 3.9% a decade ago to as high as 12.6% in recent urban research. While the biological traits of dyslexia remain stable, our instructional methods have shifted, creating a generation of students who appear to be struggling with reading but are actually victims of a confusing phonetic hybrid.
The Rise of the "Phantom Vowel"
We know the brain can learn to read. Some children, like Emma Hartnell-Baker, pick up Enid Blyton at age three with no instruction. But most aren’t so lucky. They need teaching — and the science is clear: everything hinges on connecting letters to sounds.
The following tweet captures a maddening truth:
Education is one of the few fields where people with no training feel entitled to dictate methods, policies, and “best practices.” Nobody would let a passerby advise a surgeon mid-operation or redesign an engineer’s bridge. Yet in classrooms—especially in reading instruction—voices from policymakers, academics, influencers, and even trainers who’ve never sat with a failing child often carry more weight than those who have.
The Star today reports a dual crisis for Chinese students in Malaysia: fewer candidates, fewer top scorers in the SPM. The shock is palpable. But let’s be blunt—this collapse didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the direct consequence of wrong teaching imported from China, and the silence of educators who refused to confront it.
The Bopomofo Infiltration
In 2004, I began teaching a bright young child to read. Like many educators at the time, I turned to the internet for guidance and encountered countless articles claiming that the primary cause of dyslexia was a phonological awareness deficit. This idea—that children with dyslexia struggle mainly because they can't properly perceive or manipulate the sounds in spoken language—dominated the conversation.
Not a single adult has ever openly discussed why many kids misbehave. Many who misbehave are intelligent kids.
This observation comes from years of working with struggling readers. The pattern is unmistakable: bright, capable children are often the ones who act out the most in class.
Early wrong input is hard to undo. Claude Bernard saw it in the 1800s. Thorndike proved it in 1913. Charlie Munger explained why the mind closes the door.
For years I have been warning about instructional videos that teach consonant sounds with extraneous “uh”. These videos don’t just confuse children — they cause many to disengage completely from learning to read.
A respected teacher recently posted:
“A dyslexic brain needs about 400 exposures to a word to anchor it in long-term memory.”
It sounds authoritative. It sounds scientific. But is it true?
Welcome to Part 7 of How to Teach Dyslexic Kids! By now your student has built strong foundations in phonics, multisensory techniques, and the finger-blocking method for spotting reliable patterns like ee, oo, and other vowel teams. This stage focuses on two powerful unlocks: R-controlled vowels (the “bossy r” sounds)
Syllable division rules — the key to cracking longer, multisyllabic words.
Now I understand why many parents and teachers of dyslexic kids have not bought my book, Teach Your Child to Read — which is a complete programme with a QR Code for each chapter.
A few days ago, I found myself in a thoughtful LinkedIn exchange with R. Janet Walraven, M.Ed., an international award-winning author and passionate educator. The topic? Helping children—especially those who struggle—learn to read confidently and correctly.
Welcome to Part 6 of How to Teach Dyslexic Kids! We’re building directly on the finger-blocking method from Part 5. Once your student has solid success with ee (the long /ē/ sound), it’s time to introduce more common vowel teams and digraphs. This keeps the momentum going while systematically expanding their ability to decode thousands of new words.
Vowel teams (two or more letters working together to make one sound) are a frequent sticking point for dyslexic learners because English spelling is inconsistent. Explicit practice with the blocking technique turns confusion into confidence.
I have written several articles explaining that many children shut down from learning to read because they have been taught letter sounds wrongly — that is, with extraneous “uh” or “huh” noises tacked on, which makes blending almost impossible.
So here is the obvious follow-up question that almost no one ever asks me: If your hypothesis is correct, then how is it that many children who attend schools where “correct” pure sounds are supposedly taught right from Grade One still leave school as functional illiterates? If wrong sounds are the main culprit, shouldn’t every child succeed?
The “Blocking” Technique & Digraph Mastery
One highly practical strategy is helping children confidently tackle unfamiliar words is by spotting reliable letter patterns. The book Teach Your Child to Read introduces a simple, tactile “finger-blocking” method starting around Chapter 20.
This technique builds directly on phonics knowledge and gives kids a concrete, hands-on way to isolate and recognize common digraphs (two letters that make one sound) like ee, oo, ea, ai, etc.
Here is my reply to Allie and Emma Hartnell-Baker
I hear you, but you're still missing the point.
You're describing a kid limping because there's a nail embedded in his heel — and instead of pulling out the nail, you're listing a dozen other possible reasons: wrong shoes, poor nutrition, weak muscles, bad posture, lack of motivation, etc. Sure, those things could matter in some cases. But when 20% of kids have been leaving school as functional illiterates for decades, year after year, with the failure rate barely budging, it's time to stop the excuses and remove the damn nail.
How I Spot the Real Problem in Under 5 Minutes (And Why I’m Confident They’ll Read Fluently in 3 Months)
In Part 3 we covered memorising the 220 Dolch high-frequency words. These words appear so often in print that knowing them by sight gives children an immediate boost in reading confidence and momentum.
Now let’s address the question parents ask me most often:
“How can you be so confident that you will get my child to read within three months of two-hour lessons per week — even when the psychology report says he has dyslexia or a specific learning disorder?” LINK
