A third unsolicited book review

Here is a third book review from someone in the US which I happened to read a few days ago. It is followed by my comments. You may read all the three book reviews here.

Stanley B. Hooper

3.0 out of 5 stars

Kill Usual Letter Sound outs for Children

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2020

Luqman is concerned about how difficult it is for students to learn to read, especially those with dyslexia, when we ask them to pronounce consonant letters with a vowel attachment. As an example, we've asked children to pronounce the letter b as though it was "buh," and the letter g as "guh" (hard g sound). So, for many students, we would thus literally be pronouncing each letter in "big" as "buh-ig-uh" which mysteriously (to kids) translates to "big," and kids don't do well. That's somewhat oversimplified to make the point; there is a good deal more to his thesis than that, but it gets you started. I believe he has a good point and I also think that learning to read is a very complex skill to accomplish which requires children to know much more than the letter sounds alone. So, His point is well taken and needs to incorporate all of what learning to read is about, well beyond letter sounds alone. I need to finish the book to add more to this review. Perhaps he will cover what I feel (so far) is missing.

My comment:

Yes, there is another main reason why kids shut down from learning to read. Kids need to be informed that many phonemes are represented by each letter in the English language. This is explained in detail in the book.

This book is not about teaching kids to read. There are hundreds of books on teaching kids to read.

This book is on why kids disengage from learning to read and how to prevent kids from shutting down. I believe that this is the only book that deals with why kids disengage from learning to read.

Kids will not shut down from learning to read if:

1.       Teachers teach the correct pronunciation of phonemes. Listen to my YouTube video on this here.

2.       Teachers inform kids at the onset that letters are represented by more than one phoneme. Listen to my YouTube video here.

The kids who shut down due to confusion are the kids who are then classified as dyslexic.

The book also deals with context clues. Context clues or context cues are an aid to reading. One needs context clues to read for instance - On a windy day, I drove down a windy road. 

Kids need phonics to read but they need context clues to be able to read words in the proper context.

The other essentials for reading such as vocabulary, comprehension and fluency do not cause a kid to shut down from learning to read.

I repeat, my book is on why many smart kids are unable to read in English but are able to read in many other languages. The book is to share my findings on ways to prevent kids from disengaging from learning to read and is not to teach kids to read.