The Real Barrier Isn’t a Phonics Gap—It’s a Clarity Gap

                                                                      

Here is my response to a Substack post on decodables. 

While it’s true that not all struggling readers have the same needs, the statement “many struggling readers have phonics gaps” significantly understates the real issue for a large proportion of children.

 

After leaving a career in accounting in 2004 to investigate why some children read easily in Malay (a transparent orthography) but struggle severely in English, I found that the primary barrier for most persistent struggling readers is not a lack of phonics instruction per se, but the initial confusion caused by imprecise or inconsistent teaching of letter–sound relationships.

Part 2: The Reading Guarantee – Bold Vision or Missing Step?

 

We're back with the literacy showdown. As Hunter pushes structured literacy to rescue Australia's readers, Luqman tags her from the trenches. Can policy catch up to practice?

October 2024: Hunter escalated with her Grattan manifesto, slamming the 1970s "whole-language" hangover – where kids guess words from context – for leaving a third of Year 5s unable to decode proficiently. 

Evening News: Spotlight on Jordana Hunter – Australia's Literacy Wake-Up Call

                                                                 

Good evening, and welcome to Evening News. In a nation where one in three children battles to read proficiently, the stakes couldn't be higher: disengagement, behavioral issues, and a lifetime of barriers. Leading the charge is Jordana Hunter, Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute, whose data-driven pleas for reform are shaking up classrooms. But as her blueprint gains traction, voices from the frontlines – like veteran educator Luqman Michel  question if it's addressing the real flaws in how we teach. Tonight, we unpack the crisis, from stark NAPLAN gaps to a bold "Reading Guarantee," weaving in key insights from blogs, reports, and a tweet that's gone viral in edutwitter circles. Our story starts with a preventable national shame.

From Literacy to Justice: Stand With Me Against Dyslexia & Corruption

 

Support Luqman’s fight for children’s right to read and his battle to expose corruption in Sabah

 

Dear friends, readers, and fellow advocates for justice,

 

For years, I’ve dedicated myself to freeing young minds from the struggles of dyslexia. Many children I’ve taught—often at no cost—have gone from frustration to joy as words unlocked worlds they once thought closed. My book, Teach Your Child toRead, is more than just pages; it’s a lifeline for parents and schools, offering simple, effective strategies to help children read with confidence. Hundreds of copies have been distributed freely to families, educators, and schools, because literacy should never be a privilege—it’s a right.

Teaching Phonics Without the “Buh”: A Practical Guide for Educators

 

In our main post, we challenged the dominant narrative that children struggle to read because they lack phonemic awareness. We argued that many children already possess strong phonemic skills, and that the real barrier is distorted phonics instruction—especially the widespread habit of teaching consonants with added schwa vowels (e.g., b as “buh”).

 

This companion post offers practical strategies to fix that.

Phonemic Awareness Hype: Why the Real Problem Isn’t in the Child’s Brain

 

Across the Western world, educators and researchers increasingly claim that children struggle to read because they lack phonemic awareness—the ability to identify, isolate, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. This idea has become the cornerstone of reading interventions, teacher training, and curriculum design. But what if the problem isn’t in the child’s brain at all?

Do Kids Really Stop Learning to Read After Third Grade?

 

This morning I read a post in The 74 entitled: Do Kids Really Stop Learning to Read and Start Reading to Learn After Third Grade?

 

As usual, here are some extracts and my comments.

 

The Myth Repeated

I have read what the title says over and over again for years. Someone said it once, and every other person copy-pastes it across social media.

The Hype About Phonological Awareness: Clearing the Path to Real Reading

 

This morning I came across two tweets that highlight the ongoing confusion in literacy instruction.

 

Waveofthefuture (@Sustain_VA) wrote:

 

“Phonics can be a tool for the simplest words and should be used in the beginning. But English is not a phonetic language unfortunately so it’s a very limited tool. Don’t believe me? Try to read your own tweets using basic phonics as if you didn’t already know those words.”

 

And Robert Pondiscio (@rpondiscio) tweet:

The Reading Debate That's Missing the Point

                                             

Why Kids Shut Down (And How to Fix It Without the Drama)

For weeks now, I’ve been in an ongoing exchange with @NielsHoven on X about phonics, dyslexia, and why so many bright kids end up hating reading. We agree on the fundamentals—phonics works. Full stop. Yet the conversation keeps looping, not because of disagreement, but because people refuse to click and read the links I provide. So let me lay it out clearly, using only my own words and the blog posts I keep referencing.

 

Greg Ashman is Winning the Battle but Losing the War Part Two

 

The Fatal Blind Spot in Phonics

 

The Giant Hole Nobody Talks About

Greg, like almost every phonics advocate in the English‑speaking world, believes the main problem is that teachers are not being explicit enough.

 

I argue the opposite: teachers are being explicit about the wrong sounds.

Greg Ashman is Winning the Battle but Losing the War - Part 1

 

The reading wars are full of loud voices, confident claims, and endless debates about “what works.” One of the loudest is Greg Ashman, deputy principal in Australia and champion of explicit teaching. His tweets and articles win applause from teachers who are tired of trendy distractions. But beneath the surface, something vital is being missed.

 

This two‑part series takes a plain‑English look at Ashman’s arguments — where he is right, where he is dangerously wrong, and why children keep failing to read despite all the research and rhetoric.

The Bopomofo Shadow Over Pinyin

 

Why China's Kids Are Shutting Down from Reading—and How to Fix It

As a dyslexia advocate who's spent over a decade battling misdiagnoses and flawed teaching methods, I've seen firsthand how "curious, intelligent kids" get labeled as broken when they're just confused. In English phonics, we add extraneous sounds like "buh" for B, turning bright minds into shutdown cases. Now, imagine that same error infiltrating Mandarin's gateway: Hanyu Pinyin. Across my recent posts, a pattern emerges—many Mainland China schools are teaching Pinyin not as the clean, syllable-based bridge it was designed to be, but corrupted by Bopomofo (Zhuyin Fuhao) initial sounds from Taiwan. This isn't just a phonetic hiccup; it's a literacy crisis misdiagnosed as dyslexia, affecting millions and stifling China's next generation of innovators.

The Core Problem: Extraneous Sounds That Don't Add Up

Why So Many Kids Struggle with Reading

                                                               

 

Today I viewed a YouTube video which said that reading is not natural. Read the rest below:

Why So Many Kids Struggle with Reading (And What Needs to Change). For decades, we’ve been teaching reading the wrong way—and the consequences are clear. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 40% of fourth graders in the U.S. are performing below basic reading levels. While some progress has been made, the reality is that many children are still falling through the cracks.

In this video, I explore:

Why do educators ask questions but not respond to questions asked?

 

I saw a post by Larissa Phillips @larissaphillip today 22^nd November 2025 and tweeted her.

Larissa:

Phonics-skeptics fuss over this sort of thing, but the majority of low-skilled readers who come to my adult literacy program can’t decode or encode even three-sound words that they don’t know. They can’t read words like rad or tot or zig-zag.

Couldn’t we all agree that it would be helpful to be able decode the 50-85% of English words that ARE phonetically predictable? Or do they propose just guessing on all of them?

I wish they’d talk to the people who are affected by this inability.

I can tell you exactly what they would say because I hear it all the time: “Why didn’t anyone teach me this?”

This was my response:

Evening News: Greg Ashman and the Silence of Educators

 

Preface to the Greg Ashman Series

This Evening News series examines the writings and claims of Greg Ashman, an educator whose views on literacy and reading instruction have gained attention in Australia and beyond. I have chosen to respond to his posts not because he is my adversary, but because he represents a wider pattern in education: confident assertions made without confronting the real reasons children fail to read.