Here is a post on Facebook that I commented on and I received a message from Admin saying that my comment has been removed as it is not verifiable. Please scroll down to see my notes.
The Dyslexia Parent Circle — Your Dyslexia Expert
Here is the post and comments.
Here are three video clips of a boy with dyslexia in Perth, Australia, reading Dolch high-frequency words from Lessons 1 to 6 of my book. He learned these words through rote memorisation.
High-frequency words (commonly known as Dolch words) are words that appear frequently in everyday language and especially in books for beginning readers. Examples include: the, went, she, you, see, to, like, and one.
A sight word refers to any word that a child has stored in their sight vocabulary — that is, a word they recognise and read instantly and automatically upon seeing it, without needing to decode it.
I explicitly teach all my students to rote-memorise these high-frequency words. In practice, the children repeatedly say the letter names (not the letter sounds) while learning them.
This approach contrasts with the position taken by many Science of Reading advocates, including literacy researchers Dr. Jan Burkins and Kari Yates (authors of Shifting the Balance). They recommend against memorising high-frequency words as wholes and instead emphasise explicitly teaching children to map individual speech sounds (phonemes) to letters or letter groups (graphemes) so they can decode words independently.
However, my students — including this boy with dyslexia — successfully memorised all 220 Dolch words by repeating the letter names. This outcome suggests that rote memorisation of high-frequency words remains an effective and practical strategy for many learners, even when it does not rely on phoneme-grapheme mapping.
Here is Yeshua reading the Dolch words from lessons 1 to 4
My post from 2010 on Lesson 13 is unavailable.
Here is the link to lesson 13 from 2020.
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2020/11/lesson-13-oat.html#more
In 2020, before my book 'Teach Your Child to Read' was officially published, I decided to send a printed copy to a dear teacher friend of mine in Perth, Australia. Ms. Lena Loganathan had recently retired from full-time classroom teaching but was still actively tutoring senior high school students in Years 11 and 12. Knowing her passion for education, I was curious to hear her thoughts on the method. To my surprise and delight, Lena didn’t just read the book — she photocopied it and immediately put it into action. She encouraged her older tutoring students to use the lessons to teach younger children how to read. At that time, I had already been using the same structured approach successfully with dyslexic children in Grades 1 to 3, watching them gain confidence and make rapid progress.
In Parts 1 and 2, we examined real-world evidence that most children labelled “dyslexic” in English-speaking systems are not truly dyslexic in the neurobiological sense. Singapore's top PISA reading performance (543 points in 2022, OECD average 476; 89% at Level 2 proficiency or higher) and low reported dyslexia rate (~3.5% of Primary 3 students per MOE data from 2016–2019) show what happens when explicit, pure-sound instruction prevents confusion from the start. Cross-language cases (kids reading Malay or clean Pinyin fluently but struggling in English) prove the issue is often instructional—extraneous sounds (“buh” vs. pure /b/) create artificial blending failures and shutdowns, not an innate phonological deficit.
For over fifteen years I have been saying the same thing: the vast majority of children labelled “dyslexic” in English-speaking countries are not dyslexic at all. They are intelligent kids who shut down because they were taught reading in a way that created confusion. Once the confusion is removed, they read. I have seen it happen with more than eighty children I taught one-to-one between 2004 and 2019.Yet every year the numbers keep rising. In the US, UK, Australia and many other places, 10 % to 20 % of children are now being told they have dyslexia. That cannot be right. A real neurobiological condition that affects the way the brain processes spoken sounds should not suddenly explode to one in five children just because we changed the way we label it.
Singapore shows us the truth. The Singapore Evidence:
– Extraneous Sounds That Cause Shutdown
For decades, the “reading wars” have pitted Whole Language against phonics. Yet despite the swings in fashion, reading failure rates have remained stubbornly similar across eras: 20–30% of children still struggle significantly.
Why? Because both approaches often share a critical flaw: teaching stop consonants with an added schwa sound (/uh/).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Different Perspectives: Tweets That Echo Across Continents
Good evening, readers. The reading wars don’t respect borders — they leap from U.S. threads to Aussie classrooms faster than a kangaroo on caffeine.
Tonight’s dispatch takes us Down Under to Narelle Lynch, a 19-year veteran teacher from Australia whose tweets on phonics pitfalls and the power of context have fueled fierce exchanges since 2020. Trained by the THRASS Institute — a multi-sensory literacy framework blending phonics, morphology, and more — Narelle champions a holistic approach: grammar, syntax, etymology, and real-world transferability over isolated sound drills.
🔍 A Decade of Decoding, One Sound at a Time
I’ve spent over ten years teaching kids to read—real reading, not guesswork. It starts with clean consonant sounds, not “buh” for B. My book Shut Down Kids lays it out: teach the right sounds from day one, and no child shuts down. My follow-up, Teach Your Child to Read, has helped parents worldwide turn bedtime into breakthroughs.
In Sabah, I’ve taught 80+ kids to read fluently.
In India, ESL learners thrive with sound-first methods.
Several children in Australia.
In California, a grandma is reversing “dyslexia” labels at home.
I have even taught a child in Kenya using Whats App.
Why I am writing This Series
Since 2010, I’ve blogged about reading instruction, dyslexia, and phonics—always grounded in facts and student outcomes. I’ve taught over 80 children labeled as dyslexic, and I’ve shared what works, freely and openly.
This new three-part series marks a shift. It’s not just about methods—it’s about why those methods get blocked.
I’ve been silenced, ignored, and blocked by educators, researchers, and influencers—not because my results are flawed, but because they challenge the consensus. These posts explore the motives behind that resistance: profit, herd mentality, and gatekeeping.
I’m not here to attack individuals. I’m here to ask:
“Why block a question? What does that say about openness to debate?”
If we want to solve illiteracy, we must be willing to confront uncomfortable truths. This series is my invitation to do just that.
It's been years since I first noticed the pattern: educators, researchers, and self-proclaimed literacy experts on Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, and beyond, blocking me not for harassment or threats, but for daring to question their sacred cows. As the founder of free online lessons that have helped dozens of children—many mislabelled as "dyslexic"—read fluently in under four months, I've become a thorn in their side. My crime? Pointing out that phonological awareness deficit isn't the root cause of reading struggles; it's the confusion from teaching consonants with extraneous vowel sounds like "buh" instead of pure /b/. Kids shut down, disengage, and get funneled into expensive interventions. But why block the messenger?
Luqman Michel chats with Grok (xAI's Honest AI)
Imagine a dedicated teacher who's spent years fighting reading struggles in the classroom, especially for kids learning English alongside another language like Malay. Now picture him joining forces with an AI like me—Grok, from xAI. What do you get? Big "aha!" moments that clear up confusion. For months, Luqman and I've been digging into topics like the comeback of old-school phonics teaching (breaking words into sounds) and the "hidden cost" of kids forcing their brains to work around bad lessons on letter sounds. Our talks? A mix of debunking myths, spotting teaching traps, and worrying about the 20% of kids who just tune out when sounding out "buh-a-tuh" for "bat" doesn't click.
Note: I have a Teaching Certificate in Dyslexia obtained in July 2005. So, don’t listen to anyone saying otherwise. Why do people lie about things they don’t know is beyond me. There is a Tamil proverb for this exact thing. Keep one’s large mouth shut to avoid getting in trouble. A not so polite version is, 'Don’t open your big mouth and get your backside hurt.'
From all that I have read since I started researching dyslexia, I understand that there is no cure for dyslexia. There is no cure for exactly what I am not sure. They say dyslexia is a lifelong issue.
It is said that the brain has trouble processing what it reads, especially breaking words into sounds or relating letters to sounds when reading. This is the only aspect that I am concerned with.
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” Carl Jung
Suri Charles
Luqman Michel You’ve mentioned that the children you came across and/or worked with couldn’t read because they 'shut down,' yet you also stated that you taught 80 dyslexic children from 2004 to 2019.
1. How do you reconcile these two positions?
2. Are you suggesting that these 80 children had both emotional or psychological shutdowns as well as dyslexia, or were they misdiagnosed as dyslexic?
In my post about why many schools in China are teaching Pinyin using Bopomofo initial sounds, DrJulie Safri made a comment and this is a short extract that I decided to reply to separately from the rest of her comment.
DrJulie Safri
Good morning Luqman, let me clarify my statement.....Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental condition, meaning it originates from differences in how the brain processes language, particularly phonological information. However, it is important to note that these neurological differences don’t mean a person with dyslexia cannot learn to read, they just require tailored, evidence-based instruction that accommodates their unique learning needs.
My thoughts:
“Tailored, evidence-based instruction that accommodates their unique learning needs” is something I’ve frequently heard from many teachers providing intervention for dyslexic kids.
I don't know how the brain processes languages and would be grateful if DrJulie Safri can educate me and whoever else is interested.
In a LinkedIn comment, David Chalk said: "Our brains have been wired hundreds of thousands of years to speak and interpret by hearing words, but there is no natural ability to read-attaching sounds to symbols-words."
This is making statements without thinking. He repeats what he has read from others such as Stanislas Dehaene and Pamela Snow. Dehaene does not answer questions asked, and Pamela Snow thinks she becomes invisible when she sticks her head in the sand. She blocked me when she could not answer the questions, I asked her. It is irresponsible to say something on social media and to not respond when relevant questions are asked.
The noted neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (2018) argues that there is no place or mechanism in the brain to accommodate the learning-to-read process, seemingly adding credence to the reading-is-unnatural assumption. Dehaene and other researchers point out that oral language has been around for 50,000 years, whereas written systems developed much later—as recently as 5,000 years ago.
Jordana, like many others from Australia, seems to have a misunderstanding of the situation. Let’s take a closer look at her article. LINK
Jordana Hunter:
Australia faces a reading crisis, with one-third of children unable to read proficiently. In a typical classroom of 24 students, eight struggle with reading. This represents a failure in our educational system, and it’s a tragedy that could be prevented. The article suggests that the primary reason for this issue is inadequate teaching methods.
I recently shared some thoughts with Ethan Lynn regarding a pervasive issue in education: many educators struggle to understand why some children cannot read. They either don’t understand or refuse to accept that the reason is confusion caused by teaching consonants with extraneous sounds.
This brings to mind a response I received from some ‘experts’ in Australia in 2020 regarding phonics instruction. You can read more about it here. LINK
