The Paradox of Reach Without Amplification
My blog has been read more than 3.7 million times. Last month alone, nearly half a million readers visited, and thousands continue to read daily. Yet despite this reach, not a single teacher, researcher, or literacy advocate has shared my posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Substack. The silence is deafening.
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.
200,000 Defects or 26 Letters? A Twitter Debate on Literacy Reform
Setting the Stage
On March 11, 2024, a Twitter thread reignited a familiar argument:
“Kids are not dumb; the spelling system is. Research shows it delays learning to read by 2.5 years (Seymour, 2003).”
The claim: English orthography is riddled with “200,000 phono‑illogical errors” and only spelling reform can fix it.
Visit my book store at https://payhip.com/LuqmanMichel
While institutions resist reform and avoid clarity, individual voices tell a different story. Parents, teachers, and relatives who have used Teach Your Child to Read show what happens when confusion is replaced with structure: children regain confidence, families find solutions, and progress becomes visible.
Alanna Maurin (Australia)
Alanna Maurin is an accomplished teacher in Australia, a mother of four boys, and a master’s student in Reading and Literacy. In late 2020, she reached out about her youngest son, Louis, who was confused, emotional, and resistant to reading.
🔍 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.
How could a guy who could not read become an advisor to the US President?
Those with a vested interest have ensured that geniuses are flushed out of the school system as functional illiterates.
Only a genius could have conned the world into being a teacher for 17 years without knowing how to read.
You may listen to the YouTube video here.
Yesterday, I had a Zoom conversation with a wonderful lady from California who identifies as a Literacy Specialist. She expressed her confusion about the visual memorization of High-Frequency Words (HFWs). Coincidentally, this morning I came across a LinkedIn post by Nicola Lott from Canada discussing sight words and their varying interpretations. She noted, “sight word means different things to different people, creating a lot of buzz—and some confusion.”
In my book, I used the term “sight word” as it has been defined for decades. However, while proofreading two books for Dr. David Kilpatrick, I realized that sight words encompass any words we can recognize by sight.
Terms like Dolch Words, Fry Words, and Heart Words are categorized as High-Frequency Words.
Ethan Lynn, PhD:
Luqman Michel thanks for sharing. I’m curious—what exactly is the method you’ve used with the 80+ kids you’ve taught since 2004? Could you walk me through how you diagnose and then teach them to read?
Luqman Michel:
In Malaysia, I used to talk with kids who were sent to me for tuition. This is to ensure they can speak English well. All my students could speak at grade level or higher.
I then asked them to read the letter names to make sure they knew the letters. All of them do this with ease.
Julian Elliott:
What I mean by that is let's return to the original meaning of this term which is a severe and persistent problem with reading and we can use that to discuss or describe children.
So, the whole dyslexia debate is only about changing squiggles to language and that does not require high IQ.
The clip above is copied from Anna Stokke’s Tweet dated 28.1.2024. Anna is a math professor and has a podcast that will be useful for all those interested in Math. I have only listened in full to 2 of her podcasts and think it is one of the best podcasts I've heard.
I telephoned someone on some important matter and after that was settled he asked me a point-blank question:
The book – Teach Your Child to Read – was published only recently yet the testimonial is dated before the publication, please explain.
Those who have been following my blog will not have asked that question. Anyway:
I wrote more than 100 articles since 2010 disagreeing with the more than 35-year-old theory that phonological awareness deficit is the cause of dyslexia. That theory was debunked in 2017. You may read some of the articles in 2010 by Googling.
Here is a Tweet I read this morning and my comments.
Jason Kennedy | Stop Teaching & Design Learning! @letsquitteachin
Now that school's settling in, remember there are NO:
SPED kids, 504 kids, EIP kids, RTI kids, Tier kids, Low kids, Those kids, This kid or______ kids.
They are ALL kids who can learn at high levels. Treat them that way.
The second you slap a label on them, you treat them otherwise.
In 12 hours he had more than 5,000 views and 30 re-posts.
I replied to his Tweet and I do not expect a response as he definitely does not know why there are intelligent kids who are unable to read. The ego of the Westerners prevents them from asking for an explanation.
Yesterday, I read a post at LINK titled:
‘Should the parents of dyslexic learners worry about teacher shortages in California?’
The website says: Unlocking learning challenges in California. Dive into the debate around teacher shortages and their impact on students, especially those with dyslexia.
Here are a few extracts from the article which made me comment. As usual, my comment was removed. I do not know why comments that may be helpful are removed but this has occurred ever since 2010 when I started blogging.
I have said for many years that one of the reasons why many kids shut down/ disengage from learning to read is due to teaching the sounds represented by letters wrongly. A majority of these kids are wrongly classified as dyslexic.
Many educators have disagreed with me.
Let us examine the reason for the different perspectives.
In the image above, some people can only see the young lady and some can see only the old woman. Very few can see both the young and old.
If you see a situation from one angle only, you see very little of it. Besides, while you may see a situation from one angle, others will see it from another.
Here are tweets between me and one guy called Kareem J. Weaver.
