The education world has been and still is locked in a fierce debate. On one side, mainstream cognitive neuroscience pushes a purely phonocentric model, claiming that explicit phonology is the only valid path to literacy. On the other side, older philosophies relied heavily on visual guessing.
Both sides miss the operational reality of how a struggling child actually learns to read.
For decades, the reading world has been locked in debate over high-frequency words (often called “sight words” or Dolch words). Should children rote-memorize them, or is memorization “nonsense” that must be avoided in favor of pure phonics and orthographic mapping?
As someone who has worked with over 80 children labeled “dyslexic,” I’ve seen what actually works. These kids struggled to read in English but had no trouble reading in Malay (a transparent orthography) or Pinyin. My method—systematic phonics combined with deliberate memorization of all Dolch high-frequency words—produced strong results. The children learned the words without difficulty, gained confidence quickly, and progressed in reading.
The Pendulum Swing in Reading Instruction
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?
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
Different Perspectives on Teaching Reading: Dolch Word Memorisation (High-Frequency Words)
In my recent Facebook discussions with educators Kylie Hoey and Barbara Schubert, the topic of rote memorisation of Dolch words came up. They expressed concerns that memorising words is inefficient, hit-and-miss, or creates bad habits compared to pure decoding. Kylie emphasised teaching words like “with,” “there,” and “one” through explicit decoding and etymology, while Barbara noted that comprehension doesn’t simply follow decoding.
Here are extracts from a Facebook comment on a post I read today.
Emma Hartnell-Baker
It’s difficult as most have poor phonemic awareness and phonological working memory.
My thoughts:
Here they go again. They teach the wrong sounds of letters and then claim that kids have poor phonemic awareness. Read one of many posts on this at: LINK
As a parent, teacher, or caregiver of a child with dyslexia, you might notice challenges in reading comprehension that seem daunting at first. But the good news is that these issues are often not inherent to dyslexia itself—instead, they're frequently tied to factors like fluency, vocabulary gaps, and a lack of interest or background knowledge.
A Balanced Approach to Teaching Reading to Dyslexic Students
In a recent LinkedIn post, reading consultant Brian Vieira argued strongly against sight word or whole word instruction, calling it the “worst way” to teach reading. He emphasized the superiority of phonics-based methods, pointing to the vast number of English words, the finite set of speech sounds, and scientific evidence favoring sound processing over memorization.
In my last post, I argued that most children who struggle with reading are not “disabled” in the clinical sense, but rather victims of poor or confusing teaching. When the foundations are muddled—wrong sounds, distorted input, or unclear strategies—many children disengage, and once that shut-down happens, remediation becomes far harder.
Peter’s thread paints English spelling as chaotic — with “200,000 phono-illogical errors” supposedly blocking children from learning to read. But how many of those words does a Grade 1 child actually face?
The Reality in Grade 1
By the end of Grade 1, most children read simple books containing just 300–500 unique words. These are mostly high-frequency and basic decodable words like:
In Part 2, I explained that clarity in instruction—the correct sounds of letters, taught step by step—is the Grail. It prevents confusion and keeps children from shutting down. But even with clarity, some children still struggle. Why?
Because the human mind is like the human egg. Once an idea has entered, it is difficult for a new one to penetrate. This is especially true for curious, intelligent children. They absorb early input eagerly, and when that input is wrong, it embeds itself deeply. Later correction often bounces off. These are the very children who shut down—not because they lack ability, but because their early learning was contaminated.
Recently, since I am more or less done with Vistana Heights issues, I decided to chat with AI. The problem with AI is, it can’t think. It can regurgitate what it has read. The good thing is, unlike the PhDs I have discussed with over the years, it does not stonewall me. Here is one of my first discussions with AI.
Grok 4 said:
It's spot-on with how experts frame it: treat Dolch words not as pure "sight" memorization (which can backfire for analytical kids), but as phonics-friendly chunks—sound out the decodable parts ("th-en" or "wh-ere"), practice in phrases from a simple story, and repeat with games to make it stick without frustration.
Here is a post by the Literacy Architects. On their website, they boast that they promote the use of evidence-based literacy routines in grades PreK-12.
Traditionally, high-frequency and irregular words have been taught through memorization, a method that often falls short of promoting genuine literacy skills.
My comment:
What memorisation are they talking about? Is it the same memorisation method mentioned by the Dyslexia Proponents? Many of the Dyslexia Proponents talk about visual memorisation which is absolute nonsense. LINK and LINK.
Where did these teachers learn to teach kids this way of memorisation is beyond me?
Many educators such as Dr. Sam Bommarito have asked me as to why kids should memorise the 220 Dolch words. My retort to that question was ‘Why not!’
The same question is repeated by many other 'educators'. LINK.
The same educators insist that phonics does not work with children because many words are not phonetic.
However, my suggestion that these non-phonetic words may be memorised is detested by these educators.
The following are extracts from a YouTube video by Karen Quinn, Co-Founder - www.TestingMom.com interviewing Marion Blank from Columbia University New York City, United States. LINK
Kindergartens today are asking parents to teach phonics lessons at home with their children to help them label the sounds and so that is generally very destructive and not constructive and it puts a lot of pressure on the children those who can do it don’t need it and those who can’t do it just fail. It is a lose-lose situation as opposed to a win-win. (Marion Blank)
This is the kind of disinformation that misleads many parents and teachers who accept such nonsense from so-called educators.
Marion Blank is a psychologist known for her work on language, both spoken and written. The following is an extract from her article. LINK
Children with reading difficulties struggle with automaticity. Yet no attempts are made to teach them the skill because of the misguided notion that it can be developed only after extensive phonics practice. Overlearning to Automaticity (OtA) is the key to less-skilled children mastering reading. It requires multiple exposures to a word: typically, 20 to 30 exposures on each of about 200 carefully selected words from both the content and non-content domains.
About 60 percent of the words on any page are “non-content words”—words like the, so, what etc. that cannot be decoded by sounding out.
This is a continuation of the misleading article dated 26.9.2023 by Marion Blank
Breaking phonics into its components lays bare its shortcomings. First, in the initial instruction, months are spent teaching children how to decode a minute set of simple, three-letter words like man, cat and bus that can be sounded out. Those words bear little resemblance to the content of any book, leaving children unprepared for actual reading.
What an exaggeration that is! Do we need to spend months to decode a minute set of simple three-letter words? It could be true if this woman is talking about teaching 5 minutes a week or so.
About 60 percent of the words on any page are “non-content words”—words like the, so and what that cannot be decoded by sounding out. The result is that children have no solid tools for dealing with the most frequent words they see on every page.
In 2019, I dispatched a few copies of my book to a teacher in Australia and she got a few of her friends to teach kids to read. Unfortunately, Covid 19 prevented my project from being continued.
The following is a video of a dyslexic kid who was taught to read. This video shows him reading the Dolch words from the first 4 chapters of my book.
In 2019, I dispatched a few books to a teacher in Perth. She and a few teacher's helpers decided to teach using my books to see its effectiveness in teaching kids to read. Here is the video of one of her helpers who taught a 7 year old dyslexic child to read.
Unfortunately we were unable to continue due to Covid 19. My planned trip to Perth in early 2020 was cancelled.
The first video is of the kid learning to read with pictures to help him to read.
Dolch (High Frequency) words
My upcoming book teaches phonics along with 8 (Dolch words) called sight words to be memorised in each lesson.
The Dolch words comprise about 50 to 70 percent of the words in most books. These are High-Frequency words such as on, the, with, here, to, no, at, etc.
In order to achieve reading fluency it is best to get your student to memorise these words by rote memory.
Once a child knows this list of words, it makes reading much easier because the child can then focus his attention on the remaining words.
