In the intense global debate surrounding the "Science of Reading," a single narrative has taken root: The Phonological Deficit Hypothesis. Mainstream reading experts argue that an inherent Phonological Awareness Deficit (PAD) is the primary neurobiological cause of dyslexia. If a child cannot blend sounds to read words, the diagnosis almost default-points to a broken internal phonological processor.
But what happens when we look outside the English-speaking world?
We often wonder why so many children—especially those diagnosed with dyslexia—struggle for years to acquire basic literacy. The common consensus blamed the child's brain, assuming they had a fundamental deficit in phonological processing.
But my decades of teaching experience, combined with an extraordinary case of a single bilingual child, proved a completely different reality: Children aren't failing to learn; they are shutting down because of how they are taught.
Specifically, they are shutting down because teachers around the world are unknowingly sabotaging them with extraneous sounds.
My journey into literacy advocacy began not as a trained teacher, but as a curious observer. I wanted to understand why so many bright children struggled to read in English, even though they could read fluently in Malay and Pinyin. That question drove me to teach from 2004 to 2010, and through those years I discovered something crucial: the widely accepted explanation—that dyslexia is caused by a phonological awareness deficit—was simply not true. All of my students could read in other languages; their difficulty was specific to English.
In Response to Dr. Sam Bommarito's recent post. Link.
This post is in response to a recent post by Dr. Sam. I agree with his observation about how scientists often enter arguments. Years ago, he interviewed me. It was not a debate — he asked questions, and I answered them. Yet the interview was never aired. Was it because he could not accept my discovery?
Get a copy of Teach your Child to Read a complete programme for only $16. (LINK)
For years I have argued that the human brain has an innate capacity for reading, just as it does for spoken language. The difference is not in the brain’s ability, but in the quality of input it receives.
Think of it this way: A Malaysian child will not speak Japanese without hearing Japanese. The capacity is innate; the specific language is learned through exposure. Reading works the same way. The brain is pre-wired with potential (as shown by newborn connectivity to the future visual word form area), but it needs accurate, consistent print and sound input to wire the connections efficiently.
In 2004, I began teaching a bright young child to read. Like many educators at the time, I turned to the internet for guidance and encountered countless articles claiming that the primary cause of dyslexia was a phonological awareness deficit. This idea—that children with dyslexia struggle mainly because they can't properly perceive or manipulate the sounds in spoken language—dominated the conversation.
The title is the question posed by a retired SPED teacher on Twitter.
My Answer After Teaching 80+ Smart Kids Who Couldn’t Read"
@SciAdapt, Spot on! The big picture is just a series of small steps—and when we teach those steps right, the rest often falls into place. I’m an accountant, not a trained teacher. Years ago, I started working with a bright boy who had finished kindergarten + Grade 1 but still couldn’t read a single sentence in English. I knew nothing about phonics, so I grabbed a set of Peter and Jane books. I read a sentence, he repeated it after me. We did this for six months until he could read on his own. Then we flipped it—he read while I helped only on tricky words. That success made me curious.
For many bright, logical children—especially those labeled dyslexic—learning to read English can trigger a sudden mental shutdown. They sit in class, eyes open, but their minds check out. They hear the teacher but stop listening. What was once eager curiosity turns into blank resistance. This disengagement isn't laziness, defiance, or low intelligence. It's a logical mind protecting itself from what it perceives as nonsense.
In Part 1, we saw how Singapore's consistent top performance in PISA reading (543 points in 2022, well above the OECD average of 476, with 89% of students at proficiency Level 2 or higher) aligns with a low reported dyslexia rate (~3.5% of Primary 3 students per MOE data from 2016–2019). Their explicit, systematic early instruction—pure sounds from the start, no extraneous vowels on consonants—prevents most confusion and shutdowns that lead to labels elsewhere.
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.
Here is a comment I made this morning, on a FB post by Dyslexia Inspired.
This resonates deeply with views I've been expressing since 2010. Back in 2004, when I began investigating why many intelligent children could fluently read in Malay and Pinyin (Hanyu Pinyin) but struggled with English, the prevailing explanation was a phonological awareness deficit as the root cause of dyslexia.
I wrote extensively on social media challenging that theory, arguing it couldn't hold because these same children demonstrated strong phonological skills in more consistent orthographies like Malay and Pinyin.
That dominant theory faced significant scrutiny and was largely reframed or debunked around 2017, with emerging research highlighting its limitations.
Now, it feels like the same old idea is being repackaged with new terminology—what I'd call putting fresh lipstick on the same pig.
For more on my early writings, Google search "phonological awareness luqman michel"
Here are comments on the post:
The dominant view, repeated endlessly in Western research, is that dyslexia is a neurobiological phonological processing deficit. But in 2010, I began questioning this after teaching children who struggled severely with English yet read fluently in transparent orthographies like Malay and Pinyin.
If a child truly has a phonological deficit, shouldn’t it impair reading in any alphabetic system? Yet these same children decoded Malay and Pinyin effortlessly.
Visit my book store at https://payhip.com/LuqmanMichel
Lipstick on the Pig — Recycling Narratives While Illiteracy Persists
Opening Challenge
For decades, literacy rates have stagnated. Every few years, a new theory is paraded as the solution. Yet children continue to leave school as functional illiterates. The question is unavoidable: Is anyone truly interested in reducing illiteracy, or only in preserving their narratives?
The answer matters, because every recycled theory cost children their chance at literacy. Each decade of avoidance is another generation lost.
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?
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 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.
Please share my book 'with parents who have kids who can't read. https://payhip.com/b/ZV01D
For years, I’ve taught children labeled as “dyslexic” who couldn’t read a single sentence in English—yet could read fluently in Malay and pinyin. That contradiction sparked my journey. What I discovered was simple, powerful, and deeply misunderstood: these children weren’t dyslexic. They were confused.
For over a decade, starting in 2010, I challenged the prevailing 50-year-old theory that phonological awareness deficits cause dyslexia. Through more than 100 social media comments and articles, I argued against this consensus—only to face widespread rejection. Educators dismissed my views, and many blocked me outright. The irony? In an era of information overload, critical thinking seemed scarce.
Get a copy of my PDF I uploaded at https://payhip.com/b/ZV01D.
I need every cent I can get to fund my legal case against Vistana Heights Developers.
You may donate directly to my Paypal account at luqmanmichel@gmail.com
A Sequel to My Morning Post on Dr. Bommarito
This morning, I unpacked the polite pivot of centrists like Dr. Sam Bommarito – that warm nod to innovation without the follow-through that could actually change lives. If you haven't read it yet, head over here for the full story of our 2021 Zoom chat, his kind email a year later calling my work "a great gift to literacy," and why even bridge-builders sometimes leave the bridge half-built.
