A unified approach to teach reading, spelling and phonics, and intensive instruction at an early age for struggling learners is the best way to improve students' reading abilities, an American academic said this week.
Carolyn Denton, an associate professor in the paediatrics department at the University of Texas Health Science Centre in Houston, said reading instruction needed to be 'very explicit so that students are not left to infer the system of how the English language works in print but are directly taught how to decode'.
In a lecture at Chinese University's department of educational psychology yesterday, Dr Denton outlined the latest US research into reading difficulties and described a model being implemented in US schools.
Dr Denton, also with the university's Children's Learning Institute, said repeated studies had shown the most effective way of teaching children to read was by using phonics.
She said a systematic, direct approach while giving children the opportunity to apply what they were learning was the most effective way to teach reading.
Dr Denton said most schools in the US were implementing an intervention model in which students who showed signs of having difficulties learning to read received 'several tiers of intervention'.