Most children begin learning to read by listening to how speech sounds make up words and by connecting those sounds to alphabet letters. Then they learn how to combine those sounds into words and can eventually, instantly recognise words that they are familiar with.
 
Reading can be compared to riding a bicycle as it also requires doing many things at once while relying on precise timing. With practice, most readers will slowly learn to read words automatically so that they can focus their energies on understanding the meaning and remembering what they have just read.
 
Kids with dyslexia, however have problems with phonics. Research has shown that dyslexia occurs because of a subtle problem with information processing, especially in the language region of the brain. This results in reading not being automatic and instead remains slow and laboured.  A child who suffers with these first steps in reading will struggle to comprehend and become easily frustrated.
 
People commonly assume that dyslexia is when letters or words appear reversed, i.e. “was” is seen as “saw” and while this can be a part of dyslexia, reversals are common among young children and not just kids with dyslexia.  The main problem for kids with dyslexia is in phonetic awareness, phonics and rapid word recognition.

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