Australian schools failing to teach children to read, expert warns

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Australian schools failing to teach children to read, expert warns

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-18/h ... 07265926=1
Australian schools failing to teach children to read, expert warns

By Andrea Mayes

Australian schools are failing to teach enough children to read and an increasing reliance on digital screens is only worsening the problem, a US expert in reading and dyslexia is warning.

Maryanne Wolf, director of the Centre for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, said there had been an alarming decrease in reading standards in recent years, with up to a third of the population classified as functionally illiterate.

Yet most teachers were ill-equipped to teach reading, especially to children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with learning difficulties, she said.

Dr Wolf said extensive research had proved the importance of teaching phonics to learn to decode words, yet many schools put too little emphasis the foundations of reading and explicit instruction.
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