Professor blames the English language for dyslexia figures

BRITISH children struggle more with dyslexia because the English language does not look as it sounds, an Oxford professor told an audience at the Hay Festival.

Reported rates of the learning difficulty that primarily affects accurate and fluent reading and spelling are higher in Britain because the English language does not have a symbol for every sound, Professor Margaret J Snowling told the audience in Hay-on-wye, Wales.

“We looked at children who were learning to read in English compared to Spanish and Czech, which in comparison to English are much more regular and much more consistent in the way that the letters and sounds relate.”

The study found Czech and Spanish children learnt to read far quicker than English children. She told the crowd that the results from the Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages study were “all the more striking when we recall that in England we teach children to read when they’re rising five and some 12 months later in the Czech Republic and Spain.”

According to the British Dyslexia Association, 10 per cent of the UK population is dyslexic compared with 3.6 per cent in Spain and 4.8 per cent in France.

Speaking after the event Prof Snowling said that because other European languages are easier to learn, dyslexia is often harder to detect, and that, while we have regular words such as “cat” and “greenhouse”, we also have irregular words like “school”, “biscuit” and “broad” which should be pronounced like road.

This makes it more difficult for children with the learning difficulty, she said.