Difficulties in learning to read: where do they come from and what could be done?

Ziegler, J.

Twenty to forty percent of primary school children show quite serious difficulties in understanding a written text (see international comparisons, such as PISA). Children with developmental dyslexia are only a small subgroup of those who experience difficulties in learning-to-read. The causes of reading difficulties are multiple. It is commonly agreed that early screening and within-school interventions for at-risk children are crucial. Children come to the task of learning-to-read with quite some variability in component skills, such as phonological awareness, vocabulary, attention, morphosyntactic knowledge. Efficient interventions need to take into account these differences. ?One-size-fits-all? solutions do not seem to work. In this talk, I will review what is known about the deficits in component skills that cause reading difficulties and what could be done to prevent them.