I have been reading all the phonics discussions and all the threads about the reading levels achieved by everyone's various children, and I can't find anything that corresponds to my DD. Please please please help point me in the direction of the cause of her difficulties, so we can find the best response.
She will be 7 this summer, but because we are not in the UK, she has only had two years of reading teaching in English. She started reading in her other language this year. She does not have any problem compartmentalising her languages : she is fully bilingual and has been from birth, with excellent spoken fluency and vocabulary in both languages (deemed way above average by her teachers). However, as far as reading goes (in both languages) :
- She knows all the individual letter sounds, and can sound out and blend simple CVC type words ( but she pretty much needs to sound them out every time she sees them);
- She knows the sounds made by digraphs when pushed, but virtually always sounds out each sound separately, rather than seeing them as a unit, which slows down her recognition of the word and saps her energy - I am certain that she would have fallen down badly on this famous phonics test;
- She often reads words backwards or all jumbled up, even really simple words that she's seen hundreds of times - no/on, for/of, for/from, and/had, take/kate, new/w(h)en...
- She frequently misreads words that she has either recently read or could sound out quite easily because she just looks at the begining and guesses - sometimes this works and it looks like she's reading, but she's either guessing from context or recalling what one of her classmates read out in class (using a synonym of the actual workd on the page, for example);
- She LOVES stories, loves being read to, loves listening to books on CD, but can't get any pleasure out of reading to herself - too slow, too tiring, too frustrating...
- She works hard and is very persevering, it's not that she's not making an effort.
- Oh, and she's also very very smart - that's not just me saying it, several people have suggested she is 'gifted'. But how can you be gifted and still not able to learn to read? And her writing ability is suffering from her poor reading skills. She almost never finishes her work, not because she can't do it but just because her writing is so slow (and she can never remember to use any of the spelling rules she's learnt).
I've read so many threads saying that reading is actually quite easy and it makes me so down-hearted. Why is reading so hard for her????