Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

of the rules that govern these. In order to become independent readers who can tackle
unfamiliar words, they are likely to need more rather than less intensive instruction in
phonics. In consequence, it would seem irrational to provide intervention for dyslexic
children in the form of Reading Recovery, in which the teaching of phonics is less than
systematic and which enables only a rather small proportion of children taught by this
method to tackle unfamiliar words – i.e. to have mastered phonics and thus to have
become independent readers – by the end of Key Stage 1. Indeed, analysis shows that
little credence can be attached to Douëtil’s assertion that, by receiving Reading
Recovery, “…these children have learned how to overcome the effects of dyslexia”. The
conclusion must therefore be that Reading Recovery is unlikely to be an effective
intervention for dyslexia.
In fairness, it must be added that few of the phonics-based interventions analysed in
chapter 3 have been evaluated specifically with children who have dyslexia either. Those
schemes therefore also need to be researched more rigorously. However, those schemes
do provide evidence suggesting that, on balance, phonics-based programmes are more
likely to benefit children with dyslexia because they are designed to tackle the central
phonological problem.
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