Helping Students With Dyslexia Read Long Words: Using Syllables and Morphemes

Learning to read English is more difficult than in most other alphabetic languages. It sometimes seems there are not reliable rules for linking letters with sounds. Teaching students all of the letter patterns they may find in texts is no simple task. Students struggle processing the sounds in words, so even words with simple spellings are difficult. Words with complex letter patterns place an even greater burden on their memory systems and make accurate reading even harder. As a result, students with dyslexia often read slowly and guess at difficult words. The good news is that English has many "exemplary regularities." Many consonants are pronounced as expected in almost all words. Teachers can help students by teaching them these regularities one by one, slowly expanding students' understanding of the sound-spelling system. Teachers sometimes refer to this as "the Treasure Hunt," a playful way of describing how teachers introduce the complexities gradually. The trick of the game is that the complexities (like each clue) were always there; teachers just begin with the simplest consistent patterns and hide the rest until students are ready to learn them. In this article, the authors discuss the English spelling system, dyslexia, and polysyllabic words. They then provide strategies to improve polysyllabic word reading.