Despite the new research, the intervention a child with dyslexia
requires is still educational, not medical. "We've learned that
children with dyslexia require direct, explicit instruction in
what we call the alphabet principle," says Berninger, who heads
the treatment project. "And we've learned that there is an
optimum way of delivering this instruction that emphasizes the
connections between oral and written language." Briefly stated,
the alphabet principle means that there is a systematic
connection between particular sounds and letters or letter
groups. Because all children come to school having mastered an
oral language, reading and writing is a matter of translating
what is basically auditory into a visual medium. This is
phonics, but with two additions. First, it is not enough to
teach the sounds of individual letters. In English, many of the
basic sounds are formed by two-letter groups, so children
learning to read need to learn these groups as units. And
second, phonics is often taught through the u