There is a developmental aspect to learning to read, which needs to be kept in mind when teaching reading skills ((Goswami, 1994) Smith, Patricia J.). This is especially important when working with children who have learning disabilities. Children without learning disabilities seem to be able to pick up the skills with enough exposure, but they still benefit from phonics instruction, such as spelling rules to improve their knowledge of them.
According to Lewkowicz (1980) “…children should be familiarized with speech sounds in isolation before they attempt to detect sounds within words.” It can’t be assumed that children automatically know that words are made of individual sounds.
Without the proper intervention, at the proper time, there are many older individuals who still think the word “cat” is a single sound instead of \c\ \a\ \t\. These individuals have a difficult time with school work and vocational literature because they were not caught in the most important time developmentally for learning to read (K-2).
It is vitally important that teachers keep an eye for students who struggle with the developmental stages of learning to read. If they aren’t progressing forward, then intervention should be provided rather than taking on an attitude of “let’s see if they catch up.” Valuable time is lost and damage is done.