Learning to read English more difficult

CAMBRIDGE, England, April 26 (UPI) -- Learning to read English, where there are inconsistencies in both reading and spelling, results in lower accuracy rates, finds a British study.

Children come to the task of learning to read with considerable expertise on spoken-word recognition and production and regardless of the language, children seem to develop an awareness of syllables first, followed by awareness of consonants before the vowel in a syllable and rime -- vowel and ending syllable sounds, according to Usha Claire Goswami, of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, at the University of Cambridge, England.

Children can read fairly accurately by the middle of first grade in consistent languages, like Greek, German, Italian and Spanish. Reading accuracy is about 70 percent in languages that have inconsistent reading or spelling, as is the case with Finnish, French or Portuguese.

However, reading in English, where there are inconsistencies in both reading and spelling, shows the lowest accuracy at about 40 percent.