Blurb:

In this chapter the author looks at the plausible evidence that children in English-speaking countries take substantially longer to learn to read than children do elsewhere (Seymour et al. 2003; Thorsdad 1991; Oney and Goldman 1984; Landerl et al. 1997), arguing that these studies strongly suggest that English spelling, which is much less orderly than that of most European languages, seriously interferes with the ability of English-speaking children to learn to read.