Teaching that last quarter to read involves hard work. Natural readers aren't harmed by systematic phonics instruction if allowed to race through the lessons at their own pace. Since a quarter of the pupils are going to learn reading naturally and another quarter learn a bit from the practice, game-oriented programs give the appearance of good results. They can also produce some spectacular failures, and no game program will teach everyone to read. The bottom line is that English is a 90 percent plus phonetic language, and systematic phonics is the one instruction method that works with virtually all pupils.
Most children can learn to read when they are four years old if properly instructed and motivated.
The vast majority can learn at age five. U.S. schools, at one time, expected essentially all children to be able to read at the end of first grade, which is to say age six. After age six, there's no particular advantage to being older, and if a child hasn't learned to read by age eight he's likely to be in real trouble for the rest of his life. Fortunately, children can learn to read at any age. Some of Roberta's students learned at age 14.