Children's Developing Concepts of Spoken and Written Language

The child with real reading disability . . . may indeed have learnt that printed words have some relation to spoken words; and, with a few simple words, he has memorized the spoken word that corresponds to a particular shape. But he does not seem to understand why; it might be quite an arbitrary association. He appears hopelessly uncertain and confused as to why certain successions of printed letters should correspond to certain phonetic sounds in words.