The Vieira’s insight in waiting for reading

Abstract

This article intends to stimulate reflection about the importance of early diagnosis and intervention on reading disorders that appear during reading instruction time from kindergarten up to the second grade. Some people still claim we should wait for the “awakening of reading skills” in each child, without accelerating his/her natural rhythm. We tried to emphasize here the differences between children who do not succeed in their initial process of acquiring reading and writing skills due to emotional and socio-cultural causes from other children who will only show their learning difficulties at the moment of learning how to read and write. We highlight the importance of a differentiated diagnosis between reading difficulties and reading disorders, because each of these aspects corresponds to a different therapeutic approach, concerning form, time, goals and working procedures. Reading is the link between language and learning, and we can only expect spontaneous “awakening of reading skills” when we are sure that the young reader has the necessary cognitive structures.