Why is it so difficult for some children (as well as adults) to learn to read?

One big reason is that the English language actually stems from several other languages.  Each language has its own pronunciation and spelling rules, so children have to learn more than one sound for many letters.  Think about the letters ‘ch’.  What sound does it make in the word 'chip'?  What sound does it make in the word 'chord'?  What sound does it make in the word ‘charade’? These two letters, when put together, make different sounds because ‘chip’, ‘chord’, and ‘charade’ originate from three different languages. 

The most basic words in our language stem from Anglo-Saxon.  These consist of many of our everyday words (baby, chip, dog), as well as words that are considered sight words ('said', 'what', 'the', etc).  Many sight words do not sound the way they are spelled, and they are in even the most basic picture books, so it is important for children to be able to read and spell these words at an early age.  Compound words, such as 'flashlight' and 'firefly', are also Anglo-Saxon.

A large chunk of our language originates from Latin.  These consist mainly of words that have prefixes, roots, and suffixes, such as 'attractive' ('at' is the prefix, meaning 'to', 'toward', 'tract' is the root, meaning 'to pull', and 'ive' is the suffix, meaning 'causing', 'making').  In essence, the word ‘attractive’ means ‘causing to pull toward’.  ‘Chord’, mentioned in my above example, is also Latin.

Yet another language that we get some of our English words from is Greek.  Many of our math and science words are Greek, such as ‘photosynthesis’ and ‘graph’ (‘ph’ is a Greek grapheme).

Then there are the languages that we "dip" from.  Some of our words, such as musical terms, are Italian.  Some other words are borrowed from French (‘charade’) and Spanish.  See below:

Getting a child to edit his work can be tough, especially if he is a struggling reader and writer.  It can be an overwhelming task: where to begin?

A simple solution is to use a “COPS” sheet.  Cops is an acronym for Capitalization, Overall appearance, Punctuation, and Spelling.  Since the majority of the population, regardless of ability, are visual learners, a poster that includes a picture really helps.  You can get a poster here, and a checklist here.

When your child is finished writing, whether the assignment is a sentence, a paragraph, or an essay, having him self-monitor by using a COPS checklist is helpful.  It breaks down the task of editing so that he is only looking for one thing at a time to fix. 

1.        Capitalization: are the beginnings of all sentences capitalized? Are proper names and places capitalized?  Are there any capitals that don’t belong?

2.       Overall Appearance: do the sentences make sense?  Is there space between the words?  Is it legible?

3.       Punctuation: is the proper punctuation used at the end of each sentence?  Is any additional punctuation where it belongs?

4.       Spelling: are the words spelled correctly?

Basically, your child will be reading over his work four times, looking for one specific thing each time.  I have used this for years with students of all ages, and it works well.  Of course, your child may not find every error in his work, but self-editing will make him more mindful of his writing.