Includes bibliographical references.

Part 1 Challenges: literacy and the national curriculum - the challenge of the 1990s; the definition and identification of specific learning difficulties; subtypes of specific learning difficulty - a review; reconciling different approaches to intervention; Rea Reason. Part 2 Responses: phonological development and reading; rhyming connections in learning to read and spell; learning to spell, learning to read; dyslexia in childhood; intervention strategies for backward readers in the primary school classroom; teaching programmes for children with specific learning difficulties; some effects of a dyslexia centred teaching programme; testing and teaching pupils with reading difficulties; making reading real; learning strategies for pupils with literacy difficulties; ARROW - alleviating children's reading and spelling problems; meeting the challenges of specific learning difficulties; children with spelling and writing difficulties.