What Do We Know About Adolescent Reading?

If we distinguish what it is that good readers learn to do that poor readers do not learn we are half way to knowing what to
do to cure a lot of problems, for 'Failure in reading, virtually means failure in most learning tasks'. At primary school, a lot of time is given to teaching reading. Some children learn faster than others and this is taken care of with such techniques as reading groups and graded reading books. But at secondary school pupils are taught subjects; although they have varying reading attainment they are taught together; the written material they are given makes no allowances . For the poor reader even attempting the work can appear to be an impossible task.