Abstract
Reading is the backbone of all learning. The ease with which this process is carried out by expert readers - who can read around two hundred words per minute without any effort at all - makes us forget the complexity of the machinery behind one of mankind's greatest inventions. Since its creation as a scientific discipline, psychology has always been interested in the study of reading, its automatisms and its learning. Today, we're as familiar with its components and workings as a mechanic is with the parts and transmission lines that make engines run. Beyond the divisions that have now been overcome, there is today a real science of reading, whose advances enable us to offer students high-quality teaching. In this presentation, I'll be going back over the mechanisms behind learning to read. This will enable us to better understand both why some children have difficulty learning to read, and how we can better support them in this sometimes long and perilous process.
