Speech Pathology · Sydney
Literacy and Reading Support Sydney
Literacy and reading support in Sydney for struggling readers. Phonics, decoding, comprehension, and written language. Bilingual English and Mandarin.
- No referral needed
- NDIS and Medicare welcome
- Mobile across Sydney
- Funding accepted
- NDIS plan-managedNDIS self-managedMedicare CDMDVA Gold & White CardHome Care PackagePrivate pay
When to consider literacy support
Most families reach out for literacy support when a school or teacher has flagged a concern, or when the child is visibly frustrated by reading and writing. Common patterns. Your child is in Year 1 or 2 and reading is coming much slower than for peers. Your child can sound out words but the reading does not make sense afterwards (poor comprehension despite adequate decoding). Your child reads OK but spelling is a mess and writing is a chore. Your child has been diagnosed with dyslexia or is being assessed for it.
Less obvious triggers: your child has a history of early language delay and is now entering the school years where reading demands increase. Your child is bilingual and reading is harder in English than you expected. Your child has ADHD or autism alongside reading difficulty, and the school’s standard reading support is not working.
If any of this sounds familiar, a free 15-minute discovery call is the right first step. I can tell you whether an assessment would be useful and what it would cover.
What literacy work covers
The first thing I do is work out which part of the reading process is breaking down. Some children have trouble at the decoding stage (turning letters into sounds and blending them into words). Others decode fine but comprehension is poor. Others have reasonable comprehension but spelling and writing are weak. The underlying language skills that cause each of these are different, so the therapy target is different.
Phonological awareness work is central for children struggling with decoding. This means explicit practice on the sound structure of words: rhyming, syllable splitting, phoneme blending and segmenting. Evidence is consistent that phonological awareness is a strong predictor of reading success and that explicit teaching of it produces measurable gains in reading.
For children with comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding, the work shifts to language: vocabulary, sentence structure, inferencing, and narrative. Many of these children have underlying language disorder (DLD) that has not been recognised because speech is clear.
For spelling and writing, I target sound-letter correspondences, morphology (how words are built from meaningful parts), and written narrative structure. Writing is essentially spoken language turned into text; children whose spoken language is disorganised often have disorganised writing for the same underlying reasons.
I work in collaboration with school learning support where relevant. Classroom reading programmes and targeted speech pathology work best together rather than in isolation.
Literacy support across Sydney
Face-to-face sessions across the Inner West, St George, Canterbury-Bankstown, and Eastern Suburbs, based in Arncliffe. Regular visits to Tempe, Rockdale, Marrickville, Hurstville, Bankstown, Bexley, Kogarah, and Burwood. Home-based sessions work well for literacy because home practice between sessions can happen in the same environment. Telehealth is available Australia-wide and works for school-age children who can sit at a desk for focused work.
School-based sessions are a strong option for literacy work because most of the skills translate directly to classroom reading and writing tasks.
For bilingual children, I assess both languages where appropriate. English literacy difficulties in bilingual children sometimes reflect underlying language factors rather than a specific reading disorder, and assessment in both languages clarifies which.
What to expect when you book
Literacy and Reading Support questions
Make an enquiryIs speech pathology the right place for reading difficulties?
My child has been diagnosed with dyslexia. Can you help?
What age is this for?
Do I need a referral?
Related services
Back to all speech pathology services in Sydney.
Ready to get started?
No referral needed. Book a free 15-minute discovery call and we will work out whether an assessment makes sense.
