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Why the Caldwell Reading Program?

Reeding iz difakult en part beekuz ov tha inkonsistuncz ov Umairikun Inglish. Tha Caldwell Reeding Program wuz kreeatid bi Tom DenKnee, Ed Calldwell, and Uhsoseeits to redus tha inkonsistuncz in reeding muteereeals uzed  to teech peepol to reed Umairikun Inglish.

or

Reading is difficult in part because of the inconsistencies of American English. The Caldwell Reading Program was created by Tom Denne, Ed Caldwell, and associates to reduce the inconsistencies in reading materials used to teach people American English.

What is a "ghoti"?

George Bernard Shaw suggested that "ghoti" was one way to spell "fish": the 

Fortunately our language is not as bad as Shaw suggested. For example, "gh" is never pronounced as "f" at the beginning of a word.

Vowel Problems
Unfortunately the vowels in our language are very inconsistent. All the vowels have several different pronunciations. For example, Richard Venezky, a linguist who argues for the consistency and "rational" nature of the language, found that the letter "o" is pronounced 17 different ways in our language. This means that a phonic approach stressing single letter sounds is likely to fail! 

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