The Flinders University 2025 ReadingDoctor Letter-Sound Study has now finished. Check out the early results from Flinders University:

Helping Children Learn to Read: What We Found in the 2025 ReadingDoctor® Letter-Sound Study

Thank You!

Thank you to all the children, families, teachers and schools who supported our research. Your participation helps us better understand how children learn to read.

Why We Did This Study

Learning how letters represent sounds is one of the first and most important steps in learning to read. Many schools already use strong phonics instruction, but we wanted to see whether using ReadingDoctor® Online, letter-sound activities could help children develop this important skill. In this summary, we call this “using ReadingDoctor®”.

What We Did

• Hundreds of children across Australia took part (19 schools and 45 classrooms, with 762 children joining in classrooms and a further 253 children joining at home with their families).

• Children completed assessments of their letter–sound knowledge at several time points during the study.

• Our analysis included children who had completed enough activities and had enough valid assessments. This resulted in a final sample of 390 children, aged 4 to 7 years (average age 5 years 9 months), representing a wide range of learning needs and backgrounds.

• In this sample, children used ReadingDoctor® for between 1.1 and 9.2 hours (Mean = 2.6) for 8 weeks.

What We Found

• Children who used ReadingDoctor® made strong improvements in their letter-sound knowledge.

• The program had a large positive effect on learning, beyond natural development over time.

• It worked similarly well whether children completed the activities at school or at home.

• Children who completed more activities tended to make greater progress.

• Those who were further behind at the start (with less letter–sound knowledge) made the biggest improvements

What This Means

Our results show that Reading Doctor® can meaningfully support children’s letter-sound learning alongside the instruction they already receive at school and at home.

More Information

We are happy to share more information once the results are reviewed and published.

Research Team

Dr Emma Grace, Dr Lisa Furlong, Dr Karyn Carson With thanks to Dr Megan Gath, our research assistants, schools, teachers, families, and children!

For more information, contact Dr Emma Grace, College of Human Sciences and Culture, Flinders University: emma.grace@flinders.edu.au

Approved by Flinders University Ethics (#7442). Funded by a Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation Early Career Grant. ReadingDoctor® provided access to the software. Image of letter-sound activity from ReadingDoctor®, used with permission. 23 March 2026