Now there are different methods in learning, my son barely retains anything he reads but if you read it to him he retains it very well, once we adopted that method of learning for him his school work improved immensely. Being very dyslexic, reading for him was a big handicap, thankfully he is now getting better at it, but even at now 22 he is a very slow reader but he does speak fluent Flemish and English.
His cousin had the same problem and had to read everything out loud to retain it, but it was effective and she left university with magna cum laude and one of the highest passes at Leuven University as a pharmacist.