There are cases in which non-natives might have better grasp of orthography compared to natives (which might be what GP is objecting to).

I'd be surprised if the vast majority of non native English speakers would fail to spell "read"... Otoh as a non-native, I struggle to be understood and properly differentiate letters like a-e, p-b, etc. So for that reason I use the Nato alphabet whenever I need to spell something

> There are cases in which non-natives might have better grasp of orthography compared to natives (which might be what GP is objecting to).

Certainly. Neither me, nor the "GP" to which you refer ever said anything to the contrary.

> I'd be surprised if the vast majority of non native English speakers would fail to spell "read"

Really? Depending on how you pronounce it, if they even spelled an English word, it would be "red" or "reed". Are you trolling? You do realize most people who aren't native speakers of English don't speak any English, right?

That's an excellent example to pick :)

"I find that book very hard to read" ( "An oboe is a reed instrument" )

and

"I read that book yesterday" ( "My car is red" )

Q: How do you explain to a non-native speaker how to pronounce the word 'read' when you say it aloud...

Easy! just give them some latitude and longitude coordinates and tell them to match it up on what3words.com.