Lately, there’s been a resurgence in the ”reading wars,” which is the term used to describe the dispute between supporters of a ”phonics” or ”phonemic awareness” method for teaching reading and those who instead promote a ”whole language” approach.  This war has been going on ever since 1955 when Rudolf Flesch wrote the best-selling book...Read More

When I was in school, a long long time ago (sounds like the start of a fairy tale!), we had these Science Research Associates (SRA) reading programs that came in a box.  The box contained scores of laminated pages (like the files in a filing cabinet), each of which had a story on it with...Read More

Once a student has learned to decode (e.g. read the actual printed words on the page or screen), then reading teachers (and remedial teachers) launch into an enterprise called ”reading comprehension.” Taken at face value, this really just means being able to understand what you are reading.  There are rare cases of individuals who are...Read More

In an earlier post, I pointed out how over the course of millions of years of human evolution, reading and literacy have occupied only the last 5000 years of human existence.  Consequently, our brains did not evolve any brain regions specifically for reading, but must make use of preexisting structures of the brain to make...Read More

When I was a kid I used to enjoy Mad Magazine, which I loved for many reasons, the irreverence, the hilarity, the satire, and more. One feature that I remember in particular involved cartoons that spelled out nonsense words as sound effects. For example:  ”Glomp!” “Flaaack!” ”Pffft!” ”Sproing!” (above – a page from Mad with...Read More