The Born-Yesterday World of the Reading Experts

A Critique of Recent Research on Reading and the Brain

by Geraldine E. Rodgers


Formats

Softcover
£8.95
Softcover
£8.95

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 20/04/2004

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 5x8
Page Count : 128
ISBN : 9781418432355

About the Book

Two different and opposite kinds of readers are developed at the very beginning stages of reading instruction as the result of different and opposite kinds of teaching.  One kind of reader is taught to read by the “sound” of print and reads automatically and with great accuracy.  The other kind of reader is taught to read by the “meaning” of print, as Chinese characters are read, and not only reads inaccurately, but is actually encouraged to do so by so-called “psycholinguistic guessing.”  The Born Yesterday World of the Reading Experts reviews some of the recent papers by highly recognized “experts.”  It explains why little beginning readers are critically harmed when they taught to read by the “meaning” method outlined by these “experts.”  Such “experts” seem to know nothing about the history of reading, and little about the very nature of reading itself.


About the Author

On sabbatical leave in 1977-1978, Geraldine E. Rodgers observed first-grade reading instruction and tested resultant second-grade oral reading in America and Europe (using part of an IEA test form).  The oral reading of about 900 second graders in their own languages demonstrated that two opposite types of readers (or mixtures of the types) result from teaching beginning reading by “sound” or by “meaning”.   She later discovered that Oskar Messmer in 1903 turned up the two types in his research, naming them “objective” and “subjective.”  Current researchers remain oblivious to the fact that there are two types of readers, one very competent (objective “sound”) and one very incompetent (subjective “meaning”).