Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can't, and What Can Be Done About It - Hardcover

Seidenberg, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465019323 ISBN 13: 9780465019328

Publisher: Basic Books, 2017

Synopsis

In this "important, alarming" (New York Times) book, see why so many American students are falling behind in their reading skills while others around the world excel.

The way we teach reading is not working, and it cannot continue. We have largely abandoned phonics-based reading instruction, despite research that supports its importance for word recognition. Rather than treating Black English as a valid dialect and recognizing that speaking one dialect can impact the ability to learn to read in another, teachers simply dismiss it as "incorrect English." And while we press children to develop large vocabularies because we think being a good reader means knowing more words, studies have found that a large vocabulary is only an indication of better pattern recognition. Understanding the science of reading is more important than ever--for us, and for our children. Seidenberg helps us do so by drawing on cutting-edge research in machine learning, linguistics, and early childhood development. Language at the Speed of Sight offers an erudite and scathing examination of this most human of activities, and concrete proposals for how our society can produce better readers.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Seidenberg is the Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a cognitive neuroscientist who has studied language, reading, and dyslexia for over three decades. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

From the Back Cover

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR LANGUAGE AT THE SPEED OF SIGHT:

?No technologically advanced society exists without reading. This is the remarkable story of why and how it all works. From David Letterman s irony to posited Sumerian patent trolls, the writing is lively, informative, and supremely entertaining.
?Daniel J. Levitin, best-selling author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind

?Have you picked up the idea that reading is something that kids ?just pick up and shouldn't be rushed into, or that learning to read is something different from ?comprehension, or that a whole book about reading would be dull? Language at the Speed of Sight will disabuse you of all three notions and more?pick it up and marvel at how hard it will be to put it down.
?John McWhorter, author of Word on the Move and Talking Back, Talking Black

?Few works of science ever achieve Italo Calvino s six qualities of our best writing: Lightness, exactitude, visibility, quickness, multiplicity, and consistency. Mark Seidenberg s new book achieves just that. If every educator, parent, and policy maker would read and heed the content of this book, the rates of functional illiteracy, with all their destructive sequelae, would be significantly reduced.
?Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid

?A world-renowned expert explains the science of reading with clarity and wit?anyone who loves to read will be fascinated, and teachers will absolutely devour this book.
?Daniel Willingham, author of Why Don t Students Like School?

?Language at the Speed of Sight is an incisive tour through the fascinating science of reading. From cuneiform to dyslexia to the future of literacy, Seidenberg is a master guide who?lucky for us?is as gifted a writer as he is a scientist.
?Benjamin Bergen, author of What the F

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465019323
• ISBN 13: 9780465019328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384