While most children learn to read fairly well, there remain many young Americans whose futures are imperiled because they do not read well enough to meet the demands of our competitive, technology-driven society. This book explores the problem within the context of social, historical, cultural, and biological factors. Recommendations address the identification of groups of children at risk, effective instruction for the preschool and early grades, effective approaches to dialects and bilingualism, the importance of these findings for the professional development of teachers, and gaps that remain in our understanding of how children learn to read. Implications for parents, teachers, schools, communities, the media, and government at all levels are discussed. The book examines the epidemiology of reading problems and introduces the concepts used by experts in the field. In a clear and readable narrative, word identification, comprehension, and other processes in normal reading development are discussed. Against the background of normal progress, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children examines factors that put children at risk of poor reading. It explores in detail how literacy can be fostered from birth through kindergarten and the primary grades, including evaluation of philosophies, systems, and materials commonly used to teach reading.

The Science of Reading: A Handbook brings together state-of-the-art reviews of reading research from leading names in the field, to create a highly authoritative, multidisciplinary overview of contemporary knowledge about reading and related skills. Provides comprehensive coverage of the subject, including theoretical approaches, reading processes, stage models of reading, cross-linguistic studies of reading, reading difficulties, the biology of reading, and reading instruction Divided into seven sections:Word Recognition Processes in Reading; Learning to Read and Spell; Reading Comprehension; Reading in Different Languages; Disorders of Reading and Spelling; Biological Bases of Reading; Teaching Reading Edited by well-respected senior figures in the field

"The reading problems addressed in the book move beyond those associated with disabilities such as dyslexia or high-functioning autism. The author addresses experientially based reading difficulties caused by inadequate instruction or limited exposure to academic language/literacy. Unlike other books on response to intervention (RTI), this book presents an argument for using RTI as a method of identification as well as intervention in combination with individual students' reading profiles. The case studies and practical examples cover a broad range of reading problems (not only learning disabilities) to help make research findings applicable to a multidisciplinary audience, especially practitioners"--

From the Back Cover: In this incendiary sequel to his earlier best-seller, Why Johnny Can't Read, Rudolf Flesch contends that our most common method of teaching reading is fraudulent and pernicious and has failed miserably. For fifty years the vast majority of American schoolchildren have been taught to read by the look-and-say method rather than by traditional phonics. Because of it, says Dr. Flesch, the majority of today's American adults are handicapped readers. Indeed, the U.S. literacy rate has dropped below that of every European nation. His wide-ranging research shows how educators have conducted a continuing defense of this teaching method despite hundreds of scientific studies proving its ineffectiveness. Bound to stir controversy and discussion, this book is must reading for parents, educators, administrators, and public officials responsible for allocating educational funds.

Originally published in 1992. This book brings together the work of a number of distinguished international researchers engaged in basic research on beginning reading. Individual chapters address various processes and problems in learning to read - including how acquisition gets underway, the contribution of story listening experiences, what is involved in learning to read words, and how readers represent information about written words in memory. In addition, the chapter contributors consider how phonological, onset-rime, and syntactic awareness contribute to reading acquisition, how learning to spell is involved, how reading ability can be explained as a combination of decoding skill plus listening comprehension skill, and what causes reading difficulties and how to study these causes.

Today, public readings have become a vital part of any form of literary life. Orality is the keyword of contemporary writing. Yet do we know what actually happens when a poetic text is read out loud? How are signs on a page transformed into a stage performance? What does it mean to move from a text meant for the eye alone to sounds and images presented in front of a living and actively participating audience? Poetry Performed: The Problem of Public Reading answers these questions, but not in abstract or general terms. Instead, author Jan Baetens examines how authors themselves live this experience of reading out loud and how they write about it in their works. Taking its departure from Balzac, this book revisits a wide range of masterpieces of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, including works by Marcel Proust and James Joyce, and contains a series of close readings of contemporary artists (poets, performers, directors, comics authors) who try to invent new forms of public reading.

A postmodern masterpiece about fraud and forgery by one of the most distinctive, accomplished novelists of the last century. The Recognitions is a sweeping depiction of a world in which everything that anyone recognizes as beautiful or true or good emerges as anything but: our world. The book is a masquerade, moving from New England to New York to Madrid, from the art world to the underworld, but it centers on the story of Wyatt Gwyon, the son of a New England minister, who forsakes religion to devote himself to painting, only to despair of his inspiration. In expiation, he will paint nothing but flawless copies of his revered old masters—copies, however, that find their way into the hands of a sinister financial wizard by the name of Recktall Brown, who of course sells them as the real thing. Dismissed uncomprehendingly by reviewers on publication in 1955 and ignored by the literary world for decades after, The Recognitions is now established as one of the great American novels, immensely ambitious and entirely unique, a book of wild, Boschian inspiration and outrageous comedy that is also profoundly serious and sad.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.