Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Solution to America’s Literacy Crisis by Denise Eide

[W]ith some variations, the spelling rules and phonograms already are used with great success by dyslexia institutes and reading centers around our nation. For unknown reasons, this “intensive phonics” is saved almost exclusively for students who struggle. I simply cannot understand why material that effectively teaches all students has been reserved for reading centers. {p. 12}

I am resoundingly confident that we can teach reading at a fraction of the cost, and with much higher success rates, than we currently do. {p. 12}

English is comprised of 44 unique phonemes which combine together to form a word. {p. 15}

This presents the first problem: the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet are inadequate to describe the 44 spoken phonemes or sounds. To solve this discrepancy, English adds 48 multi-letter phonograms. {p. 16}

The difference between the literate and the illiterate is that the literate blame the problems on English, but the illiterate blame themselves. {p. 21}

[S]omething is deeply wrong with how we are teaching reading. It is simply not conceivable that 22%-70% of our population has a reading disability. What is clear is that students who do not thrive in first, second, and third grade continue to struggle through adulthood. {p. 22}

Children who are skilled readers have effective brain activity patterns and rely heavily on areas of their brains related to sounds. When struggling readers attempt to read, their brains show inactivity in these critical auditory areas. {p. 23}

When reading is not taught correctly, many students do not make solid connections between the phonograms {the pictures of the sounds} and the phonemes {the sounds themselves}. Instead, they seem to rely heavily on the visual center of their brain. {p. 24}

To “help” students, many schools teach “reading strategies” rather than solid phonics. {p. 25}

When solid phonics education is combined with a foundation in the roots of words, often even the definition becomes apparent. {p. 26}

The first step is to learn the 74 basic phonemes. {p. 26}

When the plurals are considered, s says /z/ 70% of the time. Certainly a sound that occurs 70% of the time is not an exception. {p. 27}

Logical students do not tolerate inconsistent rules. The smattering of phonics usually given to them is not only unhelpful; it is damaging. {p. 27}

[T]he letter names do not tell the student anything about how a word is read or spelled. The names are best learned after the phonogram sounds have been internalized. {p. 28}

Many educators mistakenly believe that good readers read whole words rather than phonetically. The prevailing thought is that readers who sound out words are sow, and that fast readers have actually developed instant recognition of the whole word. This is some of the theory behind the Dolch List, a commonly used list of 250 sight words.

However, recent research using functional MRI has shown that good readers are actually processing the sounds one a time, even though they perceive it as a whole word. It is just that the brain is so fast, it appears they are reading whole words. In reality, though, they are converting the letters on the page to sounds. {p. 30}

[E]very syllable has only one vowel sound you can hear. {p. 39}

[E]very syllable must have a written vowel. {p. 39}

[A] commonly taught rule is “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” Students are left confused by which first vowel sound. Long /ē/ as in heat or short /ĕ/ as in head? This “rule” also does not account for words such as great. These sorts of over-simplifications often generate more exceptions than words which follow the rule. {p. 41}

I experienced exactly what the latest brain research has told us about how the brain reads. The best readers decode every word, almost instantly. The brain is simply not able to memorize thousands of “sight words.” {p. 65}

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Do you see why I highly, highly recommend reading this book?