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

by Mark Seidenberg

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541617155
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Reading, Writing, and Speech

Chapter 1 The Problem and the Paradox 3

Chapter 2 Visible Language 15

Chapter 3 Writing: Its All Mesopotamian Cuneiform to Me 31

How We Read

Chapter 4 The Eyes Have It 59

Chapter 5 F u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n rdng rsch 85

Chapter 6 Becoming a Reader 101

Chapter 7 Reading: The Eternal Triangle 123

Chapter 8 Dyslexia and Its Discontents 149

Chapter 9 Brain Bases of Reading 187

The Educational Challenges

Chapter 10 How Well Does America Read? 217

Chapter 11 The Two Cultures of Science and Education 247

Chapter 12 Reading the Future 283

Acknowledgments 305

Notes 309

References 343

Index 363

Editorial Reviews

"In Language at the Speed of Sight, [Seidenberg] develops a careful argument, backed by decades of research, to show that the only responsible way to teach children to read well is to build up their abilities to connect reading with speech and then to amplify these connections through practice, developing skillful behavioral patterns hand in hand with the neurological networks that undergird them...Every teacher of young children as well as those who train them should read this book."—Wall Street Journal

"Mr. Seidenberg has that rare knack of sounding reasonable and righteous at the same time." —The New York Times

"Seidenberg...unravels the science of reading with great flair. He is the ideal guide - and it turns out that we need a guide to reading, even though we've been doing it most of our lives."—Washington Post

"Seidenberg reviews the latest science on reading and makes an impassioned plea for putting this knowledge to use."—Scientific American

"Cognitive neuroscientist Seidenberg digs deep into the science of reading to reveal the ways human beings learn how to read and process language.... Seidenberg's analysis is backed up by numerous studies and table of data. His approach is pragmatic, myth-destroying and rooted in science—and his writing makes for powerful reading."—Publishers Weekly

"The neuroscience underlying [Seidenberg's] findings is complex, of course, but [he] does not often fall into thickets of technicality...his discussions are clear and accessible.... A worthy primer on the science of comprehending language."—Kirkus

"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 it, or that learning to read is something different from mastering something separate called '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, New York Times best-selling author of Nine Nasty Words, 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, best-selling 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

From the Publisher

Too often, according to Mark Seidenberg's important, alarming new book, Language at the Speed of Sight, Johnny can't read because schools of education didn't give Johnny's teachers the proper tools to show him how…Building on decades of steadily improving linguistic and psychological data, Mr. Seidenberg's…discoveries, and those of his colleagues, lead him to logically watertight conclusions…Mr. Seidenberg's simmering anger at how teachers themselves are taught erupts over [the] last hundred pages, and it's bracing to behold…Mr. Seidenberg has that rare knack of sounding reasonable and righteous at the same time…[His] book won't end the debate between scientists and the educational establishment over how children should learn to read, but it should jump-start an overdue conversation.

The New York Times - David Kipen

11/28/2016
Cognitive neuroscientist Seidenberg digs deep into the science of reading to reveal the ways human beings learn how to read and process language. After describing how humans adapted to form writing, speech, and languages, Seidenberg explores current research into dyslexia and other literacy problems, especially as they pertain to the challenges facing the American education system. Progress in reading is inexorably tied to achievement gaps and differences in socioeconomic status, but Seidenberg circles back to the biological connections among spoken language, dyslexia, and general reading ability. Poverty alone cannot account for the U.S.’s “mediocre showing” in multinational assessments, he says. His major criticism of national reading progress lies in the “culture of education” or the way teachers are trained to approach teaching. Seidenberg turns against the trend of natural “discovery” learning, where he says nothing is really taught, and argues that direct instruction by tested methods is the best way to ensure students consistently learn to read. Seidenberg’s analysis is backed up by numerous studies and tables of data. His approach is pragmatic, myth-destroying, and rooted in science—and his writing makes for powerful reading. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-11-07
Johnny can't read—and too often his teachers can only guess why.Reading is something that we almost always do at a subconscious level: we do not think about it, and for good reason, since we need to concentrate on the result—the content of what we have been reading, that is—and not the process. Still, the fact that there is this subconscious work going on requires a science of reading to describe what Seidenberg (Psychology/Univ. of Wisconsin) calls a complex skill that operates "at levels that intuition cannot easily penetrate." One way of looking at reading is to examine where it doesn't quite work out as expected. Much of the author's research, and a sizable portion of this book, concerns dyslexia, a phenomenon that turns on anatomical properties of the brain in which "signal propagation between and within regions seems to be…noisier," which in turn affects "the modification of neuronal responses and their retention." The neuroscience underlying these findings is complex, of course, but Seidenberg does not often fall into thickets of technicality; for the most part, his discussions are clear and accessible, if of most compelling interest to a small audience of reading specialists. The author counters on that score that reading should be a matter of larger interest to teachers especially, given the discouraging levels of literacy across the world; he argues that teacher training should involve a curriculum embracing reading science, child development, and cognition, among other areas. Broader familiarity with the science of reading, he suggests, would be of use at the policy level as well, since so much of it is based on assumptions concerning problems of social engineering—poverty, household makeup, and so forth. A worthy primer on the science of comprehending language at the visible, symbolic level of print, a place that requires plenty of brain power and years of practice to navigate.

Kirkus Reviews