Diane McGuinness
Auteur de Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading
A propos de l'auteur
Diane McGuinness is the author of When Children Don't Learn and Why Our Children Don't Read and What We Can Do About It
Œuvres de Diane McGuinness
Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading (1997) 108 exemplaires
Language Development and Learning to Read: The Scientific Study of How Language Development Affects Reading Skill… (2005) 15 exemplaires
Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading (Bradford Books) (2004) 13 exemplaires
When children don't learn: Understanding the biology and psychology of learning disabilities (1985) 12 exemplaires
Formando Um Leitor Desde O Berço: O Caminho Do Seu Filho Da Linguagem a Literatura (2006) 2 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
Membres
Critiques
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 12
- Membres
- 209
- Popularité
- #106,076
- Évaluation
- 4.1
- Critiques
- 4
- ISBN
- 24
- Langues
- 1
The book is lucid in that Dr. McGuinness explains everything with aplomb. While first introducing the idea of literacy and her disdain for whole-word methodology in teaching reading, she also puts down phonics in some cases, seeing as how many don’t really know how to teach it as of the printing of this book. Starting out with an explanation of how writing developed in the first place was really interesting. Now, my methods of reading are shrouded in mystery since I learned to read when I was quite young. I know that in school I had Phonics since I remember doing the rhyme exercises and breaking down syllables of words. However, it seems that many people are not so lucky. The whole-word methodology of reading forces you to remember every single word possible. No child has the capacity to remember all possible words. It would be like handing a child a dictionary at the beginning of the year and expecting that child to be able to understand English completely by the end of it.
Dr. McGuinness goes over the development and processes that made up the present state of printed English. This part was really fascinating and quite scholarly. Writing is an invention made by the hands of man. Now it is not divinely inspired, or else everyone could read easily. That is my take on it. So we go over the history of writing itself starting with the Sumerians. We know a great deal about the Sumerians and their writing since they wrote everything on these clay tablets. Some of the writing is almost impossible to decipher, but most of it is made up of bills of sale, legal documents, grain storage and other such minutiae. Over time, the Sumerians figured out some shortcuts to their writing. Skipping a few steps, we arrive at the English Language with its 26-letter alphabet. Of course, English has issues that come from being relatively old and from having a weird system of grammar and spelling.
Now, from what I understand, English is a horribly difficult language to reach proficiency in. We have so many homophones and letters that can make multiple sounds and weird words from before they invented spelling and so on. The basic idea of all languages is that the combination of letters represent sounds. At least, that is the case in English. In order to read proficiently, it is important to “hear” all of those sounds when you read. The issue here is that many people neglect to do this. Some people just can’t hear the phonemes of the written word. I have heard that slowing the word down works, but you have to really slow it down to enunciate each sound.
I could go on and on with piling praise on this book, but this review is getting a bit lengthy so I will say that the section that describes the solution is also quite informative, putting forward a curriculum that will help your child to learn to read. All in all, this book was phenomenal. It was enjoyable and fascinating, a combination that is difficult to beat.
I would really like to find information on the current state of literacy in my country or even in my local community, but a Google Search turned up nothing of note.… (plus d'informations)