Linguistics and Reading

This chapter focuses on changes to written language and reviews what is known about the processes involved in reading and in learning to read. It explores how skilled readers can identify so many words so quickly; what is the best way to teach children to read and spell, and why do some otherwise normal children have such trouble learning to do so. The discussion begins with a consideration of the cognitive processes that are involved in skilled reading. Bottom-up processes and top-down processes are discussed. To understand the processes involved in the recognition of printed words, it is important to consider how printed words map onto speech. Research shows that the correlation between reading ability and spelling ability is not perfect. There are a number of people who are good readers but poor spellers. If dyslexia stems from linguistic weaknesses, particularly weaknesses in the area of phonology, then teaching must attempt to remediate the problems.