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Language and Friendship
I know Twitter gets a lot of flack as a cesspool of polarization and facile debate, but I have to say that if you are a nerd like me and follow lots of other nerds, it’s a veritable goldmine for nerdy indulgence. Case in point, I recently came across this fascinating paper shared on Twitter: […]
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Language and Cognition
There was a fascinating summary thread I came across recently that I want to dig into, as there’s some really interesting and rich areas of tension to unpack. Here’s the thread: The final plenary of @ICCG_11 #icc1 is by the brilliant @ev_fedorenko: "The language system in the human mind and brain" pic.twitter.com/oqg6O0Cixf — Michael Pleyer […]
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Universals of Language
In my last post, we looked at a wonderful paper, “Universals in Learning to Read Across Languages and Writing Systems“, that outlines operating principles of reading and writing across languages, as well as some key variations. Continuing on this theme, I wanted to highlight another recent paper, “The universal language network: A cross-linguistic investigation spanning […]
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Operating Principles Across Written Languages
In the course of skimming research articles, every now and then something surfaces that is comprehensive, clarifying, and just flat out fun to read because it brings illumination to something I’ve been grappling with. One I want to make sure to bring to your attention, just in case you haven’t yet read it, is this […]
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Our Brains Were Not Born to Read…Right?
As I began my great awakening to the relatively extensive body of research on reading, one of the claims of reading research proponents that I’ve picked up on and carried with me is the idea that reading is unnatural and our brains were not born to read. And this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, […]
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I think I was wrong about Phonemic Awareness
When I began this journey into learning more about literacy and language development (not too long ago), one of the first areas where I began sensing a tension in the field was around phonological awareness and the notion of instruction related to different “grain sizes.” We know that phonological awareness develops in a manner that […]
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Phonology: How it Relates to Language and Literacy
I posted something on Twitter the other day (as I am wont to do far more frequently than write anything of deeper substance, alas) worrying that because the Simple View of Reading is a predominant model of reading (and may be therefore the basis from which some educators who are aware of it may primarily […]
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Whole to Part to Whole
Oral language is baked into our brains. We are born to learn to speak. Similarly, reading our visual surroundings is second nature. Our eyes are neurally attuned to pick out fine-grained distinctions and patterns amidst the noise. But written language is something we graft onto our existing circuitry. Graphemes get bootstrapped onto our auditory and […]
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Provide Our Students with Textual Feasts
In a webinar, Dr. Alfred Tatum discussed the need to provide our students with “textual feasts” to build their intellect, and the phrase and concept has stuck with me ever since. It resonated with me because there’s a very strong tendency, when serving our students who struggle with academic text (such as students learning English, […]
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The Riches of ASHA
In my last post, I wrote about the riches of Speech-Language Pathology and what this domain of research and practice has to offer for all educators. I’d also like to highlight that relatedly, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and it’s publications has a lot to offer to those of us getting into the Science of […]
Language & Literacy
Connecting research to practice in language and literacy teaching and learning.
Language & Literacy 