Wherein we learn how to learn how to read.

Jump right to:

4:53 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Existential “be” versus straight copula
16:32 Topic of the day: Phonics vs. the 3-cueing model, AKA how learning to read works, and how teaching people to read works (or doesn’t)
1:37:43 The puzzler: “Second in command managed jewel branch. A boy, last minute, made breakfast spread (6,9)”

Covered in this episode:

The best holiday dinner foods
Existential verbs
Copulas
The science of reading
“Vibes-based reading” is probably not a fair term but also maybe not an inaccurate one
The phonological processor
FLOSZ rule
Scribal O
“Ghoti” is not pronounced “fish”
40% and 90% are different numbers
The difference between being able to read and being able to read
Statistically speaking, most people are not Sarah
The four-part processing system model
The orthographic processor
Developmentally inappropriate fonts for kids
Developmentally inappropriate fonts for Sarah on Duolingo
Eli learns he’s a white girl from Ohio
Sight-reading is not the same as whole-word reading
The semantic processor
Associating dogs and blueberries, dogs and bogs, or dogs and dishes
The context processor
Most people will not learn to read on their own
If you’re good at something, don’t necessarily teach it
For once on this podcast, an actual definitive answer! (Which some people might disagree with.)
There is no “too late” in life to learn to read
Where to learn to read, as an adult
The nerdiest part of the episode
The portion of our audience which comprises sailors from the 1800s

Links and other post-show thoughts:

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, by George Lakoff
True Biz, by Sara Nović
We may not actually have talked about scalar implicature by name on the pod? Sarah talked about it in a linguistics presentation at CrossingsCon, which we think may be what Eli and Sarah were (mis)remembering when they said we’d covered it early on. Potential future Language Thing of the Day…?
Sixty-three percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Basic level in 2022, while thirty-seven percent of fourth-grade students performed below the NAEP Basic level. Only thirty-three percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the reading assessment in 2022.
Not for the first time and not for the last: chriego and sgr
Also not the for the first time, Canadian syllabics
What The Font?
The three-cueing system was developed by Ken Goodman, who almost certainly had undiagnosed dyslexia, and has been described as functionally teaching children to be dyslexic, rather than teaching anyone (with or without dyslexia) to actually read.
Mapping where words are housed in the brain
Jumbled words don’t actually work quite like that
The style of writing Latin that Sarah refers to is called scripto continua
The four-part processor diagram Kristen describes
LETRS course with Louisa Moats and Carol Tolman
UFLI is the University of Florida Literacy Institute
The six syllable types in English orthography

Ask us questions:

Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Credits:

Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Charlie, show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod.

And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)