Stephen Parker

On one level, the trans phenomenon is an understandable struggle for equality by a vulnerable minority. But on another level, this phenomenon is harming other marginalized groups in our society – especially women, gays, and children. In this essay, I offer an explanation as to how the trans struggle for human rights has been sidetracked by influential activists, to the detriment of trans and non-trans people alike. Please Note: In any essay discussing trans issues, there are

For you, as a skilled speller, writing the words BOAT and NOTE is trivial. You don’t give the task a second thought: BOAT is spelled B-O-A-T and NOTE is spelled N-O-T-E. You don’t have to identify the sounds (phonemes) in these words, and then match those sounds with letters before you write them. Such a process is called segmentation, but you don’t need it. You don’t even give any thought to the fact that these two rhyming words are spelled differently, not just in their ini

A Research-Based Explanation of How Children Learn to Read Words With 160 published papers, Linnea Ehri has been one of the most influential and cited reading scientists in the past 40 years. One of 14 members of the U.S. National Reading Panel (1997-2000), she served as Chair of both the Phonemic Awareness and the Phonics subgroups of the Panel. (The full report of the Panel can be found here.) Ehri earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of California

With over 50 articles in refereed journals, David Share has been one of the most influential reading research scientists in the past 35...

Introduction All words consist of individual sounds, called “phonemes,” which seamlessly blend together when the word is spoken. The word...

Introduction For more than a century, reading instruction has been involved in a high-stakes battle between supporters of two opposing...

The alphabetic code is the set of correspondences that exist between the most basic sounds of English (called phonemes) and the letters...

What, exactly, are sight words? How are they created? How are they related to orthographic mapping? What phonemic awareness skills are...

Background During the quarter century, 1975 - 2000, the dominant method for teaching reading in the English-speaking world was Whole Language. Its main characteristics were: Immersion in so-called "real" books. This was in opposition to the artificial Dick and Jane readers of the 40s, 50s, and 60s in the US ( Janet and John in the UK, John and Betty in Australia). This immersion was supposed to lead, easily and naturally, to reading - just as earlier in the child's life, imme

In 1986, Whole Language, a philosophy for teaching reading that rejected systematic phonics, was approaching peak popularity. The two...