Roads travelled researching how children learn to read words

Application of psycholinguistic insights initiated a long career researching how children learn to read words. A theory was proposed claiming that spellings individual words are stored in memory when their graphemes become bonded phonemes pronunciations along with meanings, and this enables readers automatically “by sight”. Our studies offered support for theory. In addition, they clarified move into reading. Results showed teaching beginners decode using grapheme-phoneme subunits facilitates word reading spelling much better than whole syllabic units or by analogy. Findings storing new improves vocabulary learning many types learners. This research underscores the importance systematic phonics instruction establish foundational knowledge – phonemic segmentation, relations, decoding skill setting on path becoming skilled readers.