Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can't, and What Can Be Done About It

This information is rich and deep. I am taking my time reading so I can absorb the ideas in it. I've already used some of the background knowledge for the students I tutor in reading and phonics. Way too often the kids who need to read the most don't like reading. I realized after reading Language at the Speed of Sight why kids have to read every day. Text leaves out a lot of information about sound, such as pitch, timing, and loudness. We can figure out the meaning of what we read because we can fill in the missing information most of the time without it being part of the written system. The information is predictable from other things we know about the topic, context, and spoken language. If all of this information is included in the text, it would slow down our reading. We understand what makes a written language efficient. We don’t need all of the information included in the writing. Our experience tells us what is likely to be correct. Therefore, experience with reading is what helps students read accurately and fluently with comprehension.

Seidenberg is well known in the worlds of neuropsychology and special education. He has done an excellent job translating his scientific work for parents and teachers. This is not an easy read however. Parents who are just starting out (or who have reading issues themselves) may find it too technical in the middle chapters when he starts integrating the research findings. As a psychologist who diagnoses dyslexia on a regular basis, I generally suggest Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz when parents first get the diagnosis. But while this one is somewhat more technical, the science is fresher, and Seidenberg does a better job integrating multiple areas of research on the neuroscience of dyslexia. A very enjoyable read!

Seidenberg writes an engaging account of reading from the crossroads of cognitive science and linguistics—heady stuff he explains easily for a lay reader. He examines surprising and plausible guesses about how the ancients invented writing, which is harder to do than we think, and makes a convincing case that reading differs from oral expression because reading does not come naturally to us. This ultimately brings him to launch an entertaining attack on schools of education, coupled with an extremely dated attack on "whole language," which he thinks stalks the country today under the guise of "the balanced approach" to reading. His problem here is that while he accuses the balanced approach of being so vague as to allow renegade whole languageers to continue their misguided practice, his own insights into reading instruction would themselves be completely familiar and accepted by any teacher in the last twenty years: explicitly teach students to decode print to sounds by grade 3, while reading aloud to them and giving them plenty of experience with sound, rhyme, and meaning, intervene early with struggling readers and monitor the effect of the intervention, and encourage readers to read a lot of books. Classroom teachers who read this book will be annoyed to be told we aren't doing this, and more annoyed to hear that test scores would improve "if" we were. They will laugh at the source of his mistake, though: He apparently has been trying to talk to education faculty at the colleges for thirty years now, and been ignored by them, and assumes that teachers have taken every goofy pet thought those professors ever had to heart, instead of learning ourselves what works and what doesn't. Still, his account of the cognitive and linguistic history and practice of reading should interest any classroom teacher, there is likely no better guide to it than this book, and it is a fascinating story.

If you have any interest in language, in how the brain works, or in why we have separate schools of education, you will probably find this book fascinating - and if you also are interested in how people learn to read, so much the better. For people concerned about the achievement gap or who have young children or are dealing with dyslexia- I would call this required reading.Don't be put off by complicated discussions of brain anatomy or by the description of computer simulations in the first part of the book. I waded through these but I think the reader could skim those sections without missing too much. Dr. Seidenberg unequivocally supports phonics over whole language as the best way to teach children to read and the first part of the book presents the science underlying his position. Keep going and read the rest of the book. I will definitely be rereading it.

I used it for an online Professional Development book study!

"Language at the Speed of Sight" is a game changer. Dr. Seidenberg uses his research (along with others' too) to pointedly demonstrate why the actual instruction of reading in schools matters, how it's not being done correctly, and how it affects not only dyslexic students, but all students. The first half of the book is challenging. It covers an incredible amount of information on the science of reading. He discusses the mechanics, what modeling shows us, and exactly why the education system has it wrong (by buying into non-science and discredited theories). My son is dyslexic and how reading is (and isn't) taught in schools is very important. We as a society want to move the needle on reading across the country. Seidenberg finds the proverbial needle in the haystack and lays it out there. A must for parents of dyslexics who want to arm themselves against fake science and fantastic claims made to pick your pocket. I've since bought five copies for professional educators.