Episode 17: The Vibes Are Iffy

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 :)