The science of reading has made genuine progress in understanding reading and the teaching of reading, but is the science of reading just the science of reading English? Worldwide, a majority of students learn to read and write in non-European, nonalphabetic orthographies such as abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas/alphasyllabaries (e.g., Hindi), or…

In this article, we provide a cross-linguistic perspective on the universals and particulars in learning to read across seventeen different orthographies. Starting from the assumption that reading reflects a learned sensitivity to the systematic relationships between the surface forms of words and their meanings, we chose a broad group of…

Application of psycholinguistic insights initiated a long career researching how children learn to read words. A theory was proposed claiming that spellings of individual words are stored in memory when their graphemes become bonded to phonemes in their pronunciations along with meanings, and this enables readers to read stored words automatically…

Twenty-two years ago, the National Reading Panel (2000) released a research synthesis of effective reading practices for classroom instruction. The first is phonemic awareness. The others are phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This study examined the connection of assessment for kindergarten through second-grade students in the…

In this paper, we argue that second language (L2) reading research, which has been informed by studies involving first language (L1) alphabetic English reading, may be less relevant to L2 readers with non-alphabetic reading backgrounds, such as Chinese readers with an L1 logographic (Chinese character) learning history. We provide both…

This book provides a unique and accessible account of current research on reading and dyslexia in different orthographies. While most research has been conducted in English, this text presents cross-language comparisons to provide insights into universal aspects of reading development and developmental dyslexia in alphabetic and non-alphabetic…

This research synthesis examines whether the association between print exposure and components of reading grows stronger across development. We meta-analyzed 99 studies (N = 7,669) that focused on leisure time reading of (a) preschoolers and kindergartners, (b) children attending Grades 1-12, and (c) college and university students. For all…

This paper discusses some psycholinguistic and psychological bases of learning to read in two apparently disparate writing systems, English and Chinese. As an alphabet, English orthography has "more reason than rhyme"; relational units and markers (e.g., "hens" and "hence") are important. The combinatory properties of…

This study investigated (1) whether symbol-symbol correspondences are learned better when imbedded in whole words or when presented individually and (2) the effect of these two instructional methods on transfer from an experimental transitional writing system (TWS) to traditional orthography (TO). Thirty-five undergraduates were randomly assigned…

The dependence of reading on speech is based on three assumptions: speech is the primary language system, acquired naturally without direct instruction; alphabetic writing systems are more or less phonetic representations of oral language; and speech appears to be an essential foundation for the acquisition of reading ability. By presupposing…