A cognitive scientist, Mark Seidenberg, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison found that only a third of the nation’s schoolchildren read at grade level. He cites that the way children are taught to read is disconnected from how language and speech actually develop in a child’s brain. The current research shows that reading success depends on linking print to speech. Skilled reading is associated with children’s spoken language, grammar and the vocabulary they already know. Seidenberg claims that the basic science (of reading) does not go into the preparation for teachers and argues that literacy is not an “either/or” of phonics and whole language. He claims that children need both.
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