Beyond Reading “Level”: How Small Differences in Vocabulary Demands Affect Reading Success
Two new studies suggest an important shift in thinking about beginning reading instruction. “Reading level” alone does not tell us enough about how difficult a text will be for students. The familiarity, frequency, and spelling patterns matter greatly. read more
Presenting Multisyllabic Strategies for Adolescent Readers
As students move into middle and high school, challenges with multisyllabic words come to the fore. Freddy asks how corpus linguistics could pinpoint the multisyllabic words most worth teaching. read more
Knowing Word Parts Isn’t the Same as Knowing Words
Morphology teaching frequently stops at the pieces — students drill prefixes and suffixes in isolation, fill in charts, match roots to definitions — without ever encountering those element in real texts. What learners also need is sustained engagement with texts where morphologically rich vocabulary appears in context. It’s the combination — explicit guidance and meaningful… read more
