Gibson and Levin 1975

Gibson, Eleanor J., and Harry Levin. 1975.The psychology of reading. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 630 pages. 0262070634. (Review by DuBois 1984.) Location: Dallas SIL Library 372.4 G448. Interest level: specialist.

Gives insights into the process of reading and provides intellectual tools to help teachers think for themselves. Is not suggested methods for teaching reading although it gives interesting research information which has direct application to the teaching of reading. Gives theoretical background of psychological and linguistic principles for understanding the reading process. Describes how reading skill is acquired and discusses reading problems.

Only children with a mental age of seven were able to analyze words into their constituent phonemic segments (page 121). Cites studies in vocabulary development, including word frequency lists from both children's speech and written texts (page 130).

Gives Whorf's formula for the English monosyllable (page 176) and Venezky's analysis of spelling-to-sound correspondences (page 178). Discusses Chomsky's view of lexical representation and his argument that English orthography is optimal for reading since it maintains the meaning-bearing characteristics of the word (page 187).

• Bibliography module: Gibson and Levin 1975
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): G
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 28 June 1999

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