A little-known aspect of Leonard Bloomfield’s linguistics
The story of Let’s Read (1961)
Leonard Bloomfield’s (1887–1949) contribution to the literature and theory of teaching reading is not widely known. This paper recounts the history of that contribution, published as Let’s Read: A linguistic approach in 1961, well after his death. Clarence L. Barnhart (1900–1993), the lexicographer, had encouraged Bloomfield to write a complete, finished manuscript of his phonemic approach to teaching reading and expended considerable time searching for a publisher. Bloomfield and Barnhart also sought classroom experimentation of Bloomfield’s materials before publication, which by and large verified his ideas, as did later experiments. Critical reception of Let’s Read, which rejected familiar reading pedagogy, was not warmly welcoming, especially among reading professionals, while linguists like the Romanist Yakov Malkiel (1914–1998) and the structuralist Henry Lee Smith (1913–1972) offered more positive assessments.
References
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
da Conceição, Djenane Brasil
2023.
A Dialogue on Reading: The Perspectives of Bloomfield’s Linguistics and Behavior Analysis. In
Contributions of Behavior Analysis to Reading and Writing Comprehension,
► pp. 311 ff.
[no author supplied]
2014.
Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences, 2014.
Isis 105:S1
► pp. i ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.