Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

A Response to Perfetti’s (1985)   Chapter 9 of Reading Ability : “Dyslexia” The Process of Reading and How It is Changed for Dyslexics According to Perfetti (1985) Summary In this chapter, Perfetti defines dsylexia, explores various theories concerning its cause, and looks at various types of subgroups.   Also, it is argued that reading ability is a continuum, rather than there being sharp differences between low-readers and dyslexics. In order to be considered dyslexic, a child must be of normal intelligence, and must read at least two years below grade level.   However, there are problems with this definition because a reader in second grade will have a hard time meeting the two-years-or-more-below-grade-level criterion, and IQ measured on verbal items may not be normal because these items will presumably show the same deficiencies as found in reading measures.   Thus, nonverbal IQ scores should be used for classification, but they aren’t always....

  My Writing (Wo)Manifesto  May I overcome fantasies of perfection & just write write (right) now! May I find a joyful balance between academic & creative writing & living. May I accept that living fully is a form of prewriting, of gathering stories, of filling my writer's cup. May I allow myself to make  mistakes, to write without fear, to understand that my work will always be in progress . May my words be helpful to others, may they find those that are seeking them. --Bobbi Faulkner What is Your  Manifesto? After reading Sark's Thirsty Pens, Juicy Paper  (2008), I took her up on her invitation to write a contract with myself, to write my own writer's manifesto.  My writer's manifesto is published here to the left and transcribed above to the right. It is my contract with myself, my promise to stop letting my desire to be perfect keep me from writing.  I will never get better without practice,...

A Book Review of Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper: Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It by Sark.  Three Rivers press, 2008. 185 pages. $18.95.             When I first discovered Sark, I was at once inspired, envious, and critical. I remember sitting on my best friend’s bed, covered in its usual tangle of sarongs and tapestries rather than real bed clothes, growing more incredulous as I flipped each page of Succulent Wild Woman (1997).   What kind of new-age hippie crap was this?   Someone had gotten paid to write this ?   These doodles and handwritten pages were worthy of my ultimate goal, that pinnacle of success, PUBLICATION?   But each spunky drawing and passage motivated me to continue my own writing.   Sark wrote the way I wrote, turning letters to friends into artwork, and if she could get paid for it then I could.     ...

Knowledge is in the driver's seat; Verbal Efficiency Theory Represented Concretely as a School Bus A Response to Chapter 6 of Perfett's (1985) Reading Ability : “Verbal Efficiency Theory.” see also Perfetti's (2007) "Reading Ability: Lexical Quality to Comprehension,"in Scientific Studies of Reading.   Summary and Response. In this chapter, Perfetti outlines verbal efficiency theory as a way to explain individual reading differences. He explains that reading ability is multi-faceted, and that reading can be understood in terms of cost and product (comprehension). If memory and attention is reduced, processing will be inefficient. In order for a process to be efficient, comprehension quality is considered in relation to the level of expenditure within each processing resource. Schema activation and lexical access should be ideally low in energy expenditure while propositional encoding should take the bulk of the effort. When these processes are o...

A Response to Chapter One of Reading Ability : "Reading Ability: Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Perspectives," pp. 3-10.                                   in  Charles A. Perfett i's Reading Ability .   Oxford University Press , 1985 -   Language Arts & Disciplines   -   282 pages. My Reading Response           Summary                     In chapter one, Perfetti (1985) presents a picture of reading ability in terms of the cognitive processes of reading.  Lexical access processes encompass the ability to identify words, and comprehension,  which is a multi-faceted component of reading that allows the reader to construct a text model.  Reading ability and language are related, and comprehension processes and word recognit...