Reading the Letters but Not Understanding the Sentence

Twenty-six percent of adults across OECD countries decode letters flawlessly yet cannot synthesize two paragraphs. This book dismantles the binary myth of literacy, revealing Gough and Tunmer's Simple View of Reading: comprehension equals decoding multiplied by language understanding, not added. From PIAAC's 2023 survey spanning 31 countries to Recht and Leslie's 1988 baseball experiment, the evidence is stark. Japan's 10 percent low-performers versus Chile's 53 percent reflects not intelligence but when secondary schooling arrived.

You'll learn:

- Why fluent reading aloud guarantees nothing about meaning

- How domain knowledge outweighs raw reading skill

- The self-explanation threshold that exposes your true rung