Interview w/ Linnea Ehri

Teaching, Reading, and Learning: The Reading League Podcast

Linnea C. Ehri Ph.D. is an American psychologist, currently Distinguished Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Ehri received her B.S. in Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle and her M.A. in Psychology at San Francisco University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty of The Graduate Center CUNY as a Distinguished Professor in 1991, Linnea was a professor at the University of California, Davis.

Linnea has served on editorial boards of nine scientific journals. She has published over 100 research papers and edited two books. Her studies have contributed to our understanding of psychological processes and sources of difficulty in learning to read and spell.

She has received awards for distinguished research from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), American Educational Research Association, International Reading Association, and National Reading Conference. She is a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, and past president of SSSR. She was a member of the National Reading Panel that was established by the U.S. Congress to evaluate evidence indicating effective methods of teaching reading. On this panel she chaired the committee that reviewed research on phonemic awareness instruction and systematic phonics instruction.

Although Dr. Ehri has recently received Faculty Emeritus status, she continues to advise students and offer her expertise on literacy development and reading instruction. Recent publications have examined the ways in which children and young adults learning orthographic mapping and spelling.

This podcast is sponsored by Heggerty. The Heggerty curricula has 35 weeks of phonological and phonemic awareness lesson plans aligned to the science of reading. Systematic daily lessons require minimal teacher prep time and take just 10-12 minutes to complete. The Heggerty curricula is available in both English and Spanish, and it's being used by thousands of school districts across the US, Canada, and Australia. Learn more about the curricula, our intervention book, and decodable readers at heggerty.org

Further Learning and Resources from Dr. Ehri

• Ehri, L.C. (2020). The science of learning to read words: A case for systematic phonics instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), S45-S60. Special Issue: The Science of Reading: Supports, Critiques, and Questions.
• Ehri, L. (1998). Research on learning to read and spell: A personal-historical perspective. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2, 97-114.
• Ehri, L. (2005). Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. In M. Snowling & C. Hulme,(Eds.), The science of reading, a handbook (pp. 135-154). UK: Blackwell.
• Ehri, L.C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5–21.

Further Reading and Exploration

• Bhattacharya, A. & Ehri, L. (2004). Graphosyllabic analysis helps adolescent struggling readers read and spell words. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37, 331-348.
• Boyer, N., & Ehri, L.C. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440–470.
• Chambré, S.J., Ehri, L.C., & Ness, M. (2020). Phonological decoding enhances orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning in first graders. Reading and Writing, 33(5), 1133–1162.
• Gaskins, I., Ehri, L., Cress, C., O'Hara, C., & Donnelly, K. (1996). Procedures for word learning: Making discoveries about words. The Reading Teacher, 50, 312-327.
• Gonzalez-Frey, S.M., & Ehri, L.C. (2021). Connected phonation is more effective than segmented phonation for teaching beginning readers to decode unfamiliar words. Scientific Studies of Reading, 25(3), 272-285.
• Rosenthal, J. & Ehri, L. (2008). The mnemonic value of orthography for vocabulary learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 175-191.
• Sargiani, R., Ehri, L., & Maluf, M.R. (in press). Teaching beginners to decode consonant-vowel syllables using grapheme-phoneme subunits facilitates reading and spelling compared to teaching whole syllable decoding. Reading Research Quarterly.
• Shmidman, A. & Ehri, L. (2010). Embedded picture mnemonics to learn letters. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14, 159-182.

Other works mentioned by Dr. Ehri

• Noam Chomsky
• Jeanne Chall
• Phonology and the Problems of Learning to Read and Write by Liberman and Shankweiler

Linnea’s Picks

• The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton
• A Promised Land by Barak Obama