The reading instruction experiment described in this report is based on the theory that, if a child learns to talk without formal instruction solely by being exposed to language and if written language is to be considered as an independent system, a child could learn to read at the same age and in the same way as he is learning to talk, solely by being exposed to written language. He would then attack the written material, forming hypotheses, building models, and discovering the code of the

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... ten language-7its morphemic, syntactic, and semantic systems. The author describes 14 months of work teaching a two-year old to read. Details of the procedures and the results are provided. After this period, the child is capable of storing, analyzing, and comparing written words and arrives at a knowledge of the grapho-phonemic correspondences that is a prerequisite for being able to decode any written message.