Ken Goodman

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Ken Goodman started researching and his research plan won him an assistant professor research award from Wayne State. The award provided him the opportunity to take a semester off from teaching and host a conference. He later decided that he should publish a book based on the conference. The conference and the following book were called The Psycholinguistic Nature of the Reading Process. After the publication of the book, he spent the summer in Ithaca working on other research projects. He started to create a model of reading where he was inspired by Noam Chomsky’s work. His model of reading was defined as psycholinguistic as well as sociolinguistic. He defined reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game and he presented his model at AERA. He also published his work in the Journal of the Reading Specialist.

He benefited a lot from professional organizations and conferences where he had the chance to meet with others and share his work. He has been a member of important commissions and comities. He was the president of the International Reading Association, the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy and the Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking. The National Council of Teachers of English was a significant part of his professional life.

His primary goal in researching on the reading process was to offer teachers a way to understand reading. He wanted them to have the basic knowledge on reading so that they can build upon that knowledge to teach their students. Teachers started to pay attention to his work throughout the country but his work was also appreciated in other countries like Australia, New Zealand, England, and Canada. He got in touch with teachers all over the world to enhance his knowledge about reading.

His three books were published in Canada. What's Whole in Whole Language was the result of his presentations in Canadian conferences. Then he also published the English version which sold 250,000 copies. The book was also translated to Spanish and French. Venezuela, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, Japan and China were other countries where his book received attention and appreciation.

He published Ken Goodman on Reading which is his way of telling what he had learned throughout his work on the reading process. He shared his knowledge on reading with his readers but the book didn’t stop him from learning new things. He retired from the University of Arizona in August 1998.