Cognitive confusion is the common state of young persons in regard to concepts of units of writing. In the past 10 years, research has accumulated to show that all children pass through the important stage of initial cognitive confusion in learning to read. Children often confuse "writing" with "drawing,""letter" with "number," and so on.…

Examination of cognitive prerequisites for the acquisition of reading skills identified two kinds of conceptual representations of language activities--functional and technical concepts. English-as-a-second-language students can transfer these concepts to second-language literacy, but attention must be given to orthographic coding principles of…