Linguistic Competence, *Linguistics,

This paper surveys the principles and findings from the field of linguistics that have been brought to bear on questions dealing with learning to read, the analysis of the reading process, and the sources cf reading failure. It is intended to guide the reader through the significant areas in the literature and to note specific works. Section 1 pre,sents the trends in the rapidly changing field of linguistics; Section 2 describes the rationale for the "linguistic method, " which represents only one approach that might be derived from linguistics. Sections 3 and 4 deal with areas that have only distant implications for classroom practice, but which can contribute to greater understanding of how the reading process is learned and carried out; the language competence of beginning readers and the relationship between spoken and written language. Section 5 gives examples of how such linguistic considerations have bee