Diane McGuinness
(1933- )
Diane McGuinness is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida. A cognitive psychologist, she has written extensively on learning disabilities and early reading instruction.
The title of her 1997 classic text, What Our Children Can't Read, and What We Can Do About It echoes Rudolf Flesch's 1955 plea to restore phonics instruction in American schools.
She developed a lengthy list of pronunciations for English phonemes, both single-letter and multi-letter phonograms. She gives only a single "as in" key word for each, although most of these phonograms have multiple pronunciations. She does not include /c/, and gives for /g/ the hard sound as in the key word get. Sadly get is in violation of the phonics rule that g and c are soft /j/ and /s) when followed by e or i.
Despite these minor errors, her list is more comprehensive than earlier teachers.
