For decades, we’ve treated speech as a motor skill. If a child can’t produce a sound, we teach the mouth. “Put your tongue behind your teeth.” “Round your lips.” “Feel the air on your hand.” “Watch yourself in the mirror.” Speech pathologists build entire practices around it, and phonics programs lean on it constantly. The logic seems obvious. Speaking is something you do with your body, so learning to speak must be about training the body.

A new study in PNAS suggests the logic might be wrong.

A new study found something surprising: children learn words better when those words appear next to familiar ones — and the effect can still be measured in adulthood. Here's what "anchoring" means for how we teach reading.