I pronounce "==" as "equalsequals", sort of slurring the two words together for speed, so they sound like all one word. This is consistent with the way I treat

I pronounce "==" as "equalsequals", sort of slurring the two words together for speed, so they sound like all one word. This is consistent with the way I treat the bitwise-versus-boolean operator confusion, e.g. "&" is "and" while "&&" is "andand". I agree with your main point, though, that failure to understand assignment is one of the biggest failure points for beginners. What programmers need to be able to do is trace through the execution of a program in their head, thinking "once this statement executes, the state will change in so-and-such way." If I had to teach introductory programming again, I would focus more on having people fiddle around with variables in a REPL, just to get a feel for that sort of thing.