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Brillkids Little Reader, New Teaching-Reading System
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Can
preverbal babies learn to read? And if so, how?
From
as young as 4 months old, babies
are capable of learning to read - and they
do it by learning whole words. Whole-word reading
describes the process whereby a person recognizes
a word at sight, without sounding out the individual
letters.
According to
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff,
coauthors of Einstein Never Used Flash Cards,
"[Whole-word reading] is simply memorization and
has little merit beyond the performance."
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This conclusion
is drawn at the end of an anecdote from Hirsh-Pasek
about a reading toddler. The child read a set of words
shown to him by his mother, but says Hirsh-Pasek, when
asked to read some different words, he became flustered.
Write the authors, "He had learned how to memorize words,
perhaps from their shape… but he had not really learned
to read."
Critics of early reading
tend to pit whole-word reading ("bad") against phonics-based
reading ("good"). Hearing their arguments, you'd be
forgiven for thinking it's a case of either-or. In reality,
almost all children learning to read depend on both
strategies. Whole-word reading is easier, so most children
learn their first words this way, before they know the
sounds letters make. Many kindergarten and lower-grade-school
teachers teach some sight words before starting on phonics.
When children learn to
read whole words at what is considered a normal age,
no one criticizes them. But some people find it unsettling,
"wrong" even, for a very young child to be reading -
and so they attack the method in order to prove that
the child isn't "really" reading.
Whole-word reading is
just the first rung on the ladder of learning
to read - as we can see from an analogy drawn by
another early-learning critic, David Elkind. Elkind
compares reading whole words to understanding the concept
of nominal numbers (numbers as names) - the first rung
on the ladder of learning math. He compares reading
phonetically (sounding out words) to understanding the
concept of ordinal numbers (numbers as part of a sequence),
and reading phonemically (recognizing that letters can
be pronounced differently depending on context) to understanding
the concept of interval numbers (numbers as abstract
concepts).
There comes a point at
which reading cannot progress without phonics - there
are just too many words to rely on memory alone. Children
must move on to phonetic reading followed by phonemic
reading in order to become successful readers. But just
as we do not criticize a child who reads phonetically
but has not graduated to the phonemic level, so it seems
unfair to pour scorn on the abilities of a toddler who
simply has not graduated from whole-word reading to
phonetic reading.
Another concern expressed
by critics of whole-word reading is that children will
not know to read words from left to right. When choosing
a TV- or computer-based program for your child, be sure
to select one that includes an arrow for indicating
the direction of reading. If you're using cards or books,
it's a good idea to run your finger under each syllable
of every word as you read out words.
Amazingly, babies taught
to read whole words often begin figuring out the rules
of phonics for themselves - in much the same way as
babies learning their native language spontaneously
figure out grammar rules. A
new teaching-reading system for babies includes
a specially designed phonics program aimed at facilitating
the young child's natural ability at decoding words.
More proof that when it comes to teaching reading, it's
not a case of either-or - you can teach whole words
and phonics right from the get-go.
See BrillKids
Little Reader to learn more about teaching your
baby to read.
Visitors
who read this article also read these:
- How
to Teach Your Baby to Read
- Benefits
of Teaching Your Baby To Read
- Infant
Potty Training
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