Achieving the wonder of reading

Simon Marcus Gower ,  CONTRIBUTOR ,  JAKARTA   |  Sun, 03/08/2009 12:45 PM  |  Focus

How do we do it? It really is something of a miracle: The way in which young children come to terms with an alphabet and manage to deal with the abstract and initially meaningless symbols on a printed page that are individual letters.

Children quickly manage to shape those symbols, those letters, into sounds that come together to form words that in turn are meaningful. But how does this happen?

To learn to read the English language a child must work out the relationship between those letters and the sounds we utter as we read them. Learning to read, then, involves coming to grips with around 44 sounds (phonemes) of spoken English and connecting them to those 26 letters of the alphabet - no small feat of intelligence.

It is the development of understanding that the alphabetic and written spelling system of the printed word is a representation of the sound system or the phonemes of the spoken words that is so central to the whole process of learning to read and the rapid development of word recognition and so too understanding. Awareness of sounds is so critical because if a child cannot perceive the difference in the sounds of spoken words, that child will have difficulty decoding and so sounding out words at speed and accurately.

Speed and accuracy are key issues for reading. The ability to recognize and link letters and indeed words is fundamental to the whole magical process of fluent reading. Sound awareness helps achieve this speed and accuracy. It is now known that this is not just about the ear and listening to sounds, it is much more to do with the brain and how it processes information.

It is also clear that the listening and brain processes that are so fundamental to sound awareness and so reading benefit greatly from the child being read to from an early age and this means at home in the preschool years. Such children are being introduced, at an early age, to the concepts of print, connecting to sounds and so literacy activities.

The neural systems perceive the phonemes of the language and so there is the development of an understanding of the alphabetic system, which in turn leads to understanding of what is being read and learned from the reading. The sound system and so sounding out new and unfamiliar words is an important early stage in developing reading skills, but this must be linked to dealing with larger chunks of print such as whole words, roots, prefixes and suffixes and syllable patterns.

As a child develops ability to deal with these "chunks" of printed language, fluency and speed in reading develops. To develop this reading skill a key requirement is practice and exposure. Some children may only need to read a word once and they will be able to recognize it again. But others may need to see it many more times to achieve recognition. It has been estimated the average need for exposure and then recognition is between four and 10. Repeated exposure and practice are, therefore, quite critical.

Reading practice can also be accompanied by spelling instruction. This helps children see how letters combine to create sounds and exposes them directly to the printed or written letters/words, which promotes recognition. Spelling instruction can help the learning reader to see and appreciate larger units of print (those chunks noted above) such as syllables and this will assist fluency and flow in reading as the learner moves away from reading letter-by-letter to read words and even whole clauses of sentences at a glance.

All of these things are quite rudimentary but they are helping to achieve the ultimate goal of reading which is to be able to construct meaning from the printed words that have been viewed. The ability to construct meaning and so understand the written word is borne out of a variety of factors but a central factor for a child that is able to comprehend well is that child's ability to actively bring his/her own relevant knowledge to mind when reading - such that the child is relating to what is on the page via his/her existing knowledge.

The ability to read, then, links in closely with the ability to comprehend well and good comprehension is supported in various ways. As children gain word recognition they also gain in vocabulary and good comprehension can be distinctly influenced by being able to "bring back" words through the possession of a vocabulary. Vocabulary can help discern meaning of unfamiliar words - so again a process of "chunking" the language is at work.

Similarly, comprehension comes from being able to predict what is coming up. Sentences can become predictable as patterns are learned and understood. Likewise being able to summarize and clarify while reading enhances the whole process of reading. The act of reading is an active one, not a passive one and so the child that is curious and asking questions while reading is constructing meaning and so growing in understanding.

Good readers can then bring their vocabularies and background, existing knowledge to the process to enhance and ease what is going on. This helps them form a firm foundation for their increasing reading acumen. But how is this "firm foundation" fostered? That background, existing knowledge can be important. Children that have stimulating reading experiences learn faster, so the choice of materials to read with a child can be very important - that is, materials that build on previous materials and stimulate interests and associations in the child.

This means that parents have a key and critical role to play. Reading with their children regularly gives that much needed exposure and practice and the choice of stimulating and even exciting reading can be hugely beneficial. The concept of rhyming can help in sounding out words and make it exciting for the learning child.

The knowledge that is coming from reading is, though, so fundamental to the whole process. A young child that reads and then talks and thinks about the reading is a child that is stimulated and is learning. Learning through gaining new areas of knowledge and thought and learning to read by reading more.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.