Learning To Read - Acquiring Reading

Acquiring Reading

A child's ability to learn to read, known as reading readiness, begins in infancy, as the child begins attending to the speech signals in their environment and begins producing spoken language. Children make some use of all the material that they are presented with, including every perception, concept and word that they come in contact with; thus the environment in which a child develops affects the child's ability to learn to read. The amount of time that a child spends together with parents or other important caregivers while listening to them read is a good predictor of the level of reading that the child will attain later in life. As a child sits with a caregiver, looking at pictures and listening to stories, he or she will slowly learn that all the different lines on each page make different symbols and then that together these symbols refer to words. Taking time to read to children is the most important precursor to a child's development of reading. Preschool-aged children with limited exposure to books and reading in their home, including limited experience of being read to, are at risk of reading difficulties. For example, these children tend to have less exposure to literary phrases, such as "Once upon a time", and have smaller vocabularies, both factors that affect the ability to read by limiting comprehension of text. The environment in which a child lives may also impact their ability to acquire reading skills. Children who are regularly exposed to chronic environmental noise pollution, such as highway traffic noise, have been known to show decreased ability to discriminate between phonemes as well as lower reading scores on standardized tests.

Thus, the ideal process of what is called emergent or early literacy begins in the relationship between hearing spoken language, seeing written language and feeling loved. The positive feeling that arises from spending time with books in a loving context provides a strong foundation and intrinsic motivation for the long and cognitively challenging process of learning to read. However, reading to children and ensuring exposure to many books is not enough to prepare them for reading. Another critical skill is the ability to name letters or characters.