A child’s reading vocabulary and his listening vocabulary will not be the same. Though he may be able to listen and understand a lot of words, he may not be able to read those same very words when presented to him in writing. Important as it is that you teach your child to read, it is equally important to feed him information by reading to him.
If a parent reads to his child every day, the child will understand and enjoy what is being read to him. The pace at which a child learns when he is read to is simply amazing.
Reading should not be a "When you feel like it" thing. Parents should read to their children whenever possible but if they can make it a point to read to them daily before they go to bed the children will enjoy it and at the same time learn many facts at a faster rate. Their listening vocabulary will be much higher than their reading vocabulary and therefore parents may read books that are motivational or biographical or whatever books that their children are interested in.
When you are driving your child to supermarket or school or anywhere for that matter you could ask him about the story you read to him the previous night. You could fill in the gaps that he may not remember. This way he is now made to recall new words you may have read to him and his vocabulary will improve at an amazing pace.
For busy parents who may not have the time to read to their children at night I suggest you read and record a story in an mp3 and let your child listen to it when he goes to bed.
Parents insist that I do exercises (school exercises) with their children. I tell them point blank that for the first two or three years I only read story books and do not do any exercise. What are exercises anyway? If the child reads every day and we gradually read books of higher grades he will automatically be able to do any exercise in the books. I began doing exercises with my first student only in the 3rd year. By this time his reading level was around grade 6 level and so was his vocabulary.
For lesson 9 click here:
4 comments:
I totally agree with this article. My son's reading performance and his ability to overcome his dyslexia would have been much harder if I had not regularly read to him. All his teachers would state he had excellent vocabulary. I think it also helped him to guess the correct words to read due to contextual clues. I believe my son would have hated reading, had we not read regularly before bedtime, and he developed the love of hearing stories.
Thank you for your comments Heidi.
Hi Uncle, I am starting to read your blog again and practicing it with my second son. Since school holiday is just right around the corner,I usually would send him to KK for a month in Effy's school to learn how to read with phonics method. But this time around, i am going to follow your lessons and teach him personally, take one hour at least from my busy schedule to be with him and do these lessons together. So far, we have covered lesson 1 to lesson 9 and he did it very very well! Thank You... I was surprise myself of Ethan's capability with your method. It was easy for him to follow and understand. And yes, i am planning to record a story in an mp3, if i could not make it home before their bedtime. And you have answered the question that I have been asking myself about doing exercises with him... So now we are just gonna read and read and read first... We are off to lesson 10 now... till then...
Hi.Sorry I did not see this until now. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to comment.
Wish you well.
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