Learning to Read - doing 'research', please help

[JaneS]

Hi everyone,

I'm a PhD student studying literacy (including psychology of reading), though not in a modern context. I am dyslexic myself and learnt to read quite oddly because of that and some vision disturbances, so it's difficult for me to use my own experiences as a blueprint.

I would really like to know when you (if you know) and your DCs learned to read, age-wise. And did they have any problems? What did they make of phonics - did they struggle to understand that letters represent sounds, or did this seem to come naturally? Any memories of things they did/said about books and reading that seem strange/quirky to you as an adult?

Would love to hear from you if you have a moment.

Thanks,

LRD.

I've left a message as to where we all are now. we'd love to see you. There are a few of us all meeting up as well as we are all in the same neck of the woods!

I learned to read as soon as I started school (born late 60s), even though English was not spoken at home. I was always really good with reading/literacy/words and could read very fast and remember all spellings (dss are the same) but looking back I don't remember ever focussing on comprehension.

Also I picked up languages really easily at school - was v good at French, German and Latin but by the time I started my degree in MFL everything slowed down and although I could read very easily I struggled with the spoken language and with writing in that language.

Ok, just asking questions as they occur - I never expected to get such a lot of responses, it's great!

Devexity - interesting what you say about your DS being a symbolic pattern person - English isn't great for patterns in some places (you know - words like 'yacht', homophones and so on) - did he find those tricky or did he seem to put them together ok?

Pippa - does your dyslexic son still struggle with phonetic stuff? Eg., if you asking him what 'boat' without the 'b' is, can he get it right?

There's a theory that I understand is the current front-runner about reading, which posits that people access the sound of a word even when they're reading silently, and even if they don't really need phonics to decode it (ie., because they've already learnt the 'picture' that word makes). Obviously, this isn't how profoundly deaf people learn, so it's not completely universal, but it is something I'd be very interested in understanding more about.

FWIW, I didn't learn to read until I was 7 and a half, which I really hated as I loved books. Then one day it suddenly 'clicked' and I never looked back. I was learning 'look and say' and used to get into trouble for trying to sound out words, but oddly nowadays I'm a fast reader and scan very fast, which are attributes that I've been told don't often go with strong phonetic processing.

I'm trying to think about how people used to read, and what it would have been like living in a society where literacy was unusual, but becoming massively more widespread, very fast.

acorntree, when you say you still read/spell by the shape of the word - how do you know this? I know that sounds like a stupid question but I'm really curious - I find it hard to know exactly how I read things. Could you describe what it feels like?

mrsboring - really interesting about the alphabet making a big difference. I find that myself - I struggled hugely with Greek and my DP is Russian.

Did you find it harder to learn vocabulary, do you know? Or were you happy just learning it aurally and bypassing (so to speak) the visual 'reminder' on the page?

cory - I am always madly jealous of bilinguals, very exciting!

DD started learning to read by playing with foam letters. she coudl recognise them and fetch the right one with a bit of practice 17-18mo....though her speech is still very slow and though she read her first word (popshop, from the Cbeebies logo on my laptop) age 19mo basically she is only learning to read at the speed of learning to talk....she can pronounce all of the alphabet and recognise the letters with a reasonable level of reliability..which i have sounded phonetically and with actions, and we still play with the foam letters. Linking to the words in books is proving harder, as she often knows 'her' word for things eg .'ock' for sock - so gtting her to pronounce the 'sss' at the start doesn't give her any clue to the word....she recognises some words by sight 'up', 'go', Ponk'....At tthe moment, when we read together, i try to get her to 'read' al the words she knows how to say (which is acutally more to get her to talk more, than anything else)

I once taught english to chinese kids, the key part was using actions to represent as much as possible becuase it was more fun, and helped them learn better...also flashcards, songs, books, tc etc - there just isn't a wrong way, unless its a boring way! those same kids learned the chinese phonetic system in the same way from somene else!

Teaching English to Chinese kids would be really interesting!

Mind you (grouchy, me), I don't believe there isn't a wrong way to teach. I think some children - not all - really, really can't cope with some methods.

I learned to read before I went to school at 4.8, after spending a lot of time (eagerly) playing school with my big sisters. When not asleep I spell very well. Early 1970s. Peter and Jane.

DS1 wasn't keen on reading. He knew quite a few of the simple phonics sounds before he went to school at 4.8 but could barely read anything other than his name and crucial words like "school", "Dr Who" and mummy/daddy/brother's name. He was just not interested. Started reading scheme books at 5.2 (jelly and bean then ORT). Decided he did want to read and made rapid progress. At 6 is now reading very happily on ORT level 6, which is a little above average for his age.

DS2 very enthusiastic. Not at school yet. Nearly four. Knows all the simple letter sounds and some more complicated ones. Can read some words mainly by whole word recognition but can spell out simple words. Generally very switched on. In recent months has become an avid watcher of alphablocks on CBeebies which has helped him with the harder sounds and the magic e.

As another child of the 60s I learnt to read using a system called ITA, initial teaching alphabet, which I think has been largely discredited. Luckily I didn't suffer any problems and was reading at five, devouring everything the local library possessed very soon afterwards.

My DS also learnt at five, his school used Oxford Reading Tree. He made good progress and was reading Harry Potter by age seven. Last time I can remember being told his reading age at primary it was about five years above his chronological age.

I remember one of DS's friends at nursery was reading adult books on planes at three!

LRD, I was, but haven't been for a while - realised I wanted out when the perfect job in DH's university came up, and I filled in the application, talked to enthusiastic HoD, and realised I didn't even want to post it!

Did most of my work on book culture - pre-print, but used modern literacy theory to help explain findings.

Gosh. I will have to try really hard not to wonder who you are now ... I work on medieval too!

It's so interesting, but does seem odd that lots of academics don't seem to question their assumptions about how people might have been learning to read - eg., someone recently who had a really fascinating theory about the Ormulum that was completely literacy-based, and I was just itching to talk cognitive processing with him!

No - he only ever used to have issues the first time he saw a very odd word like 'yacht.' He became a sight-and-context reader (if that makes sense) very rapidly.

I spent some time being professionally fascinated with emerging mass literacy: all that gorgeously demented activity from the early Religious Tract Society and the divine (almost literally) Hannah More whose Cheap Repository Tracts sold millions of copies in a decade during which the population of England was less than 17 million.

Before (and during the emergence of) mass literacy there was, of course, an incredibly dense print culture - ballad street hawkers and crowds round print shop windows and circles of listeners around readers and the like - all of which indicate (to me) a society thoroughly versed in decoded and encoding meaning. A very allusive culture.

Of course then you track off into literacy as a group activity that blends into a culture of individual readers etc etc. But it's all very good fun.

Sorry for rambling!

Oh, it was ages ago, LRD - got PhD in 2000. Email me on myusername at gmail dot com if you want - don't think my work (mostly codicology) would have much to offer you, but feel free.

Interested in what you said about fast reading and scanning and poor phonetic processing - I'm the same, and aam quite "visual" in my approach to words - am a v. good speller (not typist!) but find it hard to spell without writing things down.

The penny didn't drop for me until I was about 7. I hated the 'exceptions' I would argue that a rule isn't a rule and can't be taught as such if there are so many exceptions. I was a pain in the arse a bit precocious. If the teachers had explained the concept before tryong to teach me how to read, I think I would have been more co-operative, I hate being led by the nose. I want to know why, why does the shape 'S' translate to a 'esssss' sound? Who picked it? I must have been hugely irritating for my teachers.

Eventually though I gave in got it and within a year was helping other children in my class, the teacher used to get them to read to me so she could get through class reading time quicker.

I am a very fast reader as an adult, very good at spelling (usually...) and a bit of a pedant, tbh. Although I have no problem with abbreviation, obv.

But put me in front of numbers and I go to pieces. Numbers do not make sense.

LRD hmm I don't really know - re learning vocabulary. I seem to be really quite good at this in general, and still learnt pretty fast in Greek and to a certain extent Russian. But whether it was as fast as, say, French which is easy to read is hard to say. Oddly, I would say I find German vocabulary hardest to remember and that is very regularly phonetic.

I used to think I had a visual picture of words I'd learnt but thinking about it I'm not so sure that's true. I think I have an auditory memory, and often also associate the feel of the word in my mouth too (particularly in Russian with its more foreign sounds). I might then have a very strong visual of the word, with the letters that make that particular sound standing out most prominently. I learn exceptions and unusual things really well (which is probably why I struggle with German - there are fewer exotic sound/letter combinations to hook onto - I really struggle with the common prefixes and compounds of really boring things - anfangen, abholen that sort of thing. But Schlussel (key) and huebsch (pretty) [apologies for lack of umlauts] have got that nice pinched u umlaut in them and a good squashy German sch so I like them. They are cute and there is a mnemonic which will hang off them - the tiny U sound in Schluessel is like a keyhole, huebsch is like pouting in front of a mirror)

This has been really interesting, thank you. I hope it is of some help to you.

trying not tryong

Dev, I'd argue that the emergence of mass literacy began before print culture; print was a response to a demand, rather than a main trigger.

Hi LittleRedDragon,
you asked:
"..when you say you still read/spell by the shape of the word - how do you know this? I know that sounds like a stupid question but I'm really curious..."

I've noticed that I can quite happily read a book and not be able to tell anyone the name of a character - I just know the shape of the name - for example - I just had to look a couple of times to get your name because I had registered it as a long name starting with something like LilliPut...

If I take the time to pay attention to the letters then I know what the name is, but that comes second.

If I spell a word I've only read in passing I'll get the shape right but not always the letters, for example - e, o and a are the same shape and often play the same role in words. Actually my spelling is good now because I have learnt all the rules and learnt all the words, but new words still defeat me.

I remember something from a lecture in second language acquistion - if you cover over the lower half of a word, it's still quite easy to read it, but if you cover over the top half it's much more difficult. At least I think that's what I remember...

I posted earlier in the thread. My DD is very visual. She says she pictures the words in her head and then spells them. She is very good at spelling dinosaur names backwards...and correctly. I have to write the word down to check. She is primarily a sight word reader, but I'm guessing she 'chunks' unfamiliar words. She was also very early at jigsaw puzzles- she could look at the shape of the piece...rather like looking at the shape of the word and remembering it.
Her other interesting thing was that she learnt to read as she learnt to speak. She could read longer sentences than she could speak at one point!
Apart from the initial A-Z phonics, she'd never had any advanced phonics (blends, digraphs etc) teaching until she went to school.

I learned to read really early. I had older brothers and sisters (was youngest of 6) and one sister always played teacher with me (she was 8 years older than me). I don't remember if I did phonics, but I remember family talking about me reading the newspaper at 5. I know that's no big deal nowadays, but in a poor household with no real academic bent, it was seen as a big thing.

DD (now 9) had early reading skills, pre-school decoding and writing skills with sophisticated phonetic spelling at a very early age. She was a great communicator and really took to phonics. She still spells incredibly well now (got all HFW this year...the only one in her class, which sounds conceited, but I was really proud of her, thought why, I don't know. It was chuff all to do with me!).

DD went off reading once she'd grasped the basics and even hated me reading to her once she was 7 and fluent herself. The last 6 months she's really started to love reading again and has polished off the odd book in a day (not dreadfully complex, but age 7+ so not too basic). She isn't into large books even now, which I find odd as I was a great lover of the epic novel. Still am, in fact.

I'm mid forties, so was school age early 70's. Can't wait to read this whole thread, but have to sort out my ironing now. Hope this helps.

mrsboring - thanks, that is great. Lots for me to think about there - glad you find it interesting too! I actually thought this thread would get about 3 replies and I'd have to put it in chat and bump vigorously!
It is very exciting to hear from someone who's learnt three alphabetic systems and is a) English-speaking and b) not bilingual - it's pretty rare!

Thanks habbibu, I might email if you're sure.

I'm not visual at all (not sure if I said that clearly), I'm strong phonetic - actually, both the ed. psychs who diagnosed me with dyslexia and an optician both think there's no logical reason why I learnt to read at all. However, I think the visual has a part to play as well.

The thing about covering the bottom or top half of words - this is of course what people like Malcolm Parkes are talking about when they say that the 'important' elements of letters become concentrated at the minim-line. It helps you run your eye along the line, but it's a right pain in serifed textura! (Or, er, so my thesis will argue ... we'll see ...)

acorn - thanks, that makes a lot of sense!

Lio (see, I'm useless at visual - I could say your name out loud, but can't spell it now I've scrolled away from it!) - thanks, and for your earlier post. I'm always interested in people who are good at the visual stuff. To me it is like magic, or a sixth sense. The spelling backwards thing sounds great - did she just start doing that unprompted?!

Oh, textura. Bloody hell, that takes me back. Yes, for all earlier hands are neat and pretty, they're a bugger to read in some ways. I stuck to late C14th/C15th.

And yes, do email. I'll warn you, I'm very rusty at all this.

Both dd and I are like Acorn too. I read things and have no clue how to pronouce them but know what they mean from the context, obv not so much now as know lots more words. Dd is the same and will quite happily make up a nonsence word that has the same start and end letters as the word in the sentence and she will quite happily explain what the word means. Neither of us were/are good spellers at school either tho I have taught myself through a mixture of phonics and 'it doesnt look right' methd.

I learned to read when I was about 5. I have 2 older brothers who both learned earlier than that. My mother made a conscious effort to teach them.

We didn't 'do' phonics. Learned the letter names rather than sounds. And "look and say". My oldest brother was very good at reading. Basically, my mother says that she labelled everything. Put signs up all over the place. i.e. "Now take your nappy off" on the inside of the bedroom door, so my older brother would read it and take his nappy off (though he might just as easily have remembered as read it).

My middle brother was less fluent initially (though still good). He has what might be seen as mild dyslexia. Never diagnosed, but always had difficulty with transposing letters when writing. He was (and is) rather averse to people pleasing - announced to my mother "I don't know M for Michael".

By the time I came along she'd kind of been there, done that, so didn't take as much time teaching me. When I started school I wasn't reading, but did pretty quickly and you wouldn't have any idea from our academic progress which one of us read first/most fluently initially.

DD learned to read after goign to school. She knew her letter sounds (letterland) but picked up Jolly Phonics quickly. Started to blend sounds and read properly by about the first half term of Reception. Reads well in advance of her age.

DS1(4) is different - he has learned to read, but pretty much self taught (bit of help from dd). And rather than naturally finding phonics the route to reading, he seemed to learn on more of a look and say model - recognised words without breaking them down into component sounds i.e. Spiderman, pirate, Up, Shaun the Sheep (he's very keen on films. I think he mostly learned by using dh's phone to go on flixster/you tube and search for film trailers). At the same time though he watched Superwhy and Fun with Phonics on kids tv. He starts school in September.