Learning to read at 4/5 or later?

[Pico2]

This is just out of curiosity. Looking at children in reception, some learn to read really quickly and others after 2 terms are still struggling with the one letter sounds. I know that many countries start formal learning later. Is there any evidence (for reading English) that those children who will spend the next couple of years struggling would do better or worse if they started at 7?

Hopefully they learn something between 4 and 7. I've not seen a struggling group being taught, but I'd find it stressful learning something I found that hard and I wonder if the gain from starting early is worth that.

Also, is there some sort of 'readiness' that comes at different ages for different children, or would those not ready at 4 still not be ready at 7 without some sort of intervention?

Research shows that television (technology) doesn't improve vocabulary and that includes DVDs intended to build vocabulary

And then some!

I assume your DS also gets some conversation and interaction from the adults around him. This can be missing in a lot of children. TV makes up most of their language input. I think he's slightly older, which might make a difference.

Am I right in thinking that new vocab only comes from conversation up to a certain point? After that it mainly comes from reading?

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5 is much younger than I thought. I thought I'd read 9. Which ties in with the 3rd grade dip.

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Thanks. That actually makes more sense. Although I assume there is probably a fair amount of variation depending on circumstance.

mrz, so what are the implications of this for those MNers of other countries who did not learn to read until age 7 or thereabouts?

(hardly any kindergartens around where I grew up and they certainly didn't teach reading)

does that mean they are deficient in vocabulary? or don't understand metaphor and idiom because they were not taught in written form from age 5?

No. Because presumably they are being read to and being taught by teachers that are specifically aiming to increase their oral language skills.

Oral conversation refers to the sort of everyday conversations you might have with a 5 year old that isn't particularly focused on teaching them anything new. A toddler might learn from that because there are lots of everyday words they don't yet know. A 5 year old would need something over and above because they have probably picked up nearly all the vocabulary they are going to from those situations.

I understand that books provide an unrivalled opportunity to learn new vocabulary. They are also very effective at exposing kids to complex grammatical structures and giving them wide general knowledge. Conversation and TV (even "educational" programmes) tend to fall far short of books in standards of vocabulary, grammar and general knowledge.

However, for children who have not yet fully mastered the mechanics of reading, there is an excellent substitute: audiobooks. (Well, best of all is an adult who can read aloud to them, but that isn't universally available to all kids, whereas audiobooks could be.)

So this particular argument in favour of requiring all children to work on learning to read from an early age doesn't move me. We could read to them or let them listen to recorded books instead. In fact, doing this would provide them with access to much more challenging content than they can access through direct reading. In nearly all cases, a child's ability to understand what she hears far surpasses her decoding skills. In short, you can read a child a more advanced book than she can read to herself.

Tackling reading this way round ensures that when the child does start learning to read, she already has many books under her belt. With a superior grasp of vocabulary, grammar and general knowledge, she's on a firmer footing when first approaching the challenge of reading.

I don't think we were arguing that as a reason for early reading.

We'd moved on a bit to vocabulary or lack of it being a barrier to comprehension at higher levels. Particularly in children from deprived backgrounds.

We went slightly off topic.

mrz, I would be interested to see where you got your crazy statistic that there is an illiteracy rate of 46% in Australia. A quick Google has given me a UNESCO report 2014 which gives a rate of 96%. Wiki has a similar result.

96% of adults can read, that is

The Unesco data refers to complete illiteracy i.e. an inability to read anything at all.

The 47% refers to functional illiteracy i.e. people are able to read to an extent but wouldn't have the reading or writing skills to cope with everyday tasks at home or work i.e. reading letters, job adverts or medication instructions accurately.

I think it correlates to the lowest or 2 lowest levels of literacy on the OECD tests.

my trio started school the year after they turned 5 (Canada, SAHM no need for nursery) at the time the flavor of the time was "whole language". learning to read by sight/memory no phonics at all. spelling tests were not emphasized as it was assumed they would have access to spell check. producing (a challenge to decipher) stories was done daily.
not all techniques are ideal for all students. my daughter did amazing at an open concept school with whole language but my son's probably would have done better with some phonics integrated earlier on.
with the open class room she could attend the reading lesson of another higher level or do her math assignment on her own in the library.

language development begins in the womb. from 30 weeks on the fetus begins to pick up on dialects.
that lack of a diverse vocabulary starts early on.

Thanks Rafals. My apologies, mrz. Those figures are astounding and very sad.

FreddFrig my data u from the World Literacy Foundation and as I said in my post refers to number of adults who are "functionally illiterate" basically adults itch the literacy skills of 5 year olds

A child growing up in a home where talk/chat/ discussion is part of everyday interaction will have a receptive vocabulary of approx 14 000 words whereas a child from a home where that kind of interaction doesn't happen will have a vocabulary of a few hundred (or less) when they start school. It's nit difficult to work out why they struggle with comprehension and communication.

Research shows that after that age new vocabulary comes mainly from reading (which stillrequires an adult to talk and explain unfamiliar words )

Other research shows a child who reads for 20 mins a day will have read 2 million words in a year

Reading and vocabulary

Watching TV, DVDs, computers, tablets and audio tapes are passive activities and lack interaction which is why they are less effective than good old chat

The good phonics program really needs to be embedded in a language rich classroom too. There's a fairly alarming tendency to push the curriculum downwards to improve results too. Particularly with the increased demands in the new curriculum. And it's wrong IMHO.

There's no need to be teaching phonics to children in nursery. Just because you can teach 3 year old to blend, doesn't mean you should routinely.

Totally agree there is no need to push phonics into nursery/pre school. Of course some children might show an interest early but I'd much prefer a focus on language, stories, songs, rhymes and talk.