Learning to read- More difficult in English than in other languages?

[Benedikta]

Hi,I've got four kids. My elder boys are 11 and 9 years old and started school back home in Europe ( English is not our first language).We are currently living in Canada. One could already read when he entered school the other learned it immediately afterwards - in late fall both were fluent readers.

My daughter now is in first grade- has been for more than two months and visited kindergarten before. And she faces huge difficulties- and honestly, I can not help her. In my language you speak the way you write a word- so it really is not that difficult when you know the letters. My daughter knows all the letters- but I think it is so difficult because English is written differently than it is spoken. For example, in to knit you do not pronounce the "k", in knight you do not pronounce it, you pronounce it "nait "- so it really seems to me to be very confusing.

Could you please tell me of your experiences? How long does it take , learning to read adequately in English?

regards, Benedikta

Hi Benedikta, English is great isn't it ? There are so many words which don't make sense. eg bought, through, trough...

How old is first grade?

Goodness its difficult! When its not your first language it must be more so, my DD who is yr 1 of an English school was taught phonics in receoption so sounds of letters and some blends such as ch and ou. She is now beginning to learn about the names of letters eg: 'Kay' for K when she knows it as 'ku'also about silent letters such as the ones you have pointed out .
Alot of english words can be broken down into their consituent letters and 'sounded out' but that would depend on wether your DD is being taught phonetically.
probably not much help but the way most British children are taught may differ from the Canadian way.

Yes, learning to read in English is def more difficult than in other languages. this is why it can take ages. I'm Italian and honestly I've never heard my friends being concerned about their children's ability to read. It is something that happnes in just a few months. here it takes ages, at least for ds, and I find it vey difficult to help him.

I only have experience of learning to read in English, but have learned a little of other languages as an adolescent/adult, and really feel that English must be one of the hardest languages in the world to learn to read, because it is so un-phonetic. French and Italian are both so much easier - once you have learned any sound combination you can pronounce anything. But English is so irregular in it's pronunciation. I wish your children luck, because it is hard. Having said that my ds learned quite fast, and is a fluent reader at age 6, but I think he would have done it faster if we had been Italian/French/Spanish/German.....

I teach, and yes, English is very very difficult. There are so many anomalies, and many of them must just be learned, word by word, that it can take a long time. (Such as, the 'o' sound can be made by 'oa' as in goat, or 'ow' as in 'bow' or 'o-e' as in 'hope' etc.) Different children also 'click' with their reading at very different times. I would hope that a child would be reading fairly fluently by the age of 7.

English is really hard because England got invaded by so many people. Each group of people ie. The Celts, Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Angles, Normans contributed to our language. Also a lot of words come from countries that the English invaded like "Bungalow" comes from Hindi.

Anyway I suggest that you get "The Jolly Phonics Handbook". It you can get it on Amazon quite cheaply.

If you want a free guide to teaching someone to read in English this might help

www.catphonics.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

This website is good and has lots of resources.

www.dyslexics.org.uk/

I think what helps is good sight recognition of 200 or so frequently used key words.

It is more difficult if English is not your mother tongue of course because you cannot guess in the same way a native speaker can what word might make sense. So a native speaker seeing the word "moat" in a story about a knight and a castle would probably be able to guess the word in context and pronounce it correctly whereas your daughter might not. So it is harder for her. It will come right with time I am sure.

Have you spoken to the teacher? She may have some good tips

I suspect that there is a close correlation betwen the later school starting age in some of Scandanavia and the phonetic nature of the language.

LOL califrau
(I would like to point out that I didn't have any problem at learning to read in English, I was ten when I started to learn it, and like any other second language it is the pronunciation the real problem ). But ds (who is not a 100% bilingual but nearly there) is taking ages to learn how to read in English (he is 5 and started reception in Janaury). Mind you that I also believe that a six yrs old is on average more ready to learn how to read and write than a 4 yr old. But this is not a popular stance in the UK

Ladymuck, yes, possibly. Primary school starts at 6 in Italy, and as far as I can remember, it took only a few months to learn how to read fluntly. Never heard of reading levels until I became a mother in the UK!!!

fluntly? , fluently

Quick derail of the thread: How are you going to keep up his English when you're back in Italy Franca? Aren't you due back any time now?

Benedikta have you tried www.starfall.com?

hi sssandy!
we are moving back before Christmas (probably the 22nd, when school breaks up for the holidays).
At first we contemplated the possibility of sending them (dd is 3 and a half,and her English is v. good) to an English school, there are in fact quite a few in Milan. I visited the one considered the best, but we decided not to take this route, for various reasons. The cost, the fact that they'd have to travel 1 hr to go and 1hr to come back every single day (too young imo to travel for such a long time in the Milanese traffic), the fact that they'd never study Dante , for instance, and the very important (to us) fact that the social composition would have been too one-dimensional, either expats or Milanese upper classes of a certain kind...
So, I was thinking to look for an english babysitter. Don't know where to start though. An au pair would be lovely, but we are moving into a two bedroom flat for now, so no place for an au pair. heeeeeelp .
how's your dd feeling at schoo, a bit better I hope?

. After visiting the school (which was nice, if only a bit "too much"), I thought omg, they'll never study Leopardi .
Now, how do I go about looking for an English babysitter I don't know!

YOu should be able to advertise for one at the local universities, no? Or is there an expat milanese website? I am sure Milan must be full of English girls or boys.