What’s happening in a child’s mind when they’re learning to read? What’s the process they go through as they transition from a nonreader to a reader? Naturally, there are plenty of theories and lots of research. Let’s review some theories of how children learn to read before looking at a generally accepted explanation and what some recent research says about how they should learn.
How Do Children Learn to Read: Environment or Guesswork?
Some theorize that children develop the ability to read naturally, as they do with speech. This theory suggests that a child with access to a selection of books will develop basic reading skills over time. Other theories suggest that reading is clever guesswork on the part of children, who use contextual clues to narrow down the meaning of words on the page.
The ability to speak generally comes years before the ability to read, but these two essential skills develop in dissimilar ways. Children mimic the spoken sounds they hear back to others and the more accurate those sounds are—meaning, the more like the actual words they are—the more excited the people around them act and the more positive reinforcement the child receives. Most children do not easily make the connection between the letter they see and the sound they hear at first, however.
Reading, by the Numbers
For most children, the process of developing the ability to read goes something like this:
- The child becomes aware of sounds—a phase known as phonological processing.
- The child’s brain associates a sound with a letter.
- Through repetition, the child begins to understand the combinations of letters as words and their meanings.
This condensed explanation has exceptions, of course, and a plethora of research has been conducted and is still being conducted in order to understand how children of all abilities learn to read.
A Focus on Phonics in Reading Instruction
How do children learn to read in a formal educational setting? As university professor emeritus and former director of reading for Chicago Public Schools Timothy Shanahan told U.S. News & World Report in 2021, “Beginning reading instruction needs to emphasize decoding—letters, sounds, phonemic awareness, sounding out words, spelling, and oral reading fluency—and reading comprehension.” Reading comprehension includes spoken language, vocabulary, and strategies for students to understand what they’re reading.
Researchers have compared reading to working out written code, with specific letter combinations representing specific sounds. When a child is taught how to break the code, they become able to read. The research illustrates that children who have trouble learning phonics will correspondingly have trouble learning to read. Hence, the guiding wisdom is to place a heavy emphasis on phonics in reading instruction.
According to Education Week in 2019, research indicates that “reading is not a natural process” and “teaching systematic phonics … is the most reliable way to make sure that they learn how to read words.” With systematic phonics, teachers use an organized method to teach children how to read. Some of the principles are:
- Teaching students every letter-sound correspondence in order.
- Ensuring every student grasps a specific letter-sound correspondence before moving on to the next one.
- Telling students exactly what letters and sounds correspond instead of asking them to guess or work out the answers for themselves.
Be the One Who Teaches Them to Read
Reading and writing are fundamental skills that help determine our ability to be successful throughout our lives. The University of Texas Permian Basin’s CAEP-accredited online Master of Arts in Literacy program was designed for people like you who wish to empower young learners with these essential abilities. View our program curriculum.
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Sources:
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-do-kids-learn-to-read-what-the-science-says/2019/10
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/how-children-learn-read
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/when-do-kids-learn-to-read