beetiger | Little Reader

projectmothra is sight-reading some phenomenal number of words these days. He's just randomly walking around places, trying to read signs, and getting them kind of right more often than not. (It say "Please Flush"! This store is "Closed on Sunday"! "Men"! That the bathroom of going with Daddy!" That lady's shirt saying "Soccer"!) It's kind of boggling. He'd been "playing" our Apples to Apples set by trying to read the cards, so we just bought him Apples to Apples Junior so he'd be able to get more choices like "Hot Wheels Cars" and "Cowboys" and fewer like "Henry Mancini" and "Adolf Hitler".

In any case, as I mentioned, his sight reading vocabulary is huge, but he doesn't have any interest in phonetics/sounding out words. He knows all his letters and the primary sounds they make, but he's somewhere between uninterested and incapable of "sounding out" a word even if I guide him heavily through it. He'd rather I tell him the word so he remembers it next time he comes across it.

My friends who know more about Early Education than I do: should I be fussing about trying to help him get the sounding out concept, or should I just let him build an arsenal of sight-read words and not fuss about it?

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I'm trying to imagine the kid-- in his antithesis-of-National-Socialist-ideals home context-- actually saying "Adolf Hitler," and for some reason it's really funny.

My MIL is a K-1 teacher. She taught my husband to read by showing him words on road signs and other sight reading. I'm assuming at some point that he worked up to sounding out words and reading that way, but he was reading by the time he was 3. My older daughter has known her alphabet (including sounds) since before she was two, but I dropped the ball on teaching her stuff when my younger daughter was born, so she's still mainly sight-reading the words she already knew (and her vocabulary isn't nearly as vast). However, she is now sounding out words (when she's in the mood), which I thought she'd never be interested in (she was the same about words, just wanted me to tell her what they were). So, I wouldn't worry about the sounding out concept, I bet he'll start doing it when he's good and ready for it. In the meantime, keep showing him more words. :)

There's two schools of thought on this one.

One says that the alphabet is the building material for all language, and that all reading should be taught phonetically. The other emphasizes sight words as being every bit as important, because let's face it, most readers don't stop and sound out the words they read - their sight vocabulary is vast enough that they don't have to. The only time adults sound things out is when they come across a word that they don't know how to pronounce, and the sounding-out is an attempt to come up with a pronunciation that will give a clue to word origin and thence to meaning.

I subscribe to the second theory. Phonetics is not without its value, and when learning to spell it is extremely important; but if your son is approaching reading successfully from the sight-word direction, there's no reason to get him to stop. He's already discovering the learning method that works best for him, and I'm always in favour of encouraging individual learning styles. At some point in the future, he'll look back and say, "Oh, that's why that word is written that way! The letters go together to make those sounds!" He has skipped that step for the moment, but if he doesn't need it, then more power to him. He's still learning to read.

From a psychological standpoint, the idea that one must build up using the building blocks doesn't hold water. Adult brains work that way, sometimes, because we train them to; but kids' brains usually don't work on a building-block model. They're much more likely to be intuitive learners. One concept doesn't necessarily flow logically from a previous concept in a child's mind. One of the primary functions of school is to train kids to think in what we see as logical patterns - a habit of thought more suited to older children than very young ones. There's no reason to circumvent his intuition in that way. He doesn't need the building blocks to figure out written language, so don't worry about it. When he's ready to make those connections, he will, and in the meantime he's linguistically way ahead of the game.

I don’t know much about early childhood education, but I know a fair amount about linguistics and writing systems and the psychology of perception (and a teensy little bit about the neurology of perception), and I promise you that sight-reading is perfectly fine, and won’t get in his way later on. He needs to eventually be able to sound out completely unfamiliar words when he comes across them, but really, adults with good reading skills only read a word letter-by-letter if they don’t know it already. We pick out words based on some combination of general shape and recognizing the combinations of letters, but the latter case isn’t sounding out the word phonetically, it’s knowing instantly that the word house corresponds to the letter-pattern h-o-u-s-e (which you can quickly distinguish from l-o-u-s-e because it’s slightly shorter) in the same way that a literate Chinese speaker knows instantly that it corresponds to the stroke-pattern 家.

Yes, it’s really important to be able to sound out new words, but that’s one of those things that can come on its own once you have enough words memorized by sight. And being able to sound out new words letter-by-letter, while it lets you get through a short job application if you have to, is not adequate on its own (in my opinion) for real, fluent literacy of the sort that you’re used to in your social circle.

He’s gonna be fine!

One thing that occurs to me as useful is to give him lots of material that’s a little bit beyond his current abilities, but that he can get with a stretch. Material he’s mostly familiar with, but with some unfamiliar words (and some context to help him figure them out). Apples to Apples is a great idea. Another would be to see how much of a kids’ movie he can get with the sound off and subtitles on. (I’d bet you’d need to introduce him to the movie that way, though; it’s probably not something to try with a movie he’s already used to.) I’d encourage you to mix a little of what you read in, even though that’s going to be generally way over his abilities; I bet part of why he’s excited about signage is that it’s not contrived, but language written as adults use it, and being able to figure out a headline (or even a few important words) in the newspaper Mommy’s reading or the subject of the email that Daddy’s about to send would be pretty cool for him.

Do you do crossword puzzles? You might want to start — doing them around him will create all sorts of opportunities for talking about words and letters, even if the puzzle itself is way beyond him, and will also give him a model for looking at words in a different way than he’s doing now. (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what he’s doing now, but I’m all for versatility and looking at things from new perspectives.)

How old is he now? I think that you should never push a child into learning things they aren't interested in. Of course, that will only last until he gets into school, where they force feed education into children rather than letting them learn things that they are interested in. Eventually, he will want to sound out words because there will be a book he is interested in. I personally would sound out the words that he wants you to read. That will help him get into the idea that words are made up of sounds and each letter contributes to the word as a whole.
Of course, I am not an education major, this is just my own opinion based on reasearch that I did when I wanted to homeschool a while back.

First, I want to say that I’m enjoying this thread quite a bit. It’s encouraging to see how other parents have nurtured their children’s intellectual development.

Words are messages from one mind to another. The fact that you’re reading these words gives you the power to know what I think on this subject. That your son has a vast sight-reading vocabulary makes me believe that he’s got the words-as-clues concept down. Of course, it’s so much easier to ask the All-Knowing Mommy and Daddy when unfamiliar words pop up. I remember getting “What that say, Mommy?” all the time from both boys. I wouldn’t be too concerned about that.

As far as phonics go, I understand its importance as a key for unlocking future, more difficult words, but I never stressed it. That is, I’ve always thought it was more important to instill a love of words through the stories they tell. Still, I’m aware that it’s a good idea for a child to know that the letter H makes a huh sound.

I’m sure that given his sight-reading vocabulary, your little one has more knowledge about phonics than you realize. Your reader who suggested that children learn in intuitive leaps was absolutely right. But if you really want to support his learning to sound out words phonetically, here’s my philosophy:

Keep your ears open and make learning a joyful experience.

My grandmother used to make her traditional Italian S-shaped cookies every Easter. When my first son was a toddler, I remember him saying s-s-s-s before eating the cookie. Right then and there, I knew this was wonderful tool to help teach the sounds that letters make.

I didn’t bake the cookie letters often, mind you. I was never what you’d officially call a mommy who bakes. But I made those letter cookies just often enough to help them “devour” letter sounds and, eventually, whole words that they created. Of course, I probably created some food issues with that one, not to mention the spike in blood sugar, but I tried my best. Sounds like you do, too.

Congratulations! It sounds like young Mothra is doing extremely, extremely well!

Little Reader

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