A Parent’s View on "How to teach your child to read as early as two"

A father who has been professionally teaching reading and writing for over twenty years gives us the following advice:

1. This is a crucial issue. Reading skill is the most important factor for future academic success and is significantly important in being able to function in a complex world.

2. There are two issues: first is inculcating a love of reading; second is the technical skill of being able to read.Reading aloud to your child at the age of three is a highly enjoyable and emotional bonding experience for the child. This storytelling reading should be presented to the child as special time between parent and child; no pressure to learn to read whatsoever. Teaching a child to read is wholly different.

For most children, reading is taught, not caught; it is not a natural skill. The extent to which it has to be taught in a structured, systematic way varies from child to child, but it does need to be taught. Very few Children really 'pick up' reading; this usually happens only in very high ability children who decipher that English is a sound-based alphabetised code.

I think the idea of being child-led and so letting the child decide when being taught to read, whilst appealing to home-educators' instinct, is flawed. I meet too many children at the ages of seven and eight who are really struggling to read and are potentially in danger of ending up semi-literate at best. The teaching of reading should be presented as a normal activity, like brushing teeth. It is not a case of accepting the child's lack of interest; it is a case of saying that this is something to be done. Of course, you want to make it appealing, but the hidden agenda has to be that it is necessary.

3. I have taught children from as early as 2 1/2 years old to 8 years old. The usual tell tale sign to start is when the child indicates a desire to read during storytelling time (emotional bonding reading). However, if this does not happen by the age of five then gently force the issue (see point 2 above).

4. Reading should be systematically taught using linguistic phonics.This is phonics based upon a real understanding of what the sound-based alphabetised nature of the English language is. Many off-the-shelf phonics programme do not have this understanding.

5. Phonics is not sufficient; however, it is valuable for most children to jump start them into reading. After children start reading, other strategies grow in importance (such as morphology [shape of words] and syllabication [identifying syllables]).

6. Always remember that the aim of reading is comprehension. I meet too many over-proud parents who show off their children as excellent readers, but find upon closer examination that their children are excellent at decoding words rather than understanding.

7. Related to point 5 regarding phonics, the teaching of English reading is fundamentally different to the sight-word / pictorial teaching of Chinese characters.

8. I have taught children formally diagnosed as dyslexic. In fact, I disagree with the diagnosis and believe that in most cases it is poor prior instruction and inattentiveness that have resulted in weak reading ability.