Earlier is Easier

By now, you will have realized that it is better not to rely on whole-language instruction alone to teach your child to read. Does the fact that your young baby can only learn to read whole words therefore mean that you should hold off on teaching her to read?

It is important to distinguish between whole-language reading instruction in the absence of phonics instruction, and whole-word reading (or sight-reading) in general. With so many irregular spellings in English (as well as other languages), everyone needs a certain number of sight words in their reading vocabulary. Rote memorization is what enables us to read words like “one,” “age” or “was” without stumbling over their arbitrary orthographies time and again.

Most children spontaneously learn their first words as whole words – whether or not we teach them to do so. By seeing certain words on a regular basis (such as the “Stop” of a road sign) and learning to associate the word they see with the sound they hear, children build up an early vocabulary of sight words. There is nothing wrong with this.

It is also not uncommon for young children to go through a phase of exhibiting dyslexic-like tendencies while learning to read. During this time they may misread similar-looking words that they have memorized by sight. They may confuse the letters “b” and “d,” or “p” and “q.” There is nothing wrong with this.

The difference between the children who sight-read words and confuse letters who go on to be good readers, and the children who sight-read words and confuse letters who go on to be dyslexic is when and for how long these habits occur.

By exposing your child to the written form of language from a very young age, you can effectively avoid the scenario of an older child being tripped up by rudimentary complexities of spelling, as Kailing explains:

What unites [the aspects of written English that dyslexics typically find difficult] is that they are problems that have no analogy in the spoken language. They are problems at a basic, building-block level of language – a level that, in the spoken language, five-year-olds have already mastered.

We believe that the sooner a child is exposed to the written word, the better. We also recommend that you teach your child phonics as soon as she is able to deliberately vocalize letter sounds. By doing so, you can ensure that your child is a practiced phonetic reader long before she enters first grade. Children who rely on whole-word reading alone tend to experience problems with the technique from around third grade. There is no reason why any child of this age should be without a knowledge of phonics.

Why is it that baby Aleka Titzer worked out the rules of phonics while some third graders fail to do so? Leaving aside natural differences in language ability, it is highly likely that babies will find it easier than children to figure out the rules of phonics for themselves. Just think of the way babies deduce the rules of grammar without their parents ever teaching them, while older children struggle with the new grammar rules of a foreign language. The younger the child, the more gifted he is at language.

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Summing up…