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Can An Infant Learn To Read?
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If you are like me, your initial reaction to the question above is to shake your head no. At least that was my reaction only a few years ago, but not now. I will discuss in this article the brain development of an infant. The brain is an amazing instrument. Recent studies in brain development suggest an enormous amount of information is taken in during the ages of zero to three.
Brain synapses form as infants experience the world around them. Synapses that will determine the way they process information for the rest of their lives. Pre-reading skills can form with these developing synapses, so that a child can begin to read when his or her vocabulary is sufficient at about the age of four or five. So in a way, the infant can learn to read.
How can this be achieved? Very simply, the proper tools need to be applied, and those tools are phonics. Do you remember the book "Why Johnny Can't Read"? When phonics was replaced on a large scale with the "whole word" approach to teaching reading, an entire generation of readers were effected and that effect remains to this day. So, what if we reapply those tools of phonics?
Certainly today there are many efforts to do just that, with "The Phonics Game" and "Hooked On Phonics", etc. These programs are marketed to students already struggling with reading, so let me propose a better idea.
Let's take advantage of the developing mind of the infant. You know that children learn more in their first three years of life than at any other time. Now combine that fact with the emerging knowledge about language development in an infant. As synapses are forming in the child, do I have the tools in phonics to allow those synapses to form in such a way as to produce early reading?
Based on discoveries of my own I theorize that if an infant is exposed to the most basic element of any learning process, given there is provided a sufficient amount of exposure, then the neural pathways will form very strongly with amazing results. In the case of learning to read, the most essential and basic element in learning to read is phonics. Therefore, my theory goes that if the infant is exposed to phonics from the early months or first years of life then by the age of four or five, when the child's vocabulary becomes sufficient enough, that child will read spontaneously and effortlessly. This will happen because the neural pathways have developed so strongly that when the child sees a word it is quickly recognized. For example, the sounds of the C, the A, and the T in Cat are automatically recognized. The brain processes it quickly. The word is read.
I have a link in my Links page that I would like to direct you to. That is the Brain Research Summary link, directing to the website http://www.ed.gov/pubs/ReadWithMe/makconn.html, which discusses recent discoveries made in brain development research and emphasizes the importance of reading with the young child. It is interesting reading and I would like to quote here two phrases. "...optimal development hinges on the experiences provided for them (referring here to the young child) by the adults who take care of them." And "...those connections used repeatedly in the early years have become stronger and tend to remain." This short article talks about the importance of reading to the young child, and as you read through my site, you will know I am advocating not just reading to the child but also introducing them to the phonic sounds. But the principles talked about in this article remains the same, i.e, early exposure to learning and repeating that exposure.
My theory, my hypothesis, is why introduce the infant to the adult level of learning? Which in this case would be just reading to the child. Introduce them also to the most basic element of the learning process, which in this case is phonics. Now this is what is exciting. My hypothesis is that the synapses and the neural pathways will form at a basic level so that the result will be the child's own brain development will form the context rather than it being provided for them. This is exactly what happened with my daughter, Victoria. I had taught her nothing, only showing her ABC cards with their phonic sounds and without external visual and auditory interferences that your entertaining ABC videos give, but nothing else. She only got the most basic element of the learning to read process and she just started spontaneously reading. (I have written my story with my theories in the link Superman? which I suggest you go to next as you continue to pursue this concept.) Her mind did everything all on it's own with no help from me. Had I taught her also along the way, I would have attributed her ability to that teaching. Since I did not, the only explanation is the early exposure to phonics, which is the most basic element of the learning to read process. So my daughter Victoria's mind did it by itself!
My hypothesis is that if you just introduce the infant to the most essential and basic element of anything, in this case I am talking about reading, you will leave the child's own mind to put it all together. Perhaps what I have discovered goes beyond just learning a particular piece of knowledge. Perhaps it is a discovery of how the neural pathways can form in a way that will prepare for creativity.
In researching this, I have come to believe that early in this past century educators observed the phenomenon of early spontaneous reading, and not realizing these children had already been exposed to phonics at an early age by their parents, word reading alone without phonics became popular in teaching reading. I believe, although I know not everyone will agree with me, that the result was not good for the overall reading level in America. So maybe what I am trying to advocate here is a best of both worlds scenario. Let's do word reading, but only if the child has had sufficient early exposure to the phonic sounds, and has them already well ingrained in their minds.
These are my theories, my vision.
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