Re: How long doe it take to learn to read?
- From: "John_Kane" <John_Kane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 29 Jul 2005 12:56:13 -0700
John Holmes wrote:
> John Dean wrote:
> > John_Kane wrote:
> >> In another ng a poster, in making an argument, made the rather
> >> throw-away statement that "it takes 5 minutes to learn to read".
> >> This was in a discussion about literacy in the medieval period and
> >> the poster was making the argument that learning to read was a
> >> relatively low effort or low cost activity.
> >>
> >> While 5 minutes is probably not true, does anyone know even roughly
> >> how long it would take a person, either a child or an adult, to learn
> >> to read, assuming that the language is English? Note that the
> >> question is about learning to read not to read and write.
>
> It is an interesting question, but are you asking how long it would take
> today or back then? Was this other poster implying that people were
> slack or stupid for not learning to read?
I'll settle for either but I imagine that today is probably the more
likely example since I suspect that evidince from 12-15th century is
lacking.
Actually the OP's question was: "Why was there so much illiteracy among
medieval English speakers when it really ought to take five minutes to
teach one of them to read?"
The author was making the assumption that reading was such a useful
skill, even in medieval times, and one that required such little cost
or effort to acquire that he did not understand why it is generally
assumed that there was a great deal of illiteracy.
My argument was that reading was not a very useful skill for a large
proportion of the population but another poster was also making the
argument that it was a fairly high investiment in time and/or money. I
thought that this ng might have some idea of how long it might take to
learn. A very rough ball park figure was all I was expecting since
there are a very large number of variables that would differ between
now and the medieval period.
> > I asked Mrs Dean (ex-teacher, English graduate, feisty debater and
> > all-round good egg). As I suspected, the answer is "it depends".
> > It's close to impossible to imagine anyone coming to the "learning to
> > read" process without some prior exposure - like a 4-year-old kid
> > might well be able to recognise a name seen on eg a packet of
> > breakfast cereal presented in a different context. Happened with our
> > grandson who saw "sainsbury's" in a newspaper advert after seeing it
> > on his breakfast cereal box every day and was able to say it and know
> > what it meant. This is a year before anyone made any attempt to
> > "teach" him.
>
> Ah yes, but what were the popular brands of breakfast cereal in medieval
> times? Such casual exposure to written material probably has a helluva
> lot to do with the answer to the question. I'm not sure precisely what
> years J_K's group was discussing, but surely there wouldn't even have
> been public signs other than pictures like "Pig and Whistle" in most
> places. Even if a medieval tyke did see something written, it wouldn't
> mean much if they couldn't get a helpful answer to "What does that say,
> Mummy?"
Something of my argument in fact!
> [snip]
>
> > And to show what might be done in the more exceptional situation,
> > here's a case history. One of our neighbours is Chinese. Came here a
> > few years ago as a trained nurse on a work permit and has been able
> > to renew the permit and eventually have her family join her.
> > Her daughter arrived in England a year ago, aged 9. She had a
> > smattering of conversational English but could not read it at all.
> > Had spent her entire life reading Chinese characters and did not know
> > the Roman alphabet. Was and is, however, very bright.
> > She was put in the class appropriate for her age in the local school
> > so she was mixing with English-speaking nine-year-olds all day in the
> > class and the playground and was immersed in Roman alphabet text all
> > day. Her parents are very committed, very supportive and ensured she
> > continued to work on her English in the evenings. Additionally, the
> > school provided learning support on a one-to-one basis to assist in
> > learning English. However, the support was for two hours a week only.
> > One year later, the girl is 10, speaks English with considerable
> > fluency and the same tests used to evaluate all Oxfordshire children
> > at that age confirm she has a reading age of 13.
>
> Well done that girl!
Yes indeed. I've often wondered how mastery of a first language
predicts learning another. I even was starting a research project on
it once when our funding got cut.
Mind you, given that she is very bright, this is not all that
surprising. Children, up until the age of puberty seem to absorb rather
than learn a language.
John Kane
Kingston ON
>
> --
> Regards
> John
> for mail: my initials plus a u e
> at tpg dot com dot au
.
- References:
- Re: How long doe it take to learn to read?
- From: John Holmes
- Re: How long doe it take to learn to read?
- Prev by Date: Re: A call for a moderated AUE
- Next by Date: Re: Viva Emoticons [was: Re: A call for a moderated AUE (was: Re: OT Pounds)]
- Previous by thread: Re: How long doe it take to learn to read?
- Next by thread: Re: How long doe it take to learn to read?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
