Re: How long doe it take to learn to read?
- From: "John Holmes" <see sig>
- Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 00:42:27 +1000
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 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?"
[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!
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
.
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