Where do we start from when teaching a child to read? It depends on your skills, outstanding difficulties, age , etc.
The only certain thing is that the complete learning of reading requires a lot of time and effort , and that it is done in different ways.
Many times we think of learning to read as a single “monolithic” process. However, it is not a single process, but a set of processes focused on reading .
Such processes depend on the age of the child , and are related to their cognitive capacity to face them –brain development- and the reading processes that due to their age they should master.
These information processing skills or strategies are learned in a precise order , since only then will the necessary skills be obtained to face the next stage in the effective learning of reading.
There is no last skill that is equivalent to reading itself, but reading is formed through the accumulation of various information processing strategies (visual, auditory, memory …) that, when combined, give rise to reading itself (fluent , without errors and understanding the text).
Having clarified these provisions, we will look at the 5 main stages in learning to read , so that parents can recognize where their child is in order to help him in the best way possible.
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Main stages in learning to read
Logographic stage
The child recognizes the word as a whole unit, although he cannot read or decipher it. It also happens when an adult observes a word in Latin or in the Cyrillic (Russian) or similar (Greek, etc.) alphabet.
Pre-alphabetic stage
The child recognizes a word (knows its meaning) not by reading it by converting the letters to their phonetic (sound) correspondences, but rather by “reading” the words by remembering their shape, as if it were a drawing.
It depends on the length of the words, if it has many strokes up or down (fy), if it has a capital letter (like its own name) etc.
Partially alphabetic stage
The child is in the midst of learning the language, by consolidating phonetic equivalences (the equivalent of each letter to its own sound) to read the word through the sound they generate. It is commonly observed that the child syllables aloud to hear the word.
However, since he is not fluent, he tends to pay more attention to the first and last syllables to “guess” the word and save the effort of reading it all.
Complete alphabetic stage
It happens when the child knows well all the phonetic equivalences of the letters and syllables that make up the word and can do them with some speed, saving effort and gaining speed in reading.
They will then learn grammar by comparing the way sentences are written and how they are correctly said in spoken language, until they can correct themselves by rereading it.
Consolidated alphabetical stage
It is the culmination of the previous stages, when the child is fully autonomous for reading , and has the ability to read understanding what is written , its context, retaining it in memory and enjoying reading.
The conversion between graphemes and phonemes (understood as the passage from the written representation of the sound – word – to the concrete memory of the sound that each letter / vowel is equivalent to) is automatic and unconscious.
All these stages develop at the same time that the child grows (as long as he is in school) and although they are essential, it is possible as much as possible to “stop” completely in one stage as to advance in all of them dragging shortcomings and basic errors that make reading difficult.
However, it is difficult to stop at a single stage, since the threads that comprise them are produced and related between the different reading processes.
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