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A quick glance around certain other forums will show you that semi-literacy is everywhere. That coupled with the alarming statistics that come out periodically (such as this one about poor reading skills among college graduates) has made me wonder how people learn to read well or poorly.

Overgeneralizing a bit, it seems that there are two broad strategies for parents: teach your children to read and let school reinforce this, or just let school do it for you. How well does school teach children to read? I would think that it's much less effective than early instruction by parents, simply because I was reading Charlotte's Web in first grade when the curriculum only called for picture books like Frog and Toad Are Friends, thanks to my parents teaching me first. But extrapolating from a single data point is uncool; how did you learn to read?


To get this started: I learned to read by first being taught the alphabet and what sound each letter makes, then being taught how to sound out words, then going through some basic children's books with the help of my father. Around that same time he decided to read some books to me aloud. Real books, with chapters and plots and everything, not little children's books. At one point he even read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to me, which was loads of fun. Then once we had agreed that big books were fun, he gave me one to read on my own. Then I read another and another and another, and I enjoy reading to this day.

I learned the basics from school, but then essentially taught myself. None of the other students in my public school were even in the same ballpark, reading-level-wise, as me by second grade, so I was pretty much on my own in terms of reading.

I'm not entirely sure, I remember my mum reading to me every night when I was little so when I started school I could already read fairly well. It's hard to remember that far back and I don't recall any particular details, but I can ask my mum and get her to fill me in.

Our daughter is one year and 2 months old and so far we have been just reading everyday for at least 20 min or more. We stick to boardbooks that engage her somehow (soft pages, colors, touchie feely things in the book- like "silky" dog ears and a fleece hat- that kinda thing.) Last month she started bringing her favorite books to us to read, demanding to be the one to turn the pages, and pointing to things she likes in the books.

I can't remember how I learned to read, but I was always ahead of my level. I hope that by starting with her early and getting her to enjoy reading that we will have a little book worm with us

I was taught to read from a very early age by both my parents and public television. Also, I was read to a lot. Since kids like having the same stories read to them over and over, I had certain ones memorized and could decipher them by looking at the books myself.

Not to sound cynical or anything, but I don't think my education contributed much to my literacy. In fourth grade I was reading Michael Chrichton novels and post-secondary paleontology textbooks. Large, difficult words like Coelophysis and Ordovician were everywhere in the subjects I was genuinely interested in. I'd credit that more than anything.

I honestly can't remember learning anything in terms of letters until Kindergarten, but I already knew how to read by then (I was five). My mother read a lot of books to me, especially Cat-in-the-Hat.

The book I learned how to read upon, and which I actually remember slowly becoming aware of what the words meant, was Miss Nelson is Missing. I sort of just picked upon it.

I was reading well before I started going to school, to the point that I had polished off Jurassic Park while I was in second grade. I can't remember any sort of step-by-step process, but the fact that my folks read to me and encouraged me to read on my own, helping me out when I needed it, gave me a leg up on classmates for whom reading was a much less central part of their household.

I think that was a large part of it; there were so many books in the house that I had ample material for practice. I cut my teeth on picture books like Richard Scarry's and similar, but I was able to move on to collections with excerpts from classic children's literature - Grahame, Milne, C.S. Lewis, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and a whole host of others. It wasn't a far hop from there to full-blown novels and non-fiction.

If parents encourage and help their kids to read, and there is a lot of varied reading material available, it's not hard to show a kid that books are fun - and once that's done, their own interests will take over. That early start can do more than learning in school possibly could.

I was taught to read by my parents. They used these cards which had words printed on them in large type. When i was about 18 months old i was able to read and comprehend on my own. I then read a lot. It seems absolutely bizarre that somebody would not learn to read until they went to school at 5 or so years old.

I grew up in a book store. I'm pretty sure that my parents read to me a lot when I was very young, but I really don't have any clear memories of that time. Its been long enough that I can't really narrow the time frame down, at some point between age 4 and age 6, I went from not reading much of anything to going through Oz books like they were candy. By age 8, for a school reading contest, I was blowing through Star Trek novels, until my parents decided to slow me down by throwing the Bible at me and quizzing me on each chapter/section/whatever dividing structure they use. Of course, the Bible did stop me cold for well over a month.

Of course, my sister grew up in a bookstore, with her parents reading to her, and she had massive difficulties until subtitled anime gave her some motivation to develop her reading abilities. She did have some signifigant learning disabilities though. So there's really no sure-fire way to get a child to read.

I think that was a large part of it; there were so many books in the house that I had ample material for practice. I cut my teeth on picture books like Richard Scarry's and similar, but I was able to move on to collections with excerpts from classic children's literature - Grahame, Milne, C.S. Lewis, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and a whole host of others. It wasn't a far hop from there to full-blown novels and non-fiction.

If parents encourage and help their kids to read, and there is a lot of varied reading material available, it's not hard to show a kid that books are fun - and once that's done, their own interests will take over. That early start can do more than learning in school possibly could.

My mother (my parents are divorced) didn't own a lot of books other than child books for me to read, but I did have a few good ones. I remember that the first novel I cut my teeth on was full novel of Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson. I don't think I understand much of it until I read it through several times, but I really liked it.

My dad, though, was the big push in terms of literacy. He likes to read (and listen to books on tape since his eyes aren't what they used to be), and when he saw my brother and I two or three times a week, he would take us to the library, and allow us to check out books on his account. I remember that in 4th or 5th grade, I probably read all the Star Wars novels out by then.

Honestly, I don't remember how I learned to read. I just know that by the time I was three, I could read fairly well. The story mom likes to use is when we were in the grocery store and some woman saw me reading, thought I'd memorized words, and then I read something and her jaw literally dropped.

My mother constantly read to me, but I'm not sure that was the real drive. I think I can attribute it to SW books, like the Young Jedi knights(don't laugh) and Asterix comics. Later on I kinda read other things, but from what I remember, it what kept driving me to read.

Mostly from my parents/grandparents, then somewhat in school. I remember when I was in school at the time I was ahead of most of the other students, and even had some of the upper graders asking me for help on words/phrases. And since two of the grades were mixed at the time, I'd often keep an eye on the upper classman work, being able to mostly puzzle it out as it wasn't much tougher than what the grade I was in was working.

Actually, come to think of it, I remember my mom saying that when I was two years old, I could already sing the ABCs. So that may have been my basis for reading; I was probably 'lettered' long before I was 'literate.'

Parents taught me. I think I read the entire World Book Encyclopedia before I was in 4th grade... my first book was P.D. Eastman's 'Are You My Mother?'. Good times....

I learned to read when I was four years old with some help from my older siblings. Of course, I've forgotten exactly how I learned to read.

I learned to read in school. I didn't like to read, but I could. It wasn't until the "Battle of the Books" competition that I really learned to like reading. It was a competition where you had to read several books and then compete in answering questions about them. I really got into several of the stories. Since then I haven't been able to put a book down. I can plow through massive books real quickly. I can read a 600 page book in a day if I am really engrossed in it. And when I was substitute teaching, I ran across people who would be hard pressed to read 60 pages in a single day. And these are high school kids. People who don't like to read mystify me.

Learned to read by myself and with some help from my parents. I was reading young adult novels by first grade and an 800 page physics book by 3rd. I didn't understand the math, but I had a good grasp of all the concepts.


I was such a fucking nerd.

My mom started teaching me to read just before I went into kindergarten, and it took a few weeks for me to move past the little "Dick and jane" equivalents the school had. Although the school I went to was shit when it came to anything else (I didn't learn subtraction until third grade), they had a great library with books on all sorts of things. I must've read every astronomy book in there.

My parents read to me constantly and taught me how to read by the age of three.

During the first grade at school with rest of the kids. There were maybe two out of over twenty on our class who had trouble reading after the first year.

I learned to read early at home. I actualy hated learning to read at school and reinforcing it in the lower grades since the usual modus operandi would be for the teacher or one of the pupils (*groan*) to read a story and then the class would have a chance to read it silently by themselves before "analyzing" (if you can call it that at primary school level) the work. The problem being that most of the pupils read so slowly (both aloud and silently) that I usualy had the time to read the work 3-5 times. Once I'd read the story *12* times before the teacher finaly decided that enough time had passed for people to read it *once*. Needles to say, it made reading (and learning to read) at school agonizingly boring.

Then again, I can't really fault them much for it. It seems that, either by nature or training, I simply read very fast. Compared to my friends with a similar background (ie university students with a decent reading history) I usualy read stuff something like 30% to 50% faster. Like Alyeska, I can devour a 600 page book within a day if I get engrossed with it.

My parents got me private lessons between kindergarten and Grade 1, then I taught myself through reading everything I could lay my paws on. I rarely understood all of what I read, but I figured it out.

Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:My parents got me private lessons between kindergarten and Grade 1, then I taught myself through reading everything I could lay my paws on. I rarely understood all of what I read, but I figured it out.

I'm still sometimes at that stage, I read everything and infer from context and from what I do know. Sometimes it leads to embaressing fuck ups, but most of the time it gets me a leg up on people who go "I don't understand this line therfor I can't understand the text"

The only reason I know this is because my parents have told me.

I taught myself. I apparently never liked being read to, so I somehow figured it out on my own over time. I apparently had a decent amount of skill in reading by the time I reached kindergarten.