How did you learn to read?

[Anguirus]

I taught myself to read when I was two, pretty much just by watching Wheel of Fortune and Sesame Street addictively. Then I'd fool around with magnet letters, Scrabble tiles, etc., and then BAM, I realized that letters = sounds.

I don't remember much of this (I was already reading children's books in my earliest memories) but apparently I was spelling out words with magnets on the fridge so early that my parents each thought the other was doing it as a joke, till they caught me at it.

I didn't get into longer books as fast as some of you, but I was hooked on young-adult novels from kindergarten on, and reading full-length Star Wars novels by third grade.

[RedImperator]

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.

Come to think of it, I honed my skills on dinosaur books, too. I'd never considered it, but I wonder if that's where my love of polysyllabic $25 words came from.

I know my parents were reading to me when I was very young. We had to have hundreds of those Little Golden Books, with my favorites missing their covers, they'd been read so much. I'd actually memorized some of them and fooled my aunt and uncle into thinking I knew how to read at 2 by "reading" one of them for them.

[Pick]

My parents emphasized the importance of reading and taught me how to do so at an astonishingly young age. I'm not even fully sure when. I can't remember being incapable.

[Sofia]

I don't remember when I learned to read, so it must have been around 3 or 4. I was fluent by first grade. There was a fat book of Greek and Roman mythology that I loved. My mom was a single parent until I was seven or so, so I spent a lot of time at the school where she taught. I remember a kid laughing at me because I was bored and asked if I could read War and Peace. Of course I had no idea what it was, I just thought it had an interesting title.

Most likely, I learned to read from being read to and memorizing my favorite books. Sesame Street might have helped some, too. I don't think I learned anything from school, because my earliest memories of school are of me reading to other kids who hadn't learned how to read yet.

[Dooey Jo]

Huh? I can't remember that. I do have evidence that I wrote stuff (like my name and simpler words, with awesome backwards S:s and the more lines in the E:s the better) when I was four or five, so I must have learned to read before that though. Grandma used to babysit me back then, so she probably helped (seems like she drew stuff and then I wrote what it was that she had drawn).

But I know that I read a lot of dinosaur books (and not the children's variety) when I was around six, though...

[Exonerate]

I think my parents taught me to read - I distinctly remember being able to do so at the age of 3. I don't actually remember what I honed my reading skills on - children's stories, I think. My parents actually taught me Mandarin Chinese first, so I guess that made me bilingual too

[Crazy_Vasey]

I started reading with my mother at home long before I started school. She used to read to me a lot and I just kindof picked it up as I went along and then started reading for myself. My primary reading material was Enid Blyton novels. I absolutely devoured those things. I must have just about every book she ever wrote packed away in the attic. Also, I remember being fascinated by Roman-era history back in the day.

[Noble Ire]

I'm not sure exactly when I learned to read, but I had the basics down before Kindergarten, perhaps when I was four. Actually, the first thing I remember reading with any clarity is Calvin and Hobbes.

[PrinceofLowLight]

Grandmother taught me. I couldn't say when it started, but I was really, really young. One of the few things I distinctly remember was organizing words into families, depending on both spellings and sounds (night went with might, but kite went with mite.) Also read every night.

Plus I grew up with the internet. Searchable electronic dictionaries made it very easy to develop a good vocabulary.

[Lord Zentei]

I had learned it by/in nursery school (= kintergarten).

EDIT:

"It's appalling -- it's really astounding," said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. "Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That's not saying much for the remainder."

What the hell?

[Metatwaddle]

Honestly? I have no idea. I don't remember. I was two years old at the time. I don't remember not being able to read, and frankly I can't imagine not being able to read. My parents taught me to read, of course, and throughout my preschool life I was the quiet girl sitting on the beanbags in the corner reading a book.

[Rye]

I'm pretty sure I learned when I was 5 years old, school taught me, learned the alphabet at that age, too. After that I read as many Mr. Men books as I could, and certainly read Jurassic Park and Good Omens and some discworld novels before finishing primary school.

Parents read to me a lot and when I finally knew how to read, i would churn through books.

[Meeper]

I started reading young. Really young. I’m told that within about a month of me starting to speak, I was reading things like street signs. By the time I was three, I was reading the newspapers with my mother, with little assistance. By the time I was in first grade, I was reading better than my father (which is not a reflection on me, but on him, and he’ll be the first person to admit that ).

I was reading so far ahead of my level through primary school that when I hit fourth grade the school library no longer stocked books that were at my reading level. Unfortunately, due to a motor skills deficiency I have I was dumped into remedial classes in nearly everything else.

So, basically, I don’t know how I learnt to read. My parents aren’t exactly big readers. I think it was some sort of biological compensation for the motor skills deficiency, but obviously I have no real evidence for that. It was cool being faster and more accurate than the teacher when I did a mandatory speed reading course last year .

[Lusankya]

I had a really good memory when I was young, and basically memorised every book that I'd had read to me, so at some stage after that, I learnt how to read (my parents couldn't tell when because they had no idea when I stopped reciting from memory and started actually reading). The first novel I read was The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and because I had this idea that I was supposed to know every book I'd read off by heart, I then proceeded to read it ten times. I got to the point where I could recite about the first half (up until Edmund went to tell the witch that everyone was with the beavers) off by heart.


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[TheBlackCat]

My parents taught me. They both read to me a lot and encouraged me to read, getting me pretty much any book I wanted. I generally focused on non-fiction, most of my exposure to fiction came from the novels I was forced to read for school. I know I had already read through the 21-volume children's encyclopedia my parents had bought me several time by the time I started kindergarden. I also had (actually still have) a ton of eyewitness books.

Another important factor had to do with how my parents taught me words. Whenever I asked what I word meant, my parents would tell me to check the dictionary (we always had one huge dictionary and several smaller ones handy). That trained me to always have a dictionary handy and check the definition of new words I ran into. That really helped my vocabulary. I still keep an electronic dictionary in my backpack all the time, and I still check words in it from time to time. I also always had an encyclopedia, thesaurus, quote books, and a bunch of reference books in case I needed more in-depth information. The idea was that if I wanted to know something, I should go and find the answer myself. That is definitely a good training strategy, since ther won't always be someone with all the answers there to help you along.

[TheBlackCat]

I had a really good memory when I was young, and basically memorised every book that I'd had read to me, so at some stage after that, I learnt how to read (my parents couldn't tell when because they had no idea when I stopped reciting from memory and started actually reading).

My cousin had that problem. The way they would teach is to have the teacher read something so the students could learn it, then have them read it. The problem is my cousin would simply memorize the book and repeat it back. She didn't actually learn how to read it. It took several years for anyone to figure it out, and by that point she was way behind. She is better now, but they had to put her in special remedial classes that would actually teach her something.

[Zadius]

My parents taught me the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make first, then read to me every night for at least 30 minutes, pointing at the words as they said them. Then we'd alternate; I'd read a page, then my mother/father would read a page. And eventually I was reading the whole book with them simply correcting my pronunciation if I made a mistake or helping me with a word I didn't know. From there I began to read on my own. This was all before I even began school.

[felineki]

I don't recall any of the specifics, but my mom told me that when I was very young and she was reading me children's books, I was more interested in the text than the pictures. I would point at the text and ask what it was, and she would try to turn my attetntion to the pictures, but apparently I was more interested in the text.

[wilfulton]

Mom and dad taught me, I could read quite well by the time I was 3.

[Stark]

Yeah, I could read long before I went to primary school. I also read a lot of dinosaur books. And space books! I have the coolest 'what shit will be like in 2000AD' book ever on my shelf. I'm going to show my own kids one day.

[Edi]

I knew the alphabet by age three or four, from what my parents and otehr relatives have told me, but I did not really learn to read until first grade when I was seven years old. Didn't matter so much, as my dad read an absolute shitload of fairy tales and other stuff for us when we were young. I still remember roughly half of the stories in Arabian Nights almost by heart, as those were our favorites. As for full novels, I cut my teeth on the Tarzan books and the Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and soon after that Tolkien's works. The weekly trips to the library had my dad joking that he'd need a wheelbarrow to cart home all the books me and my brother and sister wanted to borrow.

Mind you, learning to read Finnish is easy, because the spelling is completely phonetic. In English it's not, so I imagine that unless you learn to read from an early age, it's going to be a lot more difficult. Essentially it's like learning to speak all over again but at a point when your ability to learn is not as great as it was.

As for how I learned English, I basically learned to speak and read it at the same time and then improved my vocabulary, grasp of grammar and so forth by reading books. I'd run out of fantasy translated to Finnish already a couple of years before that, so there was nothing that could have stopped me. The first three books were pretty hard going, but after that it got a lot easier.

Edi

[ArchMage]

I went to a french emersion school, didnt know jack shit for english reading. My friend got me a Dragonlance book (kaz the minotaur) when i was in grade 6. Leard to really read english from Dragonlance. Course now i dont know any french

[Lusankya]

I had a really good memory when I was young, and basically memorised every book that I'd had read to me, so at some stage after that, I learnt how to read (my parents couldn't tell when because they had no idea when I stopped reciting from memory and started actually reading).

My cousin had that problem. The way they would teach is to have the teacher read something so the students could learn it, then have them read it. The problem is my cousin would simply memorize the book and repeat it back. She didn't actually learn how to read it. It took several years for anyone to figure it out, and by that point she was way behind. She is better now, but they had to put her in special remedial classes that would actually teach her something.

I wouldn't really call it a problem for me. When I was three, my parents would ask me if I wanted to play cricket and I would reply, "No. I want to stay inside and write dinosaur names." It wasn't indicative of any learning disability on my part. I've yet to find anyone who thinks 'learning disability' when they see a two-year-old who's memorised their entire decently-sized bookshelf (and more), but may or may not be able to read yet.


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[Imperial Overlord]

I was a bit late in learning to read. My mother read to me a lot, but I wasn't linterested in it at all in kindergarden (I faintly recall a disapproving teacher). I prefered my imagination to what was being taught as reading and writing material. My mother essentially got me jump started over the following summer (by using interesting material, possibly The Hobbit or Greek myth, its hazy). I took off from there.

[Vympel]

I can't remember. By careful process of elimination, I must have been born with the innate ability to read flawlessly.

You know what I hate? Idiots who can't read being asked to read in university- it's like someone scratching a blackboard to my ears. You know, they're so stupid they can't tell how to end the sentence, so they'll finish off where there's a period as if there's a question mark at the end, or vice versa?

My favorite books when I was a kid was, incidentally, the children's version of the Iliad, and Russian Fairy Tales