How did you learn to read, and at what age?

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I learned to read at school, when I was 6.

Kids who learn to read early probably are raised in a family/community that emphasizes the importance of reading. I've never been impressed by parents who teach their kids ASAP just to be able to say how smart their kids are, though. It's one thing to spend some time with your toddler by reading a book with him, another thing to grab an easy-to-read book so you could gauge his word recognition skills and coach him on how to do it better.

I remember being four and listening to how amazed my grandma was when our neighbor told her so-and-so's grandson was able to read when he was only--ONLY--two. I felt jealous and embarrassed because I'd just recently got it (I remember finishing my first book a couple days earlier), so when my grandma asked me when I learned to read so she could brag about how smart her granddaughter was, I lied and told her, "Last year." In hindsight, I learned how to read when I was four--I should never have felt like I had to lie about it. But since all the grown-ups I knew put the importance of reading above everything else, I did what I had to do and committed my first sin.



Excuse me, but I don't think YOU understand how flexible the brain can be. Saying a certain age is the peak for learning something is crap. It's just not true.

There's nothing wrong with being able to read at two if it's just something you pick up naturally, but there's also nothing wrong with not learning how to read until you're six. Christ, people, why insist on doing things a certain way when we've spent our entire lives not doing things the way other people want us to do?

i learned sometime around 5. i was reading a couple of years ahead at that point, and accelerated to about 3 or 4 grade levels ahead by grade 6. i did not always understand what i was reading though! i remember reading a science book about molecules in grade 3. the teacher thought i was a freak (also because she would speak to me in Yiddish and i knew what she was saying, though i was just using logic. i still have a talent for languages.)

i was a teacher for 5 years and had every student on an IEP/IPP (with 3 or more grades in every class, and reading levels spanning 9 grades, it was actually easier to manage the lessons that way) advice on helping your child? hard to give any without the actual assessment or without interacting with/observing your child. i've seen some great ideas on the thread though.

my daughter has dyslexia, but her desire to read harry potter pushed her over the edge to becoming a fluent reader. j.k. rowling also helped my daughter learn to write extremely well because my girl was inspired to create harry potter fan fiction and publish it on the internet.

I don't, except sometimes when I'mt yping but that's from typing too fast and not going back to proofread properly. And then they're not truly orthographic errors so much as typographic errors.

And, yeah, I don't hear the words in my head -- I see the shapes and then understand with no sound intermediary. For this reason, I often miss plays on words that depend on the sounds of different words being similar. For instance, I didn't get this joke until I read it out loud:

A man walks into a bar with a salamander on his shoulder and says, "I'd like a beer for my friend, Tiny."
The bartender asked, "why do you call him Tiny?" and the man replied, "because he's my newt."

I puzzled over that one for an embarassingly long time. When I finally said it out loud, I got it immediately.

Possibly for similar reasons, I frequently don't "get" poetry. There are a few poems I really love, but they didn't capture me until I heard or read them out loud and then I got what was happening with the rhythm and the sounds, etc. But I still have enough dificulties with poetry (because I'm a relatively concrete person and so much poetry is ludicrously abstract) that my general, blanket answer is usually "no, I don't like poetry."

You're right, most of the time that's what happens though there are some exceptions. In my case, it is true that my parents do not like books or culture (I am an alien in my own family XD) so they may have read a story or two in front of me but I was not surrounded by books unlike the people I know who have learned to read earlier.

Apart from one of my friends, she comes from the same kind of family as me but she taught herself how to read at 4.



I agree with you, it's really important to find a book the children will like to make them appreciate reading even when they are struggling, it's the best way to become a good reader though not everyone can really outgrow their disabilities so much that they sound like someone "normal" (my dyslexic grandmother reads better than most "normal" people for example) but at least they will want to read.

To take an example :

My cousin has been diagnosed with dyslexia at 10 and now her mother does not really allow her to read because of that and pretend that everything is so difficult for her that we have to understand (= life should not be challenged and no one should ask her to improve or stimulate her intellectually) and she dislike books (she does not care).

A girl I met (a friend of my best friend), on the other hand, really wanted to read and improve her writing and she was encouraged to do so. It may have taken some months or years to do so and she still have difficulties but you would not realize it most of the time.

Same here. I could read things I couldn't understand. I was just looking at some stuff about hyperlexia yesterday and found this on Wikipedia:

"Whereas dyslexic children usually have poor word decoding abilities but average or above average reading comprehension skills, hyperlexic children excel at word decoding but often have poor reading comprehension abilities."
source: Kate Nation. (1999). Reading Skills in Hyperlexia: A Developmental Perspective. 125(3):338-353.Psychological Bulletin

I found that interesting because, at least in my experience, people tend to assume that a very small child who reads voraciously needs no assistance because they are "brilliant" and people also tend to assume (quite incorrectly!) that a child with dyslexia is "slow" or "dull" . . . but it appears that the child who struggles to learn to read may be reading text *better* (once they succeed in decoding it) in some ways than the child who leaps right into reading easily.

Of course my reading comprehension is much better now than it was when I was two, but I still notice that my comprehension isn't where I'd like it to be. Additionally (and I have no idea if this is related to my hyperlexia or to something else entirely) I have no real ability to do what people call "scanning" or "skimming." I'm not even entirely sure how that stuff works. I can read every word or I can not read at all but there is no way that I can look at a page and pick out the important ideas in a flash like other people do.

Some of my classmates can read an entire academic book in a day or two! The only way I can do that is if I read the introductory chapter and then read the first and last page of every chapter (because in academic books, that where summaries of ideas go) and then read the entire last chapter. When it comes to academic articles, if I'm supposed to "skim" it, I read the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. I don't know how people magically pull ideas out without reading the whole thing!

Heck, even if I'm in a grocery store and need to get, say, Ham Chowder soup, I have to look at every can of soup on the shelf until I get to the one that says Ham Chowder. I can't even "skim" a shelf of food! I wonder if anyone else out there is like that, especially any of the people who were strong early readers.

At school in first grade, 6-7 years old. At the beginning I was doing bad for being too lazy to read books, but I get better.

There is quite a bit of videos on Youtube of kids reading so young.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE9TYODjF4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdGrI08F70M[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5o-VcgHD74[/youtube]

I was really hoping someone wouldn't have to make a deal about the age I chose, I'm basing it off of tests that were taken, The optimal age to start learning is from birth. Kids that learn to speak earlier most likely gained that ability because their parents spoke to them often, no "baby talk" and they spoke in a slightly higher pitch voice then normal to draw the baby's attention to the words. Bright colors are extra stimuli and help young children to learn because it hones their attention. The reason I pointed the optimal time to be around 2 years old is because it is also around that age that children can show they understand, or don't. If they don't show interest in it yet, then by all means wait until they do, that is fine, but if they do show interest, it means that they are ready, and that usually occurs around 2 years old.
The range is very wide, and everyone is different for the times they are developmentally ready to learn different aspects, but on average 2 is the age where comprehension can be shown through an understanding of a party. That was all I was trying to say. Now I have written I whole paragraph about what my point was.

I learned to read when i was 2, from a mixture of media, mainly Dr. Seuss books. My mom told me that when I used to ride the city bus with her I would sound out the words on billboards and store fronts. I started preschool before I turned 3, and when they did alphabet lessons, I sat in the corner and read books. I've always been extremely proficient at reading. I had read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus The Hobbit, by my 8th birthday.

yes, i cannot scan or skim either, but only in terms of blocks of text. i read fairly quickly, but i often need to reread the same page or paragraph of text several times to truly understand it. it's much worse if someone reads aloud to me. it is often irritating because i really cannot follow what they are reading at all.

on the flip side, i can read very short bits of text quickly and from far away, or even upside down. i can also easily find stuff that is lost.

heeeheeeheee did you notice my username is hyperlexian? heeheee it's actually because i don't stop talking. at all.

I was one of those kids who had stuffed memorized and relied on my memory to recall passages from books. That wasn't reading, that was just remembering. When it came to actual reading, I didn't want to try to learn because I relied on my memory so much and it was just easier to memorize because I was used to it. I had a reluctance to learn something new. My mom ended up teaching me in first grade because I refused to learn at school. My mom was able to teach me fairly quickly during the evenings at home.

What about pronunciation? (I don't think anyone mentioned it.)

There are words that I recognized & knew the meaning of for years, but mispronounced them in my head, until I finally heard someone say the word aloud.

The word "Pizza" comes to mind. I had no idea what pizza actually was... my mother always cooked at home. (My kids, on the other hand, were all born knowing what pizza is, also Chinese food, quasi-Mexican, & whatever else you can get as a takeout.)

Anyway, beyond the digression: There was a red neon sign that said "PIZZA" on a building we used to pass by in the car at night, and I'd always say it to myself when we passed. "PIZZ - ah" (short "i" as in "hit") ... because there are two consonants after the vowel & I didn't know there was such a thing as Italian.

"Vagina" was another one... I probably didn't hear anyone say the word until college biology, so in my mind it was "VAG-inn-ah" (hard "G" as in "grape") until then. There are others.... maybe even one or two left to go, idk.

I ALWAYS did that! I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head, but I just remember me trying out words while speaking and then having an older person instantly correct my pronunciation as I had only seen them while reading.

To your original question...I was a self-taught reader. I was never formally instructed on learning how to read, like you, it was just something I felt I always knew how to do. I started to read at age 1 1/2 and by the time I entered school I could read at a grade 7 level. I hated the fact that my peers read so slow, and it boggled the teachers, so they didn't do anything to nuture it. Also, I had a strong interest in anthropmorphic animals and thus didn't want to read anything but picture books where they were the main focus.

I taught myself how to read at age 4. My mom did read a lot to me when I was little, but she never taught me. I believe that I was hyperlexic as a child. I showed all of the signs, and when I taught myself advanced Spanish in high school, I realized that I was hyperlexic in that language, too. It was both an enjoyable and frustrating experience to be such an early reader.
-OddDuckNash99-

mispronounciation: yes!

I thought "supercilious" was pronounced "super-SILE-ee-us" until I said it once out loud in front of my dad when I was about 12 or 13 and he corrected me.

Also superfluous and inexorable got corrected when I finally said them out loud.

That reminds me, thats basically how my daughter kick started herself into reading properly, at age 6-7; tin-tin comics.