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| Introduction to Native Reading |
(this book excerpt is Chapter 1 from Native Reading: How to Teach Your Child to Read, Easily and Naturally, Before the Age of Three by Timothy D. Kailing) |
I started reading to my daughter, like many parents do these days, from a very early age.
But to be perfectly honest, Freya showed little interest in books and, in particular, she usually
seemed to pay no attention at all to the text. So reading generally became one of those things I
resorted to when I was tired of playing peek-a-boo or singing songs, or when marching around
the house trying to get her to sleep just wasn’t working. As soon as she got bored with reading,
the book would be tossed aside, and I’d pick up a stuffed animal, or go back to peek-a-boo,
or perhaps hand her off to her mother for a while.
My daughter was, without a doubt, more “high-maintenance” than her older brother had
been—which was actually a bit of a shock, her mother and I had figured we would feel like
experts the second time around—but she was still an absolute delight. As she grew into
toddlerhood, it became clear that she was vivacious, funny, coordinated, clever (yes, I am a
doting father!), and, also, more than a little stubborn, or, as I like to think of it, opinionated.
Freya was definitely a child who could not be pushed into doing something when she wasn’t
in the mood for it. Whether it was a new food we introduced, or a game she didn’t want to play
at the moment, or an unwelcome long car ride, she would often become what we called,
usually with fondness, “contrary girl”. So, when it came to reading with her, we did relatively
little of it most days, especially when compared with her older brother, Otto, who had loved
being read to at length from an early age. In fact, one of Otto’s first words had been, “Again!”
and it was very often said the moment a favorite book was finished, even after the second time
through. With Freya, in contrast, the books were usually tossed aside, often only halfway
finished.
Still, books were part of our daily routine, and she soon had a few favorites. As I’d done
with her older brother, I nearly always pointed at the text when I read to her. This was a habit I
had developed to an unusual degree. She never seemed to take much notice of my finger
dancing over the text as I read: she was all about the pictures. Then one day, when she was
about two-and-a-half years old, I was being a little lazy. My finger had drifted from the text and
my hand was resting on the arm of our well-worn armchair when the magic word came, the
word that I had almost given up expecting: “Point,” she said, “Papa, point.” Being the assertive
little girl that she was, she grabbed my finger and moved it, not to the picture, but to the text on
the facing page. “Read,” she commanded.
This simple act, I already had reason to be quite certain, was evidence that a critical
threshold had been reached—a sort of neurodevelopmental tipping point, to use a popular
term. Within a few weeks Freya could recognize many words; within a few months she could
read hundreds of words. Even out of the usual context of a book, she could read with
confidence. She delighted in reading labels at the grocery store. When riding in the car, she
began reading words from signs along the road. She quickly progressed to the point that—still
before her third birthday—we could entertain Freya during road trips by putting a pile of books
in her lap when we set out. She would sit in her car seat and work her way through them one at
a time, reading them aloud from cover to cover before tossing them onto the floor. Many of
these books were old favorites, and she was certainly using memory to help her reading. But
from time to time I would also give her a new, previously unseen, library book. This was
primarily just to surprise and delight her, but it was also to satisfy her skeptical scientist parents
that her reading reflected more than a prodigious memory of previously read books. With only
an occasional pause at an unfamiliar word, Freya would read through these new books nearly
as fast as she read through her favorites; and she read through even these new books fluently,
with natural intonation, and with clear comprehension, as evinced by her occasional comments
on the action. Incontrovertibly, although she had not yet reached her third birthday, she was
reading independently. She was reading so well, in fact, that it seemed practically effortless.
It so happens that, while we were certainly pleased by this development, we couldn’t say
that we were actually surprised. Her older brother Otto, you see, had started reading simple
words much earlier—beginning at just eighteen months—and by the time he was two-and-a-
half, he was a good enough reader to read aloud the entirety of Charlotte’s Web to me. He did
this over the course of a summer beach vacation because his mother had read the book to him
earlier in the summer and he had liked it so much he wanted to share it with me. Otto’s reading
was so early and so fluent that he was considered quite a prodigy by many of those who
encountered him. Most people were delighted. Some people were simply shocked.
There were also a few people—most often competitive parents with older children who
were not yet reading—who were transparently not pleased when they saw Otto reading so
well. Sometimes such a person would make a veiled, or not so veiled, comment about how they
thought that kids shouldn’t be pushed into reading early. While these negative reactions were
definitely a bit unpleasant, comments like this actually turned out to be quite illuminating. You
see, some of these same parents were people I knew well enough to know that they drilled
their children with phonics flashcards, reading tutors, and other intensive means, all in the
attempt to teach them to read. Yet their obviously bright five and six-year-olds were sometimes
only barely literate, if at all. These parents were often palpably frustrated at their difficulty in
teaching their kids to read, and it was clearly this frustration that led to their negative comments.
For them, seeing a two-year-old fluently read through a chapter book…well, it kind of just
rubbed it in.
But the source of their frustration, the struggle their children had in learning to read, is why I
ended up finding these comments illuminating: because with both of my children, when they
were each ready, learning to read had been almost effortless. My children learned to read just
as they had learned to crawl, or learned to walk, or, especially, just as they learned to talk.
They learned easily and almost miraculously. I can’t really say that I taught them to read, they
essentially learned it on their own, at the different ages where they were each individually ready.
But both Otto and Freya learned to read at what most people consider an extraordinarily early
age. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that my early readers found reading relatively
effortless, while many older children find it a struggle. Instead, I believe the problem is that most
children learn to read too late. In fact, I believe that:
The optimal time to learn to read is when a child is one to three years old,
because this is the time when their brains naturally do the most closely-
related task: learning to under-stand speech and to talk themselves.
Nearly all children naturally learn to understand speech, and to speak themselves, between the
ages of one and three years (although the foundations do indeed start from early infancy). This
is an enormously complex task, yet you don’t really teach a child to talk. Instead, children learn
to talk essentially on their own, so long as they are raised in an environment rich with speech
and with social interaction. And children generally learn to talk with obvious delight, seemingly
without effort and, often, with amazing speed. They don’t learn to talk through regimented
lessons, instead they learn by listening to and interacting with their family and friends, by singing
songs, and by playing games. Nearly every child does this successfully, in every culture around
the world, and children have learned to talk like this throughout recorded history and, surely,
before recorded history, too.
Reading is different. I don’t believe that learning to read usually comes so naturally to a
child, at least not the way reading is typically taught. Some children certainly do pick up
reading quite easily. But many other children find learning to read very difficult, particularly
when they only started reading later in childhood. Some of these children even seem to actively
resist the process, showing an aversion to reading when encouraged to practice. Such children
can show a lack of interest in the subject, they can become easily frustrated by the quirky
mechanics of the written word, some can show signs of dyslexia. The usual way people explain
this observation—that some children learn reading early and easily, while others learn only late
and with difficulty—is often by saying that some children are naturally gifted, or somehow more
intelligent, and therefore they read early. While there may be some truth to this view in certain
cases, I believe that, in general, this notion puts the cart before the horse in a profoundly
misleading way. I believe that the reason some children read easily and early is because
reading early makes learning to read easier.
I know this sounds strange at first. Most people consider learning to read a fairly difficult
task. Look at how many six-year-olds struggle with it! And since it is difficult for many six-year-
olds, they assume that learning to read must be much more difficult, if not downright impossible,
for a four-year-old—to say nothing of a two-year-old! But this superficially compelling logic is
not valid for all tasks. For example, nearly everyone now knows that learning a foreign
language is much easier when you learn it at an earlier age. In fact, in general, the earlier the
better. It is better to learn a foreign language early for the simple reason that early childhood is
when our brains naturally are most receptive to language acquisition. It is a window of
opportunity that, if missed, makes learning harder. You can learn a second language later, of
course, but it is much more difficult to attain the fluency and accent that young children pick up
with no trouble at all. Because of this, schools in this country have finally started to move foreign
language instruction from the last few years of high school to much earlier in the curriculum,
preferably all the way to kindergarten and even to preschool. Many people resisted this
because, although everyone knows that children learn their own first language spontaneously
and with ease in early childhood, they assumed that learning a second language would be
somehow too confusing. The reality is, while there are occasional moments of confusion—
moments when a child speaks a bit of Franglais or Spanglish—children generally deal with the
additional complexity of a second language better when they are younger. Preschoolers,
compared to older children and adults, are truly geniuses at learning languages.
Native reading is a new method of teaching children to read that makes appropriate use of
this early aptitude for language. The core insight of native reading is that this natural genius
young children have for learning spoken languages can, if given the right environment, be
easily extended to written language, too. If children learn in this more natural way, they not only
read years earlier, they also gain an ease and familiarity with the written word that is achieved
by older children, if at all, only after a much greater struggle. Native readers learn to read as a
natural, effortless extension of learning to talk. And the best time to learn to read this way is the
best time to learn to talk: before the age of three. Better yet, when children learn to read in this
more natural way, not only do they learn easily, joyfully, and at an early age, but they then
become truly native readers. They become deeply and effortlessly literate in a way that has
lifelong benefits, just as native speakers of a language have an ease and fluency that can
generally only be marveled at by those who learned too late.
This is a very simple idea; yet it is also, in some ways, a radical idea. Are we really teaching
children to read too late? You should be skeptical of such a claim, but that doesn’t mean you
should summarily dismiss it. If you step back for a moment and look at the big picture, it’s really
not so surprising that our current practices of teaching reading might not be the best. As I’ve
just discussed, until very recently foreign languages were also typically introduced at what is
clearly too late in a child’s development. And remember, it is only in the last century or so that
near-universal literacy was found in any country. So one cannot easily dismiss the possibility
that we currently teach reading in a less than optimal way. We’ve only been working at it for a
few generations, after all. Also, there is the additional factor that old habits die hard, including
educational habits, and this is true whether they are good habits or bad ones. Consider, too,
that children who have learned to read very young, while rare, are by no means unheard of.
Many people have heard of a case or two of a child who could fluently read by three. Indeed,
throughout history there is ample evidence that children are certainly capable of reading that
young. For example, by the age of three the great mathematician Gauss could not only read, he
also knew enough mathematics to correct an error in his father’s payroll accounts! More
recently, it has been reported that not only was the entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey reading
by the age of three, but that she was actually so fluent a reader that she started her career in
public speaking at this same age, reading for her church congregation, to much applause and
amazement. So reading this early is clearly possible for some children. But I believe that, given
the right environment, learning to read this early, and this effortlessly, is something nearly all
children are capable of, with their natural genius for language acquisition.
Remember, fundamentally, speech and writing are just two different forms of the same
language. The critical factor is to create the right environment where the natural miracle of
language acquisition extends to the written word. This book is all about the way to foster the
type of environment that works. It is not a terribly long book, because the methods are
generally simple and intuitive, at least once you fully understand what native reading is all about.
Over the years of raising my children, I have compared the ways we encouraged reading in our
home with the ways I saw other parents and educators try to teach reading. I have realized that
while there are certainly many commonalities, there are also some important differences in
method and even in philosophy. I felt that these ideas were important enough that I should share
them with others. That is why I had to write this book. I have organized these learning
techniques into the correlation method of native reading. If you use the correlation method
of native reading consistently, and if you start at an early age, I believe that you can teach nearly
every child to read easily and well by the age of three. I also believe that you and your child will
have a lot of fun doing it, too.
I have written this book in the way, and in the order, that I hope will best communicate the
important points of native reading, and I have worked hard to keep it as concise as possible (if
you have kids, I know you’re busy!). But for those who, like me, cannot always resist skipping
around a bit, I’ll lay out the plan of the book. The two most important chapters are Chapter 2,
“The Correlation Method of Native Reading”, and Chapter 4, “Creating the Native-reading
Environment: 12 Techniques to Promote Native Reading for Your Child”. In Chapter 2 I lay
out the general method of native reading, and the logic that motivates the specific learning
techniques that promote it. These specific techniques are then what Chapter 4 is all about. The
reason I describe the general principles first and the specific techniques later is to emphasize
that native reading is not a collection of particular techniques that just so happen to help your
child read at an early age; rather, all the techniques are motivated by simple, but powerful,
principles. If you understand these principles—if you really grasp the reasoning behind native
reading—you can easily develop “customized” techniques that particularly suit your own unique
child.
That said, many people find teaching by example to be the most congenial. If that is the case
for you, you might even want to skip ahead and first read the specific techniques to promote
native reading that are described in Chapter 4. In this chapter I explain each native-reading
technique, I provide specific examples of using it, and in most cases I also relate my experience
using the technique with my own children. After reading about these specific techniques you
could then go back to Chapter 2 to get the general principles.
Chapter 3, “Learning to be a Native Reader is Fun!”, is important because, given the
struggle and the effort that learning to read can be for children who read later, many people
have the misconception that learning to read is necessarily hard and that the process inherently
involves drudgery. Understandably, such people want to spare this drudgery from a young
child. Also, many people find it very hard to resist the faulty logic that since learning to read is
often hard for a six-year-old, it must therefore be even harder for a younger child. Chapter 3
addresses these misconceptions and emphasizes that learning to read natively is, for your child,
largely an effortless extension of learning to talk. You don’t teach a two-year-old to read the
way you might teach a six-year-old. In fact, the best way to teach native reading is through
play, songs and, sometimes, through sheer silliness, because these are the things that young
children respond to the best.
Chapter 5, “Early Signs of Success, Seeing Your Child’s Progress”, gives you some specific
behaviors to keep an eye out for when raising your child as a native reader. It describes
behaviors that give clear early evidence that your child is on the path towards native reading,
even before your child is walking or talking. These signs of success are also important in
teaching native reading because they indicate that your child has ac-quired skills that you can
then respond to and build on, speeding and easing progress towards reading. Some of these
signs of progress are subtle, and they also can represent “teach-able moments” that are
important not to miss.
Chapter 6, “Some Common Misconceptions About Native Reading”, will hopefully seem
unnecessary to you by the time you reach that point in the book, by which time I hope the logic
of native reading has come to seem natural, and the benefits obvious. This chapter is included in
part because you may find yourself encountering some of these same misconceptions when your
child starts to read three years earlier than most of his or her peers. (That is, by the way, the
only real downside to native reading that I can think of, the explaining you sometimes need to
do.) Also, if you still find yourself a very determined skeptic after reading this introduction, you
might even want to skip to Chapter 6 first—although I hope you won’t read only Chapter 6—
as it may address your questions and concerns most directly.
Chapter 7, “Can Native Reading Prevent Dyslexia?”, presents the possibility that some
forms of dyslexia may be caused by learning to read too late. I emphasize in the chapter, and I
want to do so again here, that this explanation of dyslexia is no more than a hypothesis (that’s
why the chapter title ends in a question mark). However, I feel this hypothesis elegantly explains
many of the specific problems found in common forms of dyslexia and I therefore hope it is
given thoughtful consideration. This idea is potentially of such importance for so many people
that I felt I had to include a chapter on it, speculative though it is. Because this hypothesis turns
the logic of many commonly held beliefs about dyslexia rather on their heads, I expect there will
be some who will find it controversial. This is especially true because perhaps the most troubling
implication of this hypothesis, but also the most potentially important implication, is that many
cases of dyslexia might have been easily prevented. The theory also helps makes sense of the
otherwise confusing fact that dyslexia is, in some fundamental ways, a very intelligent disorder,
and that many dyslexics are, indeed, extremely intelligent.
Finally, in Chapter 8, “What Native Reading Will Give to Your Child”, I present what I
believe are the essential, and life-long, benefits that learning to read natively will give to your
child. Native reading is really not about simply reading earlier, it is about reading more easily,
more joyfully, and with a deeper level of literacy. It is about making the otherwise troubling
mechanics of reading so deeply known to your child that the technical, frustrating aspects of
reading become almost instinctive, and your child is then free to better concentrate on the
creative and meaningful purpose of language.
There is also a section of notes at the end of the main text. In these notes I have included
more of the scientific details behind my reasoning, I discuss further implications of the theory
behind the native-reading method, and I make some references to specific research and results
that formed the intellectual background for my ideas. For many people these notes may present
a level of detail that they would rather avoid, and if that describes you, you can just ignore the
notes. I certainly don’t feel they are essential to the text—that is, in fact, why I relegated them
to a section of notes at the end! But if you are especially curious, and perhaps of a scientific
bent, by all means do look them over. If you do, it may be useful to know that the notes don’t
need to be followed closely with the main text; many are structured as fairly independent essays
and their purpose is to expand and explain ideas introduced in the body of the book.
Part of the reason I start this book on a personal note, with the story of my daughter learning
to read, is to make something perfectly clear: this book comes primarily from my personal
experience helping my own children learn to read easily and joyfully at what most people
consider a remarkably early age. While I have been educated as a scientist, and this
background has certainly inspired and informed my ideas, I am not a professional expert on
reading acquisition. In general, I am a skeptical person, and I expect you to be skeptical, too
(but this should also include skepticism of professionals, no matter how many degrees follow
their names). But fair skepticism does not mean dismissing an idea without giving it thoughtful
and fair consideration. My hope is that as you read this book, you, like me, will find that the
ideas behind native reading simply make so much sense, that the methods become so natural
and intuitive as a parent, and that being a native reader has so many obvious benefits for your
child, that native reading will come to seem almost self-evident...
But to be perfectly honest, Freya showed little interest in books and, in particular, she usually
seemed to pay no attention at all to the text. So reading generally became one of those things I
resorted to when I was tired of playing peek-a-boo or singing songs, or when marching around
the house trying to get her to sleep just wasn’t working. As soon as she got bored with reading,
the book would be tossed aside, and I’d pick up a stuffed animal, or go back to peek-a-boo,
or perhaps hand her off to her mother for a while.
My daughter was, without a doubt, more “high-maintenance” than her older brother had
been—which was actually a bit of a shock, her mother and I had figured we would feel like
experts the second time around—but she was still an absolute delight. As she grew into
toddlerhood, it became clear that she was vivacious, funny, coordinated, clever (yes, I am a
doting father!), and, also, more than a little stubborn, or, as I like to think of it, opinionated.
Freya was definitely a child who could not be pushed into doing something when she wasn’t
in the mood for it. Whether it was a new food we introduced, or a game she didn’t want to play
at the moment, or an unwelcome long car ride, she would often become what we called,
usually with fondness, “contrary girl”. So, when it came to reading with her, we did relatively
little of it most days, especially when compared with her older brother, Otto, who had loved
being read to at length from an early age. In fact, one of Otto’s first words had been, “Again!”
and it was very often said the moment a favorite book was finished, even after the second time
through. With Freya, in contrast, the books were usually tossed aside, often only halfway
finished.
Still, books were part of our daily routine, and she soon had a few favorites. As I’d done
with her older brother, I nearly always pointed at the text when I read to her. This was a habit I
had developed to an unusual degree. She never seemed to take much notice of my finger
dancing over the text as I read: she was all about the pictures. Then one day, when she was
about two-and-a-half years old, I was being a little lazy. My finger had drifted from the text and
my hand was resting on the arm of our well-worn armchair when the magic word came, the
word that I had almost given up expecting: “Point,” she said, “Papa, point.” Being the assertive
little girl that she was, she grabbed my finger and moved it, not to the picture, but to the text on
the facing page. “Read,” she commanded.
This simple act, I already had reason to be quite certain, was evidence that a critical
threshold had been reached—a sort of neurodevelopmental tipping point, to use a popular
term. Within a few weeks Freya could recognize many words; within a few months she could
read hundreds of words. Even out of the usual context of a book, she could read with
confidence. She delighted in reading labels at the grocery store. When riding in the car, she
began reading words from signs along the road. She quickly progressed to the point that—still
before her third birthday—we could entertain Freya during road trips by putting a pile of books
in her lap when we set out. She would sit in her car seat and work her way through them one at
a time, reading them aloud from cover to cover before tossing them onto the floor. Many of
these books were old favorites, and she was certainly using memory to help her reading. But
from time to time I would also give her a new, previously unseen, library book. This was
primarily just to surprise and delight her, but it was also to satisfy her skeptical scientist parents
that her reading reflected more than a prodigious memory of previously read books. With only
an occasional pause at an unfamiliar word, Freya would read through these new books nearly
as fast as she read through her favorites; and she read through even these new books fluently,
with natural intonation, and with clear comprehension, as evinced by her occasional comments
on the action. Incontrovertibly, although she had not yet reached her third birthday, she was
reading independently. She was reading so well, in fact, that it seemed practically effortless.
It so happens that, while we were certainly pleased by this development, we couldn’t say
that we were actually surprised. Her older brother Otto, you see, had started reading simple
words much earlier—beginning at just eighteen months—and by the time he was two-and-a-
half, he was a good enough reader to read aloud the entirety of Charlotte’s Web to me. He did
this over the course of a summer beach vacation because his mother had read the book to him
earlier in the summer and he had liked it so much he wanted to share it with me. Otto’s reading
was so early and so fluent that he was considered quite a prodigy by many of those who
encountered him. Most people were delighted. Some people were simply shocked.
There were also a few people—most often competitive parents with older children who
were not yet reading—who were transparently not pleased when they saw Otto reading so
well. Sometimes such a person would make a veiled, or not so veiled, comment about how they
thought that kids shouldn’t be pushed into reading early. While these negative reactions were
definitely a bit unpleasant, comments like this actually turned out to be quite illuminating. You
see, some of these same parents were people I knew well enough to know that they drilled
their children with phonics flashcards, reading tutors, and other intensive means, all in the
attempt to teach them to read. Yet their obviously bright five and six-year-olds were sometimes
only barely literate, if at all. These parents were often palpably frustrated at their difficulty in
teaching their kids to read, and it was clearly this frustration that led to their negative comments.
For them, seeing a two-year-old fluently read through a chapter book…well, it kind of just
rubbed it in.
But the source of their frustration, the struggle their children had in learning to read, is why I
ended up finding these comments illuminating: because with both of my children, when they
were each ready, learning to read had been almost effortless. My children learned to read just
as they had learned to crawl, or learned to walk, or, especially, just as they learned to talk.
They learned easily and almost miraculously. I can’t really say that I taught them to read, they
essentially learned it on their own, at the different ages where they were each individually ready.
But both Otto and Freya learned to read at what most people consider an extraordinarily early
age. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that my early readers found reading relatively
effortless, while many older children find it a struggle. Instead, I believe the problem is that most
children learn to read too late. In fact, I believe that:
The optimal time to learn to read is when a child is one to three years old,
because this is the time when their brains naturally do the most closely-
related task: learning to under-stand speech and to talk themselves.
Nearly all children naturally learn to understand speech, and to speak themselves, between the
ages of one and three years (although the foundations do indeed start from early infancy). This
is an enormously complex task, yet you don’t really teach a child to talk. Instead, children learn
to talk essentially on their own, so long as they are raised in an environment rich with speech
and with social interaction. And children generally learn to talk with obvious delight, seemingly
without effort and, often, with amazing speed. They don’t learn to talk through regimented
lessons, instead they learn by listening to and interacting with their family and friends, by singing
songs, and by playing games. Nearly every child does this successfully, in every culture around
the world, and children have learned to talk like this throughout recorded history and, surely,
before recorded history, too.
Reading is different. I don’t believe that learning to read usually comes so naturally to a
child, at least not the way reading is typically taught. Some children certainly do pick up
reading quite easily. But many other children find learning to read very difficult, particularly
when they only started reading later in childhood. Some of these children even seem to actively
resist the process, showing an aversion to reading when encouraged to practice. Such children
can show a lack of interest in the subject, they can become easily frustrated by the quirky
mechanics of the written word, some can show signs of dyslexia. The usual way people explain
this observation—that some children learn reading early and easily, while others learn only late
and with difficulty—is often by saying that some children are naturally gifted, or somehow more
intelligent, and therefore they read early. While there may be some truth to this view in certain
cases, I believe that, in general, this notion puts the cart before the horse in a profoundly
misleading way. I believe that the reason some children read easily and early is because
reading early makes learning to read easier.
I know this sounds strange at first. Most people consider learning to read a fairly difficult
task. Look at how many six-year-olds struggle with it! And since it is difficult for many six-year-
olds, they assume that learning to read must be much more difficult, if not downright impossible,
for a four-year-old—to say nothing of a two-year-old! But this superficially compelling logic is
not valid for all tasks. For example, nearly everyone now knows that learning a foreign
language is much easier when you learn it at an earlier age. In fact, in general, the earlier the
better. It is better to learn a foreign language early for the simple reason that early childhood is
when our brains naturally are most receptive to language acquisition. It is a window of
opportunity that, if missed, makes learning harder. You can learn a second language later, of
course, but it is much more difficult to attain the fluency and accent that young children pick up
with no trouble at all. Because of this, schools in this country have finally started to move foreign
language instruction from the last few years of high school to much earlier in the curriculum,
preferably all the way to kindergarten and even to preschool. Many people resisted this
because, although everyone knows that children learn their own first language spontaneously
and with ease in early childhood, they assumed that learning a second language would be
somehow too confusing. The reality is, while there are occasional moments of confusion—
moments when a child speaks a bit of Franglais or Spanglish—children generally deal with the
additional complexity of a second language better when they are younger. Preschoolers,
compared to older children and adults, are truly geniuses at learning languages.
Native reading is a new method of teaching children to read that makes appropriate use of
this early aptitude for language. The core insight of native reading is that this natural genius
young children have for learning spoken languages can, if given the right environment, be
easily extended to written language, too. If children learn in this more natural way, they not only
read years earlier, they also gain an ease and familiarity with the written word that is achieved
by older children, if at all, only after a much greater struggle. Native readers learn to read as a
natural, effortless extension of learning to talk. And the best time to learn to read this way is the
best time to learn to talk: before the age of three. Better yet, when children learn to read in this
more natural way, not only do they learn easily, joyfully, and at an early age, but they then
become truly native readers. They become deeply and effortlessly literate in a way that has
lifelong benefits, just as native speakers of a language have an ease and fluency that can
generally only be marveled at by those who learned too late.
This is a very simple idea; yet it is also, in some ways, a radical idea. Are we really teaching
children to read too late? You should be skeptical of such a claim, but that doesn’t mean you
should summarily dismiss it. If you step back for a moment and look at the big picture, it’s really
not so surprising that our current practices of teaching reading might not be the best. As I’ve
just discussed, until very recently foreign languages were also typically introduced at what is
clearly too late in a child’s development. And remember, it is only in the last century or so that
near-universal literacy was found in any country. So one cannot easily dismiss the possibility
that we currently teach reading in a less than optimal way. We’ve only been working at it for a
few generations, after all. Also, there is the additional factor that old habits die hard, including
educational habits, and this is true whether they are good habits or bad ones. Consider, too,
that children who have learned to read very young, while rare, are by no means unheard of.
Many people have heard of a case or two of a child who could fluently read by three. Indeed,
throughout history there is ample evidence that children are certainly capable of reading that
young. For example, by the age of three the great mathematician Gauss could not only read, he
also knew enough mathematics to correct an error in his father’s payroll accounts! More
recently, it has been reported that not only was the entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey reading
by the age of three, but that she was actually so fluent a reader that she started her career in
public speaking at this same age, reading for her church congregation, to much applause and
amazement. So reading this early is clearly possible for some children. But I believe that, given
the right environment, learning to read this early, and this effortlessly, is something nearly all
children are capable of, with their natural genius for language acquisition.
Remember, fundamentally, speech and writing are just two different forms of the same
language. The critical factor is to create the right environment where the natural miracle of
language acquisition extends to the written word. This book is all about the way to foster the
type of environment that works. It is not a terribly long book, because the methods are
generally simple and intuitive, at least once you fully understand what native reading is all about.
Over the years of raising my children, I have compared the ways we encouraged reading in our
home with the ways I saw other parents and educators try to teach reading. I have realized that
while there are certainly many commonalities, there are also some important differences in
method and even in philosophy. I felt that these ideas were important enough that I should share
them with others. That is why I had to write this book. I have organized these learning
techniques into the correlation method of native reading. If you use the correlation method
of native reading consistently, and if you start at an early age, I believe that you can teach nearly
every child to read easily and well by the age of three. I also believe that you and your child will
have a lot of fun doing it, too.
I have written this book in the way, and in the order, that I hope will best communicate the
important points of native reading, and I have worked hard to keep it as concise as possible (if
you have kids, I know you’re busy!). But for those who, like me, cannot always resist skipping
around a bit, I’ll lay out the plan of the book. The two most important chapters are Chapter 2,
“The Correlation Method of Native Reading”, and Chapter 4, “Creating the Native-reading
Environment: 12 Techniques to Promote Native Reading for Your Child”. In Chapter 2 I lay
out the general method of native reading, and the logic that motivates the specific learning
techniques that promote it. These specific techniques are then what Chapter 4 is all about. The
reason I describe the general principles first and the specific techniques later is to emphasize
that native reading is not a collection of particular techniques that just so happen to help your
child read at an early age; rather, all the techniques are motivated by simple, but powerful,
principles. If you understand these principles—if you really grasp the reasoning behind native
reading—you can easily develop “customized” techniques that particularly suit your own unique
child.
That said, many people find teaching by example to be the most congenial. If that is the case
for you, you might even want to skip ahead and first read the specific techniques to promote
native reading that are described in Chapter 4. In this chapter I explain each native-reading
technique, I provide specific examples of using it, and in most cases I also relate my experience
using the technique with my own children. After reading about these specific techniques you
could then go back to Chapter 2 to get the general principles.
Chapter 3, “Learning to be a Native Reader is Fun!”, is important because, given the
struggle and the effort that learning to read can be for children who read later, many people
have the misconception that learning to read is necessarily hard and that the process inherently
involves drudgery. Understandably, such people want to spare this drudgery from a young
child. Also, many people find it very hard to resist the faulty logic that since learning to read is
often hard for a six-year-old, it must therefore be even harder for a younger child. Chapter 3
addresses these misconceptions and emphasizes that learning to read natively is, for your child,
largely an effortless extension of learning to talk. You don’t teach a two-year-old to read the
way you might teach a six-year-old. In fact, the best way to teach native reading is through
play, songs and, sometimes, through sheer silliness, because these are the things that young
children respond to the best.
Chapter 5, “Early Signs of Success, Seeing Your Child’s Progress”, gives you some specific
behaviors to keep an eye out for when raising your child as a native reader. It describes
behaviors that give clear early evidence that your child is on the path towards native reading,
even before your child is walking or talking. These signs of success are also important in
teaching native reading because they indicate that your child has ac-quired skills that you can
then respond to and build on, speeding and easing progress towards reading. Some of these
signs of progress are subtle, and they also can represent “teach-able moments” that are
important not to miss.
Chapter 6, “Some Common Misconceptions About Native Reading”, will hopefully seem
unnecessary to you by the time you reach that point in the book, by which time I hope the logic
of native reading has come to seem natural, and the benefits obvious. This chapter is included in
part because you may find yourself encountering some of these same misconceptions when your
child starts to read three years earlier than most of his or her peers. (That is, by the way, the
only real downside to native reading that I can think of, the explaining you sometimes need to
do.) Also, if you still find yourself a very determined skeptic after reading this introduction, you
might even want to skip to Chapter 6 first—although I hope you won’t read only Chapter 6—
as it may address your questions and concerns most directly.
Chapter 7, “Can Native Reading Prevent Dyslexia?”, presents the possibility that some
forms of dyslexia may be caused by learning to read too late. I emphasize in the chapter, and I
want to do so again here, that this explanation of dyslexia is no more than a hypothesis (that’s
why the chapter title ends in a question mark). However, I feel this hypothesis elegantly explains
many of the specific problems found in common forms of dyslexia and I therefore hope it is
given thoughtful consideration. This idea is potentially of such importance for so many people
that I felt I had to include a chapter on it, speculative though it is. Because this hypothesis turns
the logic of many commonly held beliefs about dyslexia rather on their heads, I expect there will
be some who will find it controversial. This is especially true because perhaps the most troubling
implication of this hypothesis, but also the most potentially important implication, is that many
cases of dyslexia might have been easily prevented. The theory also helps makes sense of the
otherwise confusing fact that dyslexia is, in some fundamental ways, a very intelligent disorder,
and that many dyslexics are, indeed, extremely intelligent.
Finally, in Chapter 8, “What Native Reading Will Give to Your Child”, I present what I
believe are the essential, and life-long, benefits that learning to read natively will give to your
child. Native reading is really not about simply reading earlier, it is about reading more easily,
more joyfully, and with a deeper level of literacy. It is about making the otherwise troubling
mechanics of reading so deeply known to your child that the technical, frustrating aspects of
reading become almost instinctive, and your child is then free to better concentrate on the
creative and meaningful purpose of language.
There is also a section of notes at the end of the main text. In these notes I have included
more of the scientific details behind my reasoning, I discuss further implications of the theory
behind the native-reading method, and I make some references to specific research and results
that formed the intellectual background for my ideas. For many people these notes may present
a level of detail that they would rather avoid, and if that describes you, you can just ignore the
notes. I certainly don’t feel they are essential to the text—that is, in fact, why I relegated them
to a section of notes at the end! But if you are especially curious, and perhaps of a scientific
bent, by all means do look them over. If you do, it may be useful to know that the notes don’t
need to be followed closely with the main text; many are structured as fairly independent essays
and their purpose is to expand and explain ideas introduced in the body of the book.
Part of the reason I start this book on a personal note, with the story of my daughter learning
to read, is to make something perfectly clear: this book comes primarily from my personal
experience helping my own children learn to read easily and joyfully at what most people
consider a remarkably early age. While I have been educated as a scientist, and this
background has certainly inspired and informed my ideas, I am not a professional expert on
reading acquisition. In general, I am a skeptical person, and I expect you to be skeptical, too
(but this should also include skepticism of professionals, no matter how many degrees follow
their names). But fair skepticism does not mean dismissing an idea without giving it thoughtful
and fair consideration. My hope is that as you read this book, you, like me, will find that the
ideas behind native reading simply make so much sense, that the methods become so natural
and intuitive as a parent, and that being a native reader has so many obvious benefits for your
child, that native reading will come to seem almost self-evident...
| Copyright © 2008 Timothy D. Kailing. All rights reserved |
| ...to read more, the full book is available at: Amazon.com or directly from The Native Reading Store |