Is Learning to Read the Same as Learning to Talk?

Short answer: No!

Some twenty years ago my daughter’s first grade teacher and several education specialists called me into a meeting. I had no idea why– my daughter had no behavioral issues and I thought she was doing well in school. She wasn’t.

At this meeting, I was told that my daughter was not learning to read fast enough. It was up to me, I was told, to “do the right thing” and hold her back. If I did the wrong thing and sent her to second grade, things would spiral downhill, she would get further and further behind and become–I don’t know– a high school dropout and drug addict.

I decided to do the wrong thing. I also decided that, over the summer, I would teach my daughter to read myself. I began by asking her what she had been taught so far. It turns out, not much: she did receive any of the phonics instruction that I received as a child. As far as I could tell, her teachers expected her to learn to read on her own. 

My assessment of my daughter’s reading educational experience was not far from the truth, as she was being taught to read by the whole language method. The whole language method of reading instruction is based on the premise that reading is a natural process that children can learn on their own, like learning to talk. Children do not need explicit instruction to learn how to talk, and likewise, many practitioners of whole language reason that children do not need explicit instruction to learn how to read. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true.

Speech is an evolutionary adaptation that developed in humans millions of years ago. The alphabetic writing system, in contrast, is an invention that only came into common usage 600 years ago with the invention of the printing press. Inventors of the alphabetic writing system recognized that words can be broken down into component sounds, which in turn can be represented by letters. 

It may be obvious to you, a fluent reader, that words can be broken down into component sounds, because in learning to read you developed awareness of this fact, called phonemic awareness. However, phonemic awareness isn’t required to produce or understand speech, which means our brains aren’t wired to do it. Instead, phonemic awareness must be learned. 

Some children are able to develop phonemic awareness on their own. Others aren’t so lucky. The consequences of not developing phonemic awareness can last a lifetime: in one study adults with poor reading skills had a great deal of difficulty identifying the beginning, middle, and last sound in a one-syllable word. Fortunately, phonemic awareness can be taught, and numerous studies show that teaching phonemic awareness at any age improves readings skills, both in the short and long term. 

I did not know any of this when I entered that long-ago meeting with my daughter’s  first grade teachers, but I learned quickly, and decided to teach her using a method that develops phonemic awareness. By the end of the summer, she was reading at grade level.

She has since graduated summa cum laude from university with a dual degree in physics and math, and completed a one-year internship at NASA in quantum computing. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in physics. I can’t take credit for her success, but I can say that I am glad I did the wrong thing all those years ago and taught her to read myself.