Learning to read

[Miss Chicken]

Do you remember learning to read and if so, at what age did you start to learn and how were you taught?

I have no memory of learning at all beyond playing school with my sisters. I assume that I somehow learnt to read when I was about 4 years old. I was certainly a good reader by the time I was six because I remember my grade 1 teacher placing me and a couple of other children into a group because she didn't need to teach us the basics. We were allowed to do silent reading while the other children learnt to read.

The major drawback of this is that I never learnt to recite the alphabet. I had trouble with alphabetical order until I was about 10 or 11.

 

[cultcross]

My mother is a primary school teacher so I was taught from a young age. Although she did try some phonics I never found that method particularly useful due to the idiosyncrasies of English. I can't say that I had a 'method' that I remember, I just read everything I could get my hands on until I could do it unaided. I found the reading books available at school painfully dull (Billy Blue Hat, if anyone remembers him, was my personal nemesis at a young age) and plodding, so quickly ignored the reading scheme entirely and went to the local library instead.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I remember, and I'm convinced that the reason my memories go so far back is because I learned to read so early. I had language acquisition problems when I was little, and couldn't get a handle on grammar--even things as fundamental as the difference between a question and a statement, or "he" and "she" I wasn't grasping. I had very severe ADHD, and I suspect that there is also an auditory processing issue going on as well, because sometimes there are times when I am trying to listen to someone talk, and they're speaking perfectly clearly, and all I hear is a garble of speech sounds. It's not my hearing itself--it's the way my brain seems to process speech at times.

My mom had majored in early childhood education, and caught on very quickly to the fact that something was wrong. So she started teaching me how to read at 2 1/2. I still remember my very first alphabet book, a beautiful cloth book that I think my dad might have bought in Korea. (I could be wrong about it coming from Korea, but a lot of things I had or played with when I was little came from there, because my dad was in the Air Force and I guess the exchange rates must have been favorable.) The way I remember it, it was almost like a quilt, except you could turn the pages!

For some reason, I would sit still for books. Who knows...maybe it was because having a visual helped speech to make sense. But I don't remember not knowing how to read in at least some rudimentary fashion. I remember not knowing what certain words meant, but not being completely without the written word. To this day, I think first in written words--no doubt because it's the first thing that REALLY sunk in. Given that, when I was little, I honestly couldn't understand why people had spelling difficulties; all you had to do for me was speak the word, and I saw it in my mind and all I was doing was copying it. Doesn't mean I never did (or don't) make mistakes, but they were rare.

 

[Kestra]

My mom claims I was reading between 2 and 3. I remember reading books on my own at four, in preschool. I don't think there's a big rush on milestones like this as long as overall development seems on track.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I sort of remember it, but not the actual process itself. I couldn't say how quick it actually happened, but it feels like one moment I couldn't read, and the next I suddenly could. From there it was just a process of building my vocabulary. You know, it was a lot like learning French in high school now that I think about it. There was just this sudden moment when I "got it," and even if I didn't understand every word I read, I could sound them all out, I could understand the grammar and the way the words connected to each other.

I remember reading some simple books at my grandparents' house, and sounding out the words cat and dog. But more importantly than being able to say the words, I remember being able to actually understand the story I was reading - on my own. What a satisfying feeling.

I really have no idea what age I learned, but I know that I was reading and writing in preschool. I remember always being ahead of the class with writing and reading comprehension - though I am a very slow reader. Even now, though, people tell me sometimes that I have a gift when it comes to language. It makes me wonder if I should have gone into a field of study that focuses more closely on that.

 

[SPCTRE]

Funnily enough, I clearly remember my first grade teacher in elementary school once saying something along the lines of "Basically, you just pronounce the single letters one after another really quickly and without pausing - and that's how you read.".

After that, I started reading out aloud - everything I could get my hands (or rather eyes) on. Must have been pretty annoying at times for my parents

 

[iguana_tonante]

With all people saying they started learning at 2 or 3, I am quite bashful to admit I learned it at 6 in first grade. I don't remember the specifics, but I distinctly remember reading aloud all the signs are posters I saw while walking or during car trips, annoying virtually everybody.

 

[Saga]

i could read pretty well before entering kindergarten. actually, i learned thanks to comic books believe it or not. i wasn't interested in any of the 'kids' books my mom wanted me to read. my uncle gave me a stack of old marvel and gold key comics and i devoured them.

 

[Eyes]

My mother says that I started to read at 3. I know I never had a problem reading in primary school, (or spelling for that matter) and I've always enjoyed reading.

 

[M'Sharak]

I can't point to a particular time after which I knew how to read and before which I didn't, nor can I identify any specific method by which I was taught. I do remember that we always had books around home--lots of them, on a pretty wide variety of subjects--and that my parents read to us from very early on, beginning with Dr. Seuss books and the like. I also remember that somewhere in the first half of my kindergarten year (age 5) the teacher must have figured out that I did know how to read and had me demonstrate by reading things for her (Sam and the Firefly is the one I still recall clearly); for the second half of that year, I would go to my kindergarten room in the mornings and attended first grade classes in the afternoon, moving on to second grade the following year.

I guess I never learned that reading was work or that it was in any way a thing to be avoided. It was just fun, and I read a lot.

 

[F. King Daniel]

My Mum did a great job teaching me to read at an early age. The specifics have faded with time (I remember the Mr. Men, Meg and Mog, and the BFG!), but I know I was well ahead of my classmates in infants' and junior schools.
In the afternoon one kid would read a story to the others. Everyone was supposed to have a go, but everyone else's reading was so rotten that after my turn, the class would try and get me to read every afternoon.

I was freaked out a few weeks ago when, at the library, there were two really hot 20something girls sat near me who could barely read.

 

[Holdfast]

Apparently I learned to read really early... but all parents tell their kids that I think.

I do know that my the time I went to school, I was already fluently reading books several years ahead of where we were "meant" to be. Skipped a year or two as a result, IIRC, because I was just getting bored and not actually doing anything. Funnily enough, that led to my having the same issue with remembering alphabetical order as Miss Chicken mentioned, for the same reason of never needing to recite it in order. I learnt alphabetical order some time after learning to read, as a result of that.

This all reminds me: one basic skill I DID have difficulty with was learning to tell the time. I vividly recall not understanding how I could be so good at reading, writing and maths compared to everyone else and yet I had so much difficulty reading a clock face! Even now, I can't understand why I found it so genuinely conceptually difficult, in a way I almost never found any other schoolwork. If forced to guess, I suppose it's because it's all visuospatial skills and I'm terrible at related tasks like giving directions/remembering routes, etc, etc. My mind just doesn't like to pay attention to this stuff.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It was my grandmother that basically taught me to read. I think I was like 2 at the time. She took me to the grocery store which is how I got my experience, reading the product labels. Then at Dairy Queen, I put it into practice.

Figures, really, that it was FOOD that got me to read.

 

[thestrangequark]

I don't remember learning to read, and don't know when I was taught, but I do know that I could already read by the time I started kindergarten. I do remember very clearly learning to speak, though, as I didn't start speaking until age 4-5.

 

[Amaris]

Somewhere around 2 1/2 to 3. I distinctly remember reading books around 3, and I read album covers (as in LPs) before that.

 

[mimic]

I don't really remember learning to read, but I was an average reader until between first and second grade, at which point I became a bookworm.

I remember my first chapterbook. It was The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander and my Mom had started reading it to me. Chapter 1 ends on a cliffhanger - Henwen runs into the woods where Taran has been told never to go, and he plunges in. My Mom said it was bedtime, so I waited until she went upstairs and then turned the light on, put a blanket at the bottom of the door so the room would still appear dark from the outside, and read the next chapter.

 

[Niorah]

I was a big fan of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comics, and I got bored of waiting for someone to have the time to read their stories to me. So I started learning to read on my own, asking this or that member of the family about this or that letter or punctuation. Apparently nobody had really noticed this strategy of mine.

My mum told me this story many times, 'cause I don't remember these events.
I was about 3 and lounging at my great-aunt's, waiting for lunch to be ready, with one of my precious Disney comics, reading out loud. My great-aunt was passing by, setting the table, and she looked at me and commented: "How cute, are you making up a story to go with the drawings?"
To which I replied, without missing a beat: "Oh no, I'm reading!"
She being at the time the elementary school teacher of her little town, she obviously came over to check, and she asked me to read from the comic, which I did.
She then started running towards the kitchen yelling: "She can read! She can read!"
Needless to say after 5 seconds the whole family was by my side, listening to me reading.
It was quite annoying too, because reading has always been a very intimate experience for me, so I just wanted them to leave me alone.

And that's my story.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I remember being taught to read in first grade, when I was 6. But I don't remember the actual process of learning or what it was like not being able to read, so it's really hard for me to say if I learned then or before (I think I started reading in Kindergarten and they re-taught everyone to read a year later, but I'm not sure). I have a younger brother and I remember thinking when I was 7 or 8 years old what it must be like not being able to read, not grasping the idea, and trying to get him to explain what letters look like to him. So I know that, whenever I learned to read, I quickly forgot about not being able to read.

EDIT:

I remember my first chapterbook. It was The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander and my Mom had started reading it to me. Chapter 1 ends on a cliffhanger - Henwen runs into the woods where Taran has been told never to go, and he plunges in. My Mom said it was bedtime, so I waited until she went upstairs and then turned the light on, put a blanket at the bottom of the door so the room would still appear dark from the outside, and read the next chapter.

Book of Three was one of my favorite fantasy series when I had read it. I must have read it after you (I know I read Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe first). Really cool series. I think Black Cauldron is an even cooler book.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I never had the alphabetical order problem because we were taught library research skills (that part of my childhood was pre-Internet!), and that was one of the things you had to learn. Plus I was constantly in the library anyway.

 

[RandyS]

My mom claims I was reading between 2 and 3. I remember reading books on my own at four, in preschool.

My mom made the same claims about me, after she said she taught me to read by reading to me from the minute I was born.