What exactly does reading to children teach them?
Caroline Erdos, Literacy Expert
Dr. Erdos is a consultant for the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board in Quebec and a speech-language pathology advisor for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Canada. Prior to this, she was ALDI Coordinator (Advancing Learning in Differentiation & Inclusion) for the 10 English school boards in Quebec, Canada, where she supported resource teachers through various professional development initiatives. Caroline has over 20 years’ experience as a pediatric speech-language pathologist in a tertiary care centre and has worked as a language and literacy consultant and a legal expert in speech-language pathology. Her areas of expertise include bilingualism and multilingualism, reading impairment, oral language impairment, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and craniofacial disorders. She has guest lectured at Université de Montréal, McGill University, and the McGill University Health Centre. She has also given workshops at numerous conferences across North America and has written and collaborated on several publications.
What exactly does reading to children teach them?
When a child is read to, many great things happen. They hear new words, new sentence structures and new ideas. By watching you turn the pages of the book and track with your finger, they also learn about directionality of print, distinguishing print from pictures and perhaps even letter or word identification.
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish – “Daddy, does that say fish?”
There is a very popular and well studied theory of reading called the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). It states that reading comprehension is the product of sounding out words (decoding) and understanding language (language comprehension). Reading comprehension, or understanding what we read is, of course, the ultimate goal of reading.
Decoding X Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
It is the product rather than the sum that matters because both skills are needed in order to understand what is read and we know that if we multiply a number by zero, we get zero. Imagine, for example, a child who has great oral language skills (LC = 10) but who has not learned to decode words (D = 0). They could not possibly understand text (10 X 0 = 0). The reverse is also true, for example a child who has very limited oral language skills (LC = 0) because of language difficulties or incomplete acquisition of the language but is great at sounding out words (D = 10) – that child would also struggle to understand text (0 X 10 = 0). When you read to a child, you build their oral language skills and you start them on the journey of print identification. Essentially, you are enriching the key components of the Simple View of Reading. Then, a wonderful teacher continues to provide explicit literacy instruction and a world of endless possibilities opens up.
