I have 2 boys who are 7 and 8.5 years old. Both of them are very good at reading stories, especially English. My elder boy can read the stories even up to 600+ pages now. When he was in P2, he finished the Cambridge English Exam (Mover and Flyer) with full grades and nearly full grades. And my younger boy (P2) also finds no problem to finish a story book over 100 pages. According to my experience:
1) Being late to speak doesn't necessarily mean that the child is not good at speech. The main thing is whether the parents consistently talk to him with rich vocabulary or not. Don't talk to him with baby words. You must speak proper and complete sentence with more vocabulary.
2) When you read the child story, it's better to read it as written form, rather than the spoken form. Actually when you read the story, you are directing your child to look at the words at the same time, you should be using the finger or a pencil or a chopstick to run along the story. First it can help him to focus; second, you are training him to recognize the words. At the beginning, don't expect he can recognize a lot of words. But if you are consistent reading your child the story for a period of time, let's say 2 years or so, you will find it very amazing that one day your child can read it on his own. My elder boy could read his first English story book when he was in P1. When he was in P2, he could finish the story books with over 200 pages. During the last summer holiday, he could even finish the story books ranging from 200 - 600 pages. But I want to tell you that my boys are not the gifted ones. They are only the average children, but because of my consistency to read them the story books, they have now developed a very good reading habit already. Up to now, I still read them some story books from time to time. some are very easy and some are difficult. But they still enjoy them. According to some educationalists, you can read story books to your child up to 11 years old, it means up to P6. I can share with you that it's very joyful whenever you say, "Story Time, boys", then the boys rush to your both sides and lean against you to listen to your story. It's a very good time of building the relationship with the children. Worth a try!
3) When you read English story books, definitely you should not translate it into Chinese at all. If so, you are actually discouraging him from learning English as you will explain to him Chinese anyway. If you do think that he doesn't understand, use some simple English and body language to explain to him. If the child actually doesn't get used to listening to English, how about allowing him to watch some simple English cartoon VCDs / listen some simple English songs for kids / borrow some simple English CD stories from the library for him to listen..... Start to foster his interest in English language first; then move on to read him the simple English story later.
This is my actual experience. Try consistently then you will see the amazing result. May God bless you and give you patience to teach your child!作者: echowu 時間: 2009-9-25 17:51
非常非常多謝 Purple 及 Dr. Wu 你們的寶貴分享！幸好在這裏有機會請教大家，要不然我真的做錯了很多，再次多謝多謝！！！！作者: julianacwh@gmai 時間: 2011-8-18 11:51
My daughter is 21 month old, but she can't sit still to read story book with me, she just have a look on the picture and then turn her head around with little concentration on the book.
What can I do to make her read with me?作者: csoffice@sjs.or 時間: 2011-9-1 17:21
