Reading and writing before the age of 6, are the children ready?

Each child has a different rhythm to learn to read, some authors point out that the optimal age to start is before 4 and others maintain that it should start at 10 years old. In many schools el literacy learning is introduced before the age of 6 sin, however, many parents wonder if the children are

Each child has a different rhythm to learn to read, some authors point out that the optimal age to start is before 4 and others maintain that it should start at 10 years old.

In many schools el literacy learning is introduced before the age of 6 sin, however, many parents wonder if the children are ready. In Guiainfantil.comwe clarify it. Are children prepared to read and write before age 6?

Usually, the school marks the time for your child to begin to start reading, usually before age 6. The investigations of recent years have focused on

assessing whether there was an adequate age or, on the contrary, the child should have a maturity to read.

The conclusion of psychologists specializing in reading learning as Fernando Cuetos Vega affirm that, "perhaps it is not appropriate to ask at what age should begin to teach to read, but what skills will favor the learning of reading ".

How to start the child in reading and writing- Perfect your oral language:If your child speaks fluently and understands what you say, it will be very important at the beginning of the reading. Although it may be difficult for you to believe it, reading is not just about reading again and again, there are more skills that make it easier for you to read correctly. Numerous researches affirm that if you read your son (even if he does not read yet), you talk to him with a varied and rich vocabulary, helping him to be a good reader. The explanation is because reading comprises two parts: recognizing words and understanding them. If the words you read cease to be unknown, because you have already heard them and know their meaning, you will only have to make an effort to recognize them visually.

- Enhances short-term and long-term visual and auditory memory:

Memory is a fundamental skill in language comprehension. Repeating a word will help the child to memorize it and once it is memorized, he will read it more fluently and that will allow him to understand it better. A recent study published by researchers at the University of Oviedo (Asturias) has indicated that repetition helps to improve reading and be more fluid. It is not a matter of repeating many times, but rather the only requirement is that the repetitions occur loudly for six or eight times so that a child who does not have reading problems pronounce it in a fluent way, in the event that they have any specific difficulty would need to increase the number of repetitions. - Improve your phonological awareness:

Phonological awareness occurs when your child is able to recognize that a letter (grapheme) corresponds to a certain sound (phoneme). To read, your child needs to recognize the letters, then form syllables and later recognize the word and understand its meaning. Research has shown that phonological awareness is a fundamental predictor for your child to read successfully (Serrano, Defior and Gracia, 2005). To improve it at home is easier than it seems initially, you can use songs, games or riddles. - Perfect their visual and auditory skills:

A child who is reading concentrates so much on recognizing the letters that he sometimes forgets to rely on other resources to understand the text, for example the drawings that are around him or even listen to the sounds he is saying when reading aloud. At the beginning, it demands such a level of concentration that once they have read, they do not realize that they have made a mistake until they join the syllables and turn them into a word. Therefore, try to read picture books or without words in which you stimulate their skills, understand that reading is more than reading a few letters. - Motivation:

All these skills do not work if there is not an interest to learn and if you force them you will achieve just the opposite. Reading should be associated with something fun and for this it can be a good resource in a while that is with you informally, like before going to sleep or helping you to make a recipe with you, or sing in a karaoke so that the lyrics are known . Do not forget that we read to relate to the world, so it is important that you find what you need to read in your day to day.