The Importance of Reading Aloud

This is a synopsis of information found on the DVD "Nurturing Competent Communicators" by Andrew Pudewa of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. It was sooo wonderful, I thought I'd share some of the highlights as it pertains to reading and language development.

The first and foremost key point was the extreme importance of reading aloud to your children, no matter their age!! Andrew talked about how children get to a certain age and parents slack off and stop reading to them. In opposition of this practice, he earnestly emphasized the importance of reading aloud to your children daily - even to the extent that if you're not doing it - drop a subject to make room!!

Andrew elaborated on why this is so important - sorting through the main sources of language acquisition and communication sources for our kids: peers, media, family, books (in that order). Then he walked through each of those means and what they contribute or don't contribute to correct and sophisticated language patterns.

He talked about how memorization (poetry in this case) neurologically grows the brain and also briefly touched on the issue of writing by noting that children "can't get out what's not in there". That's where the storage of rich language patterns plays an essential role.

I guess the gist of it is the understanding of how great literature, rich language, and even poetry memorization provide a "template of language" and store "correct and sophisticated language patterns" that the child can retrieve for future communications of all modes.

I had an epiphany last year on this very issue, which was probably sparked by something I read. Even so, I made a deliberate effort to immerse my dd in great literature through both read alouds and the frequent use of audio books - and in my own experience, the difference was amazing! Honestly not just in "her" language development, but my own as well. Now, I don't purport this as a cure for learning/reading issues, but it's certainly a stepping stone that should not be missed for any learner. What tends to happens when children struggle with reading, is that they get less and less exposure to "the good stuff"- you can equate this to the "Matthew effect" - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

No doubt, Andrew's wisdom will certainly give me pause next time I'm tempted to reach for the shortest story or skip a line, page or paragraph in a race to "get done"!

Forgive me for being so long winded, I guess you can tell that I enjoyed watching this DVD :-) I took away a renewed love and reverence for reading to my children as well as continuing to read for myself! I hope that this will encourage you to keep reading to you and yours too!

This and other great resources are available from The Institute for Excellence in Writing via the link below -

http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/