Learning to Read and Write

Modern societies expect virtually all children to learn to read. Before going on to consider how that skill is acquired, and might best be taught, it is worth pausing for a moment to reflect upon the fact that the current expectation of near-universal literacy is a very modern phenomenon. Children in different countries begin to learn to read at different ages. The better a child's grasp of spoken language, and the better that child's knowledge of world, the easier the business of learning to read and write should be, whenever that task is begun. If the process of learning to read builds upon a foundation of other cognitive skills, then people should find that children who arrive at school with those skills well bedded in should make the easiest and best progress. "Phonics" approaches deliberately teach letter sound correspondence to children who learn the pronunciations typically given to letters and letter groups. Reading aloud may be referred to as "decoding".