Tag: learn to read
Do children need to learn to read anymore?
I obviously think learning to read is a great idea. I earn my living writing children’s books. Children’s hard labour keeps me busy with honest toil. I wouldn’t want children to grow up without recourse to the wonderful worlds of fantasy that I was able to explore in my youth. Narnia was not just a collection…
Phonics confuse slow readers
I love the English language and all its strange little ways – how it is perfectly unsuited to learning to read using an exclusive phonetic system. Take a simple word like Slow. Slow can be pronounced phonetically as Slough, like the town, or Sloe, as in the name of the fruit. If you come from…
What is reading for?
Currently, there is a lively debate about how children should learn to read. It seems to me that both sides of the debate share the same concern – they all agree that children should become fluent readers, able to both read and understand the written word. To me, the debate has come about through the…