Early Word Recognition Is Key To Lifelong Reading Skills Says New Study
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2009) — Children’s early reading experience is critical to the development of their lifelong reading skills a new study from the University of Leicester has discovered.
It found that the age at which we learn words is key to understanding how people read later in life.
Basically, the earlier you learn to read words, the better off you’ll be later on all through the rest of your life. The earlier, the better.
This relates to a post I did the other day about early readers in Finland. Finnish is much easier to learn that English, so school age readers catch up within months in reading ability with preschool readers (about 1/3 of all Finnish children). Yet, the early readers in Finland maintain better reading fluency in later grades than school-age readers. This particular study probably explains why this occurs. The early readers have had maybe two to three years of word exposure under their belts before the school-age readers even start to read.