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With ‘National Read a Book Day’ just around the corner, the world of reading is the focus for my blog post this week.

 

As adults, I think we can easily take this learnt skill absolutely for granted, however let’s imagine our world without it for a second. What an entirely different place it would be.

 

I think I saw my biggest moment of independence as the moment I passed my driving test  - third time lucky!  However, as an adult I now see that moment was when I learnt to read. Of course, I cannot remember a time without reading, however I think we can probably all agree that without it, our lives would be incredibly narrow and restricted.

 

The global literacy rate among adults stands at a little over 87%, I think that’s quite remarkable, although of course it does leave 13% of the world’s population unable to read. If we broke that figure down further of course, and looked at statistics such as, geographics and gender, I think we would see some unsurprising factors.

 

I believe it would be pretty hard to argue that reading quite literally changes lives.

 

If you don’t know already, I’m a massive ‘drum beater’ for learning to read, and more importantly, learning to read well. What do I mean by ‘well’? ... Well (!)... let me explain.

 

As an ESL teacher (English as a Second Language) I far too often see students struggling to read. I witness this the most in my students from China, however the problem isn’t isolated to this country.  My students, often have a near fluency in spoken English. So what’s the problem? The problem is, that when learning to read in Chinese, it is effective to learn to read by sight, or memory if you like. Therefore reading in English is often taught in the same manner. However, in English we have over 170,000 words, can you imagine trying to memorise that level of words?! No wonder I receive referrals where students are, at best, frustrated by reading in English, or completely lacking in self-belief, and at worst, totally and utterly disinterested and bored in both English and reading in English. This is a hard place to pick up from.

 

If learning to read by sight isn’t effective in English, then what is? Phonics. It’s simply that.

 

As you may or may not know, phonics is the connection between the letter and it’s sound. Learning phonics gives students the skills (which I like to refer to as the secret code) to learn to read independently, and the changes can happen amazingly quickly for students, ensuring high motivation levels remain intact!

 

There are 44 phonetic sounds (phonemes) in English, represented by the 26 letters of the alphabet, individually and in combination. Once students have learnt these phonemes they can, independently and surprisingly quickly, decipher any written English word!

No memorisation required!

 

Hmmm… learning 44 phonetic sounds or memorising 170,000 words? I know which one I’d rather!

 

For ESL students there are more benefits, a clear one is pronunciation. If students learn the phonetic sounds correctly at the beginning, they are much more likely to develop a native level of pronunciation.

 

Learning to read in English without studying phonics is such a common problem, one which can lead to terrible outcomes, and also one that is so easily resolved.

 

In 2023 I took a massive leap and decided to spend much of the year creating my ‘Complete Phonics’ course, as it had become apparent that there were just not enough hours in the day to reach as many students as I had referrals. I now have many students following my carefully structured course, from home, in their own time, with my FULL support. The transformation in these students continues to be OUTSTANDING! Not just in their ability to read, although of course that’s a BIG one, but I hear from parents how their child's self-esteem and overall well-being has improved significantly too.

 

There's one incredibly proud teacher here!

 

The key here is TIME. Catching struggling students before they develop their own bad habits, in the form of coping mechanisms; once these are learnt it is very, very hard to unlearn them. This is an ongoing personal battle for me, fully enlightening parents as to the need to act NOW to give their child the best chance, in reading AND their future studies.

 

Learning the secret code of phonics is literally LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC! I will never stop beating the drum of phonics.

 

If you would like to find out more about my phonics course you can here. Please do contact me if you would like to discuss your child’s reading ability and to see if now is the right time for them to focus on phonics.

 

Many people overlook reading as being a learnt skill, however, reading is not something we can merely observe others doing as babies or children, like learning to speak, we actually need to study it ourselves, just like learning to write. The great thing is, we can be on our way to English reading fluency within 10-18 months of study, and that’s with just 10-15 minutes dedicated study per day!

 

I am incredibly proud to say that BrownOwl Education provides Anjali House, a Cambodian based not-for-profit, with direct access to our Complete Phonics course (as well as our Beginners English and Art in English Club). The phonics course is used daily in their classroom activities.

 

‘Giving back’ is incredibly important to me, and I am always looking for other non-profit, global, organisations who could benefit from my English courses. If you know of another who you feel could benefit I would love to hear from you. In the meantime, thank you for your support, without it I wouldn’t be able to offer my knowledge and services to those it can impact most, free of charge, thank you.

 

Do you have a favourite book, a book that you go back to time and time again? Do let me know on my BrownOwl Facebook page.  For me, it is a children’s book! It’s the wonderful ‘Colour Monster’ by Anna Llenas. A fantastic book in it’s own right, however in the ESL classroom I use it to teach emotions, feelings and colours, in fact it has featured in my Art in English Club, click here to access the Colour Monster story and activity for FREE.