Ten Practical Suggestions for Parents to Enhance Pre-Reading Skills in Children

by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

1. Read with your child, preferably letting her choose the book. Read in an interactive way, ask questions about the text, ask your child to find the pictures related to the passage being read, suggest alternative possibilities to an ending, reflect on the content of the book, let her turn the pages – reading for 30 minutes a day has been shown to boost verbal expression and vocabulary skills in children as young as two! These are both directly related to later reading skills. Ask your child to “read” you the story even if it means retelling from memory. Point out key words if she asks. Read in as many languages as you are proficient in.

2. Play with Nursery Rhymes and use Rhythmic Games to encourage phonemic awareness (in as many languages possible). This could also include nursery rhyme tapes in other languages as the rhythm, intonation, and variety of sounds are intriguing to children, especially during the Windows of Opportunity*.

3. Sing with your child. Or encourage him to sing alone. It is engaging and encourages memory, and shows benefits much the same as rhythm games and rhymes (in as many languages as your child shows interest).

4. Ask your child to retell a story from a book or to make up a story herself and then listen, ask questions, and show your interest in her blooming literary development!

5. Try reading games in the car or while at the supermarket. (“Today is ‘M’ day. How many M’s can we see on the labels of the food or on license plates or on street signs?” Make sure you repeat the sound of the letter of choice each time they find it. “Yes, another ‘M’ mmmmm, good!” Or a game of “I-spy” is always a winner: “I spy a red train, who sees the train?” If you see signs in other languages, be sure to read them as well, if you are capable. Be sure your pronunciation is good in all languages you play the game in.

6. If available, Sesame Street-type videos or cassettes which encourage letter and sound recognition can be used;

7. Playing with magnetic letters on the refrigerator or cutting shapes from playdough allows the physical manipulation of letter shapes.

8. Pretending to write (play restaurant with your child and let him “take your order” on a small note pad, for example, or play “school” or “library” with him to show the many different ways reading and writing are used around him. Teach your child to actually write and recognize his own name as well as that of other family members (mom, dad, etc).

9. Labeling some (by means not all!) things in the child’s room (“table,” “chair,” “door”) helps with later sight recognition of words.

10. Encourage all your child’s attempts and do not compare her progress to others. Each person has different strengths and aptitudes, and your positive reinforcement is necessary to help her reach her own potential.

Remember: Readers come from reading families. Studies have shown that children who see their parents reading are more likely to be readers themselves. Model the behavior you want to encourage.

Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa. Copyright © 2000 by Bergin & Garvey. Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

TRACEY TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA is the author of Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children (2000) and The Multilingual Mind: Questions by, for and about people living with many languages (2003). www.multifaceta.com.

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