Basic principles of learning English

By Malbert Smith III

Whether teaching a child to read in their first language or a second language, parents play a huge and important role.

While learning to read, write, and speak a second language is always a more difficult challenge, the basic principles are the same across all languages. So let’s talk about some of these principles.

Parents can foster a supportive and encouraging environment by modeling literacy behaviors across both languages. Children will not want to learn to read in a second language without first developing a love of reading in their first language.

As children start to learn to read in English, parents can provide encouragement and positive reinforcement. Just like learning to read in one’s first language, beginning to learn to read a second language requires much practice and parents can help by encouraging and rewarding children for their effort.

As children learn the alphabet and the sound-symbol correspondence, parents can assist second language readers by promoting English vocabulary growth. There are a number of options for this from audio supported books to educational software and to vocabulary lists.

A third and pragmatic way that parents can help is to make sure that their children get sufficient reading practice with targeted text. What I mean by targeted text is reading material that is at the appropriate challenge and developmental level.

One of the most important principles in acquiring any skill is matching the difficulty of the task with the current ability of the child. If we do not pay attention to this match, children can be exposed to material that is so difficult that they become frustrated and disengaged. If the material is too easy, they might become bored.

That’s the reason we created the Lexile System for Reading as a tool and resource for parents and educators to help them match reading material to the skill level of the child.

Nowadays, tens of millions of students worldwide receive a reading measure that helps them find targeted readings from the more than 100 million articles, books and websites that have been measured.

In the last few years, a number of Korean organizations have started adapting “targeted reading” for their children’s English learning. Korean students now have access to reader measures through books offered by online booksellers and renowned publishers.

Also, there are many free materials for parents and English teachers when they are in need of targeted reading materials and they can find the right books and articles based on children’s ability level and interest.

During targeted reading practice, a child might encounter some difficulties with a text. It is, however, the best way to grow as a reader and support English with text that’s not too hard but not too easy.

Korea has been a great model for success in addressing some of the common educational challenges. I believe Korea has much potential in the development and adoption of targeted reading and learning.

The summer vacation is just around the corner and I hope Korean students will develop a love of reading for a lifetime.

Malbert Smith III is a professor at University of North Carolina’s School of Education and president of MetaMetrics, a U.S.-based educational measurement and research institute.