Your child's favourite book works linguistic wonders

When my daughter was aged between 8 months and two years, she would want to "read" Harry, the dirty dog by Gene Zion nearly every night for her bed time story. That's alot of readings of a book of about 10 pages. Sometimes we'd hide Harry dog, and suggest all manner of fascinating alternatives, but then have to miraculously find it when the tears would start to flow.

It turns out she knew what she was doing in terms of her language development, even if it was at the expense of parental sanity. Repeated reading out loud of a story book can boost vocabulary by 40%. The child doesn't have to worry about understanding as they learn from the pattern of the predictable text. They learn that the words on the page have a meaning, a boost when they begin to read themselves. 

Researchers have identified 5 ways this repetitive reading of a favourite book to a pre school child helps, it:

• Improves fluency
• Expands vocabulary knowledge
• Helps comprehension
• Involves family members
• Makes reading fun

Well, despite the fact that 20 years later, even mentioning the title makes me groan, that particular child is very adept at English, perhaps her facility is due to good old Harry dog.

Ed.

Image: Editor's daughter at kinder having advanced further in reading