Importance Of Reading To Children

 

The practice of reading to children is one of the most effective ways of making children to love reading, promote cognitive development, and increase children's reading literary skills. These are some of the benefits of reading to children:

1. Vocabulary expansion: 

Reading to children exposes new words, phrases, and language structures to them. 

2. Improved comprehensions: 

It is through the practice of reading to children that they understand complex ideas, concepts, stories, and characters.

3. It helps children develop problem-solving skills through exposure to different scenarios and solutions. 

4. Reading to children improves their memory and concentration by making the children to focus and retain information.

5. It enhances critical thinking and reasoning skills, thereby encouraging the children to think critically about stories read, characters, and events.

6. Reading together as a team enhances a sense of closeness and intimacy among the children, parents, caregivers, and teachers.

7. It encourages the children to discuss and share thoughts, thereby developing essential social skills required for success in future life.

8. Children develop understanding and empathy through reading and listening to stories, cultures, and characters of people.

9. It increases children's level of curiosity, encouraging them to explore and learn more.

10. It gives children the ability to speak correctly and boldly because they have been taught the rudiments of phonetics and the 8 Parts of Speech in the course of reading.

11. Reading lays the foundation for future reading skills such as phonics, fluency, and comprehension. 

12. It increases children's academic performance, thereby making them successful people in life.

13. It increases children"s curiosity to learn more.

14. Reading exposes children to different sentence and figures of speech, helping them understand grammar and syntax (sentence) construction.

15. The children learn about punctuation marks, capitalization of first letters for nouns such as names of persons and towns and cities and countries, and other language conventions.

16. Reading rhyming books and stories helps children develop phonological awareness.

17. It helps children to associate sounds with letters and words.

18. Reading to children helps them understand storytelling structures and narrative techniques.

19. Reading to children encourages them to ask questions, make predictions, and engage in discussions.

Here are some tips to reading to children: 

1. Parents, caregivers, and teachers should use inflection, expression, and maximum enthusiasm when reading to children.

2. Parents, caregivers, and teachers should always select interesting books with colourful pictures, relatable characters, and engaging storylines. 

3. Encourage the children to ask questions, point to pictures, and encourage them to participate.

4. Set time apart for reading daily.

5. Be consistent reading to the children even as they grow older and learn to read independently.

6. Allow the children to read to themselves too. 

7. Use the opportunities of reading to them to explain the 8 Parts of Speech and 12 Figures of Speech to them thoroughly. Use this as a platform to teach the children present tense, present continuous tense, past tense, and past participle etc. 

Here are the tips to enhance language learning:

1. Read aloud with expressions. Use inflection, tone, and pace to bring stories to life.

2. Discuss and convincingly explain all vocabularies clearly to the understanding of the children. Explain unfamiliar words and provide context. If the children do not understand the vocabularies and unfamiliar words immediately, repeat them during the next reading time till the children understand them. 

3. Ask the children to summarize stories, identify main characters in the story, and desirable events.

International agencies of the world are not left out in supporting and promoting the practices of reading to the children. For example, the European Union has initiated programmes to enhance children's education through reading. One of such programmes is the Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027), which aims to support the development of digital education in Europe, including promoting reading literacy and skills. Additionally, the European Commission has funded research studies, such as "Teaching Reading In Europe: Contexts, Policies, and Practices", which focuses on reading instructions and literacy policies across European countries. The European School Education Platform is another initiative that provides resources and opportunities for teachers, schools, and organizations to collaborate and share best policies in education, including reading and literacy. In the United States, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), offers funding for educational programmes that aims to improve literacy rates and access to education, although these programmes may not be significantly focused on reading to children.

By reading to children consistently, parents, caregivers, and teachers can help them develop essential skills, foster an undying love for learning, and create a perennial foundation for academic success and personal growth.

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