Language is a structured system of communication used by humans, based on speech and gesture, sign or often writing. The structure of language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. While a child takes a while to converse properly in a given language, they take even longer to fully read the text of that language.

Reading stimulates part of a child’s brain to grow and be more active. Reading can widen a child’s vocabulary and comprehension ability. Through reading, children develop their empathy, build confidence, and expand their imagination.

No one is born already having the ability to read though. It is important to know, therefore, the stage at which your child is currently reading.

Encourage language development

By the time children reach the age of 1 year, they are able to understand the fundamentals of language. This is the ideal age at which parents should start developing their understanding further. Some ways that children do this is by imitating the sounds they hear, respond when spoken to or focus on pictures. While they pick up words by the shapes they produce, they can confuse words that are similar in shape such as ‘ball’ with ‘doll’. At such times, parents should eagerly encourage and further their child’s attempts at these words.

Partial Alphabets

After figuring out the shapes of words, children soon start to pick up words that start with the same alphabet and which make the same sound. Words like ‘cart’ and ‘can’t’ can be understood by the starting alphabet but understanding the whole word is challenging as they may pronounce the same word twice since they also end with the same letter. At such times, despite this confusion that a toddler has, parents should continue to further teach them basic words that are easy to work with. With time, these small confusions will leave the child’s mind.

Full Alphabets

By the time children reach this stage, they have already entered kindergarten. At this stage, children have the letters of the alphabets memorised as well as their corresponding sounds. They can also sound out the alphabets and visualise their shape which points to developing phonemic awareness. While all this is definitely an indication of massive improvement in the child, the school’s writing exercises take care of the alphabetic awareness of the children.

myON is a digital reading application that enables students to read anytime, anywhere including holidays, weekends, school breaks and vacations. Students receive login instructions from their school, district or community. Once they log in, they can read books within the myON Digital Library and Daily News Articles from myON News.

myON’s Digital Library offers students a way to,

• Read books on any web-enabled device with an internet connection
• Read books online with free mobile apps
• Read the same books as many times as they wish to read it
• Use optional reading support including audio, text highlighting and an embedded dictionary.

myON has a developing market in countries that are members of the GCC in the Middle East like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE. Cities like Dubai, which is such a technologically developed city, has brought myON to numerous schools and homes, for children to better their understanding of a language and surely create a better future for themselves.

Contact us