Learning To Read: Factors And Influences
Learning to read is a slow, gradual process that requires the practice of many cognitive and extralinguistic skills. However, there are many factors that directly or indirectly influence the acquisition of this habit, especially in children. If we take them into account, learning to read will not only be adaptive: it will also be interactive and fun.
These factors can be classified into three categories: emotional, physical and intellectual. However, the latter are often considered fundamental. It is true that psychological factors can be the cause of success or failure of reading. But let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Emotional factors
One of the essential ingredients for learning to read is the educational attitude of parents and teachers. Often, but fortunately not all of the time, certain adult behaviors make this process even more complicated for children.
This is the case, for example, with overprotection. If the little one feels too guarded and spoiled, it is very likely that he feels great insecurity and tends to reject these new challenges when facing them. Excessive permissiveness also decreases personal discipline, self-responsibility and the acquisition of good habits. Lack of rules can demotivate a child when faced with a new activity that requires multiple efforts.
Thus, excessive pressure from the family or the teacher also negatively influences the child. Comments like “You should have learned this a long time ago” or “You are late compared to your comrades” undermine his morale and demotivate him. They may even lead him to give up.
The worst thing is that this disillusionment and lack of motivation in the face of learning to read tends to be generalized in the school field. We then witness the very feared school failure, accompanied by a feeling of inevitable inferiority in the little one. All of this can also be accentuated by the problems of adaptation and integration that can arise in a group.
Physical factors
Vision and hearing are essential physiological functions in relation to reading maturity. In fact, some authors consider hearing ability to be even more important than sight during the higher stages of learning to read.
Lack of visual acuity or eye muscle balance can affect reading ability. Likewise, hearing loss (hearing loss) conditions the process. Despite everything, if these two difficulties are detected before 3 years, better prospects for linguistic and reading development will be put in place.
Intellectual factors
Many studies highlight the precocity of little girls compared to little boys. Such an intellectual advance is accredited by the superiority of their left hemispherical dominance. Thus, reading that is done through this cerebral hemisphere tends to be done with fewer errors and greater understanding.
A first prerequisite for the child to learn to read correctly is therefore hemispherical lateralization or, at least, a preference for using one of the two sides of the body. This would avoid interference caused by cerebral inter-hemispherical undifferentiation. If this lack of lateralization were present, we could see a series of disorders appear that would have repercussions on reading, such as difficulties in spelling or writing.
Understand and read
Although these terms may sound similar, they are not. How many times have we sat down comfortably reading a book and within five minutes we realize we haven’t understood anything? Paying attention is fundamental to understanding what we are reading. Otherwise, we would only be seeing a set of words without cognitively processing them.
Understanding requires a series of extralinguistic processes that go far beyond the lexical and semantic characteristics of words. Among these processes, we find the act of interpreting, contextualizing, problem solving and reasoning. Understanding is something bigger than the purely sensory aspect (vision and hearing). It means actively building the content of the text, the top of the reading pyramid. In other words, it is about decoding a message.
The influence of the family in reading
The more stimulating the child’s environment, the more important the contributions we can provide. The weight of parents in the process of learning to read is therefore of crucial importance for the child. Moreover, the reading habits of these progenitors will have a decisive influence on the level of this acquisition.
There are significant differences between children whose parents read frequently and parents who do not have a reading benchmark. For example, reading parents are more likely to read a book to their children before sleeping or to have stimuli that invite reading at home (magazines, newspapers, books, etc.).
On the other hand, some of the symptoms that frequently appear in children who fail in this process of learning to read are excessive shyness or the tendency to blush very easily. It is also common to see them develop feelings of inferiority or to see them being egocentric. Nervous habits resulting from a state of internal anxiety can also develop and children can thus adopt behaviors such as biting their nails, suffering from insomnia… It is therefore necessary to be extremely attentive in front of these situations to avoid this feeling. failure or generalized frustration. Remember, the importance placed on reading in the family circle influences children’s learning.
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