Initiating Imitation to Teach Reading

Like all proud parents, I have always taken pride in my daughter’s remarkable intellectual accomplishment: she became a proficient reader well before she turned four. Friends and relatives often asked me the hard-to-answer question: “How old was she when you started teaching her to read?” I used to say casually, “When she was about three years old.” Now, as I look back over the years of her intellectual development (she is now an attorney), I am more inclined to say that I began unwittingly teaching her reading strategies at a much younger age than that.

All proud parents want their children to read at any early age. In the earliest stage, teach your baby motor abilities, such as holding and grasping objects, to increase his or her sensory skills.  After that, initiating imitation is important; after all, learning a language is all about imitation.

Initiating Imitation

The ability to imitate is a prerequisite in language learning, and all babies have an inborn ability to imitate, especially their parents.

Induce self-imitation (the sixth month).

Help your child bang a toy on the table to create a noise. Your child will repeat his or her self-imitation if your child is made to see the connection between his or her action and the noise.

Reinforce imitation by feedback (the eighth month).

If your child bangs a toy on the table, imitate him or her by banging the table yourself so that your child will imitate what you have just imitated. Likewise, if your child mutters and murmurs, you imitate his or her mutterings and murmurings.

ACTIVITIES  & GAMES

Slapping the right and the left hand alternately

Sit down with your child at the table, take both his or her hands in yours and slap the table alternately with his or her  right and left hands. Soon your child will be able to do it on his or her own.

Banging an object with aim

Give your child a small cube or an object, and place a larger one in front of him or her. Pick up the small cube or object, and bang it against the larger one in front of him or her. Your child will soon imitate you.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau