EXPERT ADVICE

Maryanne Wolf is a professor of child development at Tufts University and director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at the campus in Medford, Mass.

Since I was a child, I knew that words were a gift. At 7, I hid with them where my brothers couldn’t find me. By 15, they transformed me into a virtuous beauty who fought evil and won the hero’s unattainable heart.

As an adult, therefore, it is little wonder that I went into their service, studying how children learn written and spoken language, mapping what happens in the human brain when people lose words as a result of brain injuries, and researching what occurs when some children are unable to read.

What I have found can be distilled in two simple goals and a few tough insights.

Our first goal as educators should be to ensure that every child is read to daily from early on. One of the best predictors of later success in reading is how often someone like a parent reads to a child. Just think about all that goes on “under the crook of the arm.” First, the loved adult associates reading with wonderful feelings. Second, the child begins to learn what written language is about--that scribbled markings make up letters, and letters make up words, and words make stories that invite you into unknown worlds. The child also learns that English words go from left to right, and that there are many things to learn between the book’s covers, including words before unheard.

My second goal for young children involves another key predictor of reading success, called “phonological awareness.” It refers to a child’s ability to hear individual sounds--called “phonemes”--inside of words. Teachers and parents can easily help their children increase these skills by playing with rhymes like “Mother Goose” and making word games where the child counts sounds in words.

Phonological awareness is important because it prepares a child to learn the fundamental letter-sound correspondence rules for learning to read in English. There are several related insights here. First, written English is a complex mix of historically derived rules and exceptions. Second, most children are helped immensely by explicit teaching about these rules and exceptions.

Many teachers use methods based on the assumption that children will naturally induce all those historically rich rules. A very large proportion of very bright children just don’t do that. A developmental understanding of the child, the English language and the brain dictate a different approach: an early emphasis on phonological awareness and explicit decoding strategies, and a gradual transition to the world of literature, beginning with books that use known letter patterns.

Debates that pose decoding methods against whole language evaporate when one asks not which method but rather when a specific method should be used in a child’s development.

For example, some children decode but don’t process linguistic material quickly enough. Our lab is exploring how we might speed up this processing through computerized games, vocabulary development, rapid word retrieval and repeated reading practice, where children reread stories just beyond their level.

More than ever before, intensive instruction and emerging tools are bringing our children closer to being at home with words.

BOOK EVENTS

Tuesday in Huntington Beach: Toddler Story Time at Barnes & Noble. 7777 Edinger Ave. 11 a.m. (714) 897-8781.

Wednesday at the Vermont Square branch library: Audience-participation puppet show by Karen Knotts of Kanay’s Puppet Company. Geared for teens. 1201 W. 48th St. 4 p.m. (323) 290-7405.

Friday in Northridge: Pajamarama at Borders. Bedtime Stories for children 2-8. Bring pajamas. 9301 Tampa Ave. 7 p.m. (818) 886-5443.

Friday in Pasadena: Mem Fox, author of “Time for Bed” and “Wombat Divine,” will read from her books and sign at Vroman’s. 695 E. Colorado Blvd. 2:30 p.m. (800) 769-BOOK.