Can a Child Teach Themselves to Read? Support Self-Taught Reading at Home
If a child could teach themselves to read, it would make life so much easier. But, since English is based on an invented alphabetic code, they have to learn the code to be able to use it to read and write. Only a few children will do this all on their own.
However, most skilled readers do in fact teach themselves new words. Your young reader will eventually reach an exciting stage when you notice them sounding out words on their own and coming up with the correct word, even after a few mispronunciations.
Shared reading, life experiences, and learning the alphabetic code are simple ways to support self-teaching, a skill that will be useful throughout school and life.
Can a Child Teach Themselves to Read?
Only a very small number of children, between 1-5%, are actually self-taught readers. Those children commonly have a very strong foundation for reading by growing up in a literature rich environment.
The good news is that although a child may not initially teach themselves how to read, once they know how the alphabetic code works, they actually do teach themselves new words. This is a process that continues throughout life as readers are exposed to unfamiliar words or learn new languages.
Watching your child go from struggling, to sounding out simple words, and then confidently decoding unfamiliar words is an exciting journey. It just takes a few minutes a day to help your child build a strong foundation for teaching themselves new words.
How Does a Child Teach Themselves to Read?
Once a child has learned the alphabetic code and knows how to blend and segment words, they begin to recognize patterns and letter strings that are commonly used to spell words. Knowing letter sounds, a strong verbal vocabulary, and recognizing familiar letter patterns helps them decode unfamiliar words.
Background knowledge is important for learning to read. When a child has a large vocabulary to draw on, the close approximations they make when sounding out new words, helps them pull the correct word out of their verbal memory bank.
Some factors that will help your child become a self-teaching reader include:
- Living in a home with lots of books and other print materials
- Seeing family members reading
- Viewing reading as a pleasurable activity
- Developing strong verbal, memory, and pattern recognition skills
- Being curious and personally motivated to learn to read
As a parent, you can influence these factors and help your child build the foundation they need to become a strong, confident reader.
How to Help a Child Teach Themselves to Read
A skilled reader takes less than 250 ms (a quarter of a second) to identify a word, even with variations in print, font, size, case, and direction. For these readers, the brain efficiently groups the letters of a word so they are instantly recognized as one unit. Skilled readers use knowledge of words, word parts, patterns, and rules to read new words. The more a child reads, the more new words they encounter which provides practice in using this knowledge. It also exposes them to new letter patterns and general phonics rules.
When your child successfully decodes a new word, they begin the process of storing it to long term memory. This is called Orthographic Mapping. For most children, an unknown word will be successfully stored and mapped after about 4 exposures. Once a word is mapped, it can be retrieved in milli-seconds which supports fluent reading.
If you help your child build a large verbal vocabulary and you expose them to a wide range of topics through books and real world experiences, they will have a large reservoir of words to draw on when reading new words. After several tries at decoding a new word, they often have the correct pronunciation or a close approximation.
Finding books that fit your child’s reading interests and ability will help them with self-teaching. Encourage your child to “sound out” any unknown words as they read. This provides the practice needed to become a self-teacher. Research has shown that explicitly teaching new words does not help a child become a skilled self-teacher. It is more beneficial to learn new words by decoding them while actively reading rather than using flashcards to teach isolated sight words.
Five Tips for Building a Strong Foundation for Reading
- Read with your child every day.
- Connect what you are reading to your child’s real world experiences.
- Point out words and talk about letter shapes and sounds.
- Use playful games to teach letter sounds. Our Alphabites Game Pack makes this easy for parents and fun for kids.
- Provide lots of reading practice that fits your child’s reading ability.
Bonus Tip: Keep the reading journey joyful and exciting.
Summary
Although less than 5% of children will teach themselves to read all on their own, most children will become self-teachers once they have built a strong foundation for reading. This includes knowing the alphabetic code and learning how to blend and segment words. You can help your child become a self-teaching reader by reading with them every day, building a large vocabulary, exposing them to a variety of real world experiences, and providing them with lots of reading practice. Self-teaching is a skill that will help your child learn whatever they want to know all on their own.
We’re here to support you with your child’s reading journey. Email us with your questions, and we’ll be happy to respond with practical tips that actually work.
Sources
Apel, K., Henbest, V. S., & Masterson, J. (2019). Orthographic knowledge: Clarifications, challenges, and future directions. Reading and Writing, 32(4), 873-889. Link
Li, Y., & Wang, M. (2022). A systematic review of orthographic learning via self-teaching. Educational Psychologist, 58(1), 35–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2022.2137673
McCandliss, B. D., Cohen, L., & Dehaene, S. (2003). The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus. Trends in cognitive sciences, 7(7), 293-299. https://legacy.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/sem08/McCandliss.visual.word.form.area.TCS2003.pdf
Share, D. L. (2004). Orthographic learning at a glance: On the time course and developmental onset of self-teaching. Journal of experimental child psychology, 87(4), 267-298. Link
Varga, V., Tóth, D., & Csépe, V. (2020). Orthographic‐phonological mapping and the emergence of visual expertise for print: A developmental event‐related potential study. Child development, 91(1), e1-e13. https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.13159