I feel anxious that my elder daughter is about to turn five and cannot read. Before you roll your eyes and write me off as another tiger mother, let me plead my case. My expectations for her reading ability run high because I have been reading aloud to her for almost five years, and I have been advocating reading aloud as the best way to achieve early childhood literacy. Well, she is on the far end of early childhood and she is not literate.
Lately, when reading aloud to my daughter, I sneak glances to see where her eyes rest. And I notice that her gaze never falls on the words, even when I follow them with my finger. Her focus is invariably on all aspects of the illustrations.
But my daughter can read Chinese. In Anthea Simmons' Share!, "baby" is the younger sibling until the very end, when the word "little brother" is mentioned. We have a Chinese translation of this story in our home. The first time I read aloud in Chinese, I substituted "little brother" for "little sister", hoping this would help her better relate to the big sister in the story. She surprised me by correcting me, pointing to the Chinese characters for "little brother".
My daughter also likes to read out Chinese characters that she recognises on buildings and street signs. Yet she doesn't know the English word "the", even though it has been taught to her at school, and I have called attention to the words "the end" hundreds of times at the end of our storybooks.
To literate English speakers, the alphabet seems so much more straightforward than complex Chinese characters. However, to children, Chinese characters are pictures, and pictures are easy to remember. In the same way, children who read English can do so because they have learned to recognise the whole word.
It is unfortunate that when my daughter looks at an English word, she sees a collection of alphabet letters and sounds. She has become so adept at her phonics exercises that she cannot step back and see the whole word.