The Reading Bug

Coco has been reading Enid Blyton's books since last December.

To date, she's finished 3 and going on to the 4th. She's reading well although she still has problems with the names of the characters. It's strange how reading skill becomes acquired when you don't quite see the development.

All of us are puzzled as to how Coco can read so many words all of a sudden when just not too long ago, she was still reading very simple words, and occasionally some sentences. It first started when she read aloud a message written by William after we had a fight,"Can you please talk to me? I feel terrible when you don't talk to me. I beg you." I didn't think that she could read the message, much less understood it, so I left it lying around. We found it amazing that she could read 'terrible' and 'beg' when these are words not exactly common in our spoken or written vocabulary.

To be honest, I do feel greatly relieved that she's able to read well. I still remember how anxious and stressful I had felt when I first started to teach her to read. Her reading teacher at K1 commented that she was not able to recognise words. Although she was considered 'average' in her reading ability, I felt very lost in the hows of teaching reading. That's how crappy NIE is. A trained teacher not knowing how to teach her own child to read. The only way I did it was drilling coupled with phonics, hoping that one day, she'll start to realise the pattern in the pronunciation of each letter, and combine the letters to form a word. I'm so glad that all these paid off.