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Are the babies simply memorizing the words or are they actually reading?
Answer: It is true that the babies initially memorize the shapes of the written
words, but over time they will figure out the patterns of the written
language in a way that is similar to how they figure out the patterns of
the spoken language. Toddlers learn to add an 'ed' to make words to make
them past tense or an 's' onto words to make them plural simply from
listening to English. We know that they learn these patterns because
sometimes a toddler might say "I eated" or "I swimmed" even if they have
never heard these words. After the babies memorize enough written words,
the child begins to figure out the phonetic patterns of our language. The
first 50 words that a child learns to read generally take a long time, but
once they know around 50 words they generally learn them at a faster pace.
The same is true with spoken language. Once a child understands around 50
words, the child can remember many words after hearing them only once or
twice. This is why it is so important for parents to use many new words
with toddlers. Reading is great for this because there are more
infrequently used words used in books compared with a person's speech.
It usually takes around a hundred written words or so before the child
begins to figure out the phonetic patterns. The child will need to learn
hundreds of individual words to figure out all of the phonetic patterns in
English.
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