 06-10-2005, 9:42 PM
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test
Joined on 05-12-2005
Posts 27
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Share:some facts about reading
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摘自Paul Kropp的How to make your child a reader for life (1990)
Children's reading::The News Isn't Good
From the first National Assessment of Educational Progress report:
.percentage of 4th graders who read daily for pleasure: 45.7
.Percentage of 12th graders who read daily for pleasure: 24.4
.Percentage of 4th graders who use the library once a week: 59
. percentage of 12th graders who use the library once a week:10.2
Among 8th grade students: 71% watch 3 or 4 more hours of TV a day;
27% read daily for pleasure.
The Harvard study
Caroline Snpw and her associates at Harvard Univ did a long-term study on home factors affecting literacy. Here are the factors that encourage childhood reading, ranked in order of their effect:
1. Home "literacy" environment: books, news papers, attitudes
2. Mother's educational expectations of the child
3. Mother's own education
4. Parent-child interaction
Father's expectations and background apparently had no effect on reading, but they were importatnt in promoting the child's development of writing skills.
One-third of 500,000=31?
There are almost half a million words in our English language--the largest language on earth, incidentally -- but a third of our writing is made up of only 1/3 words. Here they are, in order of descending freqency:
a, of, and , that, he, the, I, to, in, was, it, all, had, said, as, have, so, at, him, they, be, his, we, but, not, with, are. on, you, for, one.
Phonic Bits
Learning to read with phonics requires the student to master the sound of a number of phonic bits. Here's a sampling:
.Consonants: initial consonants such as the b in blendl final consonants such as r in computer
.Vowels: long vowels such as the i in like; short vowels such as the o in short;
.Digraphs: special two-letter combinations such as ch, wh, ck, ng, qu, wr.
.Diphthpngs:vowel combinations such as ay, ea, oo, io, ay.
.Phonograms:special combinations such as ide, ame, ook, ight, tion
Words and more words...
.Total number of words in Rnglish: 500,000(excludes scientific and technical terms)
.Number of words in German: 175,000lIn French:125,000
English words recognized by the average American adult:125,000
.Words used in the works of Shapespeare:30,000
Words used in three hours of prime-time TV: 7,000
Words recognized orally by a child entering school: 6,000
Eords ordinarily read "by sigt" at the end of 3rd grade:3,000
Father May Know Best
According to some researchers, fathers are better at helping their children to read because they're less patient than mathers. When a child comes across an unfamiliar wor, mothers tend to make the chold sound it out. Fathers are more likely to tell the child the word or tell him to skip it and carry on. Dad's approach keeps the story moving.
How Well Does a Person Have to Read?
The diffuculty of reading a particular piece of writing can be estimated by calculating the average sentence length, syllable count, and number of difficult words in a few sample passages. This gives a good estimate of the grade level of ability a reader would need to comfortably handle the material. Some examples:
.Scientific American:graduate school
.Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville(Henry Reeve translation):college
.San Francisco Chronicle(news)" grader 12-college
.The Handmaid's Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood: grade 9-10.
.USA Today(financial news):grade 7-9
.Ann landers advice column: grade 6
.Advertisement for a facial moisturizer: grade 5
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