En français
En españolInternational Association for Literacy From Infancy
I A L F I
IALFI is a network of research workers and practitioners, exploring, developing and applying the concept of reading and writing as language acquisition, in everyday interactions with children at home, in day care centres, kindergartens, elementary schools etc. We call our approach "Literacy from Infancy".
In "Literacy from Infancy" children are learning to read and write in natural and playful interactions with reading and writing partners, from the first year of life. They are learning in the same way as they are learning their spoken language.
Play and
games with things and words.
From c. 8 months children are able actively and intentionally
to share experiences with a partner. Then they start to engage in
games like peek-a-boo and pointing and naming. To give an example:
the child will never get tired of pulling your nose, ear, hair and
having you touch his own nose, ear, hair, saying "nose", "ear",
"hair" in a friendly and joking tone of voice. The child will also
enjoy having the words written down and shown to him, preferably
on cards that he may handle himself, like toys.
Meaningful
whole words. Real life experience. Joyful
interaction.
This is the starting point: meaningful words written down on
cards, where what is said and what is written is tied to an
experience and is part of a game. Like in the acquisition of
spoken language games and rituals are designed, tied to real life
experience, in joyous spontaneous acts of sharing.
Positive
emotions. Child initiatives. No teaching. No ready-made
material
The
child's positive emotions are crucial: reading is done in a spirit
of joyful interaction. Thus reading and writing should never be a
duty. If the child does not want to join the game or wants to stop
it, this should always be respected. Also the child's own
initiatives are responded to. No teaching in the conventional
meaning is done. No repetitions apart from the child's own joyful
repetitions within the frame of the games. No rehearsals or tests
are arranged.
No ready-made reading material is provided. Words are written down on cards, to save, or more casually on scraps of paper, later to be thrown away. All writing is done in the presence of the child and in collaboration with the child. The product of this writing is your "learning material", like utterances in your daily talk is the learning material of spoken language.
Soon the child will want to use pencil and paper, or to use the computer. To start with this will just be "scribbling", but little by little configurations of letters like conventional words will appear on the computer, and in the child's hand written "messages" shapes will appear, similar to letters. Here you must be generous with praise and also provide support if the child wants to.
Development
of literacy parallel with development of spoken
language.
Shared reading and writing will advance from separate
words to phrases and small sentences as the child's linguistic
abilities are developing. In this process environmental print will
play an important part. The daily reading aloud of books to the
child will also afford rich opportunities to identify words
already known in the text and to discover and ask about new ones.
Make sure the young reader can see both the text and the
pictures!
The child will also want to take part in writing activities: using
the computer, signing postcards, writing memo lists etc. (cf.
below).
Inculturation.
In this way, through discovery, practice and natural learning,
together with literate partners in a literate society, the child
will be inculturated into the written language. It will be a
continuos process over many years, varying from child to child,
where some children will be extremely early, while others will
take their time before they are full-fledged readers and writers.
This variation you always find also in the acquisition of spoken
language without making much ado about that. In our literate
societies, however, where reading and writing is taught
academically in schools, from a certain age, everybody is expected
to follow the curriculum, and very little variation is tolerated.
The practice
of infant reading
first started at home, with parents, often in middle class
families. Later it has spread into day care centres, kindergartens
etc. which are not bound by the official school system, where the
rules prescribe academic teaching from an age varying in different
countries between five and seven years. These day care centres
have been in charge of people free from the traditional
educational attitude towards children's reading and writing. Day
care centres in Sweden have documented their practice since 1988,
first with two-six year old children, later also with one-two year
olds.
Research
work in literacy from
infancy.
Research data from children becoming literate in the way
described here has revealed how they all by themselves begin to
pay attention to the form of words: configurations of letters and
separate letters. Simultaneously becoming aware of and paying
attention to the sound structure of the corresponding spoken
words, they eventually break the alphabetic code, i.e. find out
how letters relate to sounds. This enables them to read words they
have never seen before and to read texts that are new to them. The
first study demonstrating the code breaking process - in a Swedish
speaking girl - was published by Ragnhild Söderbergh in 1971:
Reading in Early Childhood (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell),
later republished by Georgetown University Press (1977). Similar
studies have later been carried through with children with other
maternal tongues, such as English, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French
and Finnish.
The
conventional understanding of the reading process turned
around.
Thus our experience has turned around the conventional
understanding of the reading process: the idea of first acquiring
the sound sequences and then attaching them to written form.
Instead the child who is confronted with the written language
parallel with his acquisition of spoken language will analyse and
process both modes simultaneously.
The writing
child.
As Literacy from Infancy has been introduced at day care
centres additional attention has been paid to the child's own
writing in the process of becoming literate. Especially "older"
children, from around four years of age, seem to take a great
interest in producing text themselves. This has since long been
paid attention to research workers within the "emergent literacy"
tradition. Put within the context of Literacy from Infancy it may
give us a better understanding of the role of writing in regard to
reading within the total process of becoming literate. Data so far
seem to indicate that children use different strategies here, some
preferring to approach written language by means of reading, other
by means of writing.
Bilingualism.
Deafness. Language handicaps.
Studies and practice show that Literacy from Infancy may
promote bilingualism. It has also been successful with deaf
children and children with developmental dysphasia and children
with language handicaps caused by Down 's syndrome. Reading has
here had a positive influence also on the children's spoken
language development.
Earlier
traditions of infant reading.
Much of the practice and research work from the 1960:ies and
1970:ies devoted to what we may call infant reading was originally
triggered by Glenn Doman's book from 1964 "How to Teach your Baby
to Read". But as practice and research advanced the proponents of
the emerging Literacy from Infancy went away from the Doman
approach, as most in his practice has very little to do with
natural inculturation.
In Sweden, however, we have traced the tradition of infants
learning to read in a playlike fashion as far back as the end of
the 18th century. A clergyman - Israel Gustaf Wänman - in the
year 1800 published a booklet intended for parents: "Christmas
Gift by Cadmus - or the easiest way by which small children may
learn to read". Inspired by the new child centred philosophy of
Romanticism he recommended a "game of reading" to be played by
parent and child, starting when the child had just begun to speak.
In natural interaction with their youngsters parents should be
using cards with whole words written on them. These should be
words of special interest to the child. The "game of cards" should
be done in a spirit of joy and playfulness. No duty or obligation
should ever be put on the child. A close reading of Cadmus shows
him to be very much in accordance with the literacy from infancy
concept. Thus it has become common among teachers in Swedish day
care centres to talk about the Literacy from Infancy approach as
"The Cadmus Method".
Suggested
literature.
If you want to know more about Literacy from Infancy, the
publications below are recommended for your study.
All three contain bibliographies.
- Ragnhild Söderbergh, "Reading and
writing as language acquisition from the first year of
life".
In: Proceedings
from the OBEMLA symposium, Washington DC, March
2000 -
-
Rachel
Cohen and Ragnhild
Söderbergh, "Apprendre à lire avant
de savoir parler",
Albin Michel Éducation. Paris, 1999 (In french
only).
- Françoise
Boulanger,
"Le
bonheur d'apprendre à
lire"
- Accompagner son enfant de 2 à 5 ans
Éditions NATHAN, Paris, agust 2002 (In french only)
- André
Michaud. "The Neurolinguistic Foundations of
Intelligence"
(On the need for early childhood mastery of reading skills)
SRP
Books
(Québec) (2001)
(Paper presented at the XII International Symposium "Revision of
Natural Sciences", Moscow, April 2001).
- Jeanine Cougnenc. "Un
enseignement/apprentissage moderne de la
lecture",
SRP
Books
(Québec), september 2002 (In french
only)
To
become a member of IALFI
Researchers and practitioners who work or want to work
according to the Literacy from Infancy approach are invited
to become members of IALFI. A yearly newsletter is
circulated among our members. E-mail will in the future distribute
the letter. Members and future members without an E-mail address
are recommended to join friends and colleagues who are
E-mailers.
WRITE TO the President of IALFI, who works as "the spider in the net".
Professor
Ragnhild Söderbergh, Brahegatan 28, SE-114 37 Stockholm,
Sweden
, 9. 2021