Reading aloud benefits even older kids
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>> The hidden benefits of reading aloud — even for older kids
The hidden benefits of reading aloud — even for older kids
Jim Trelease is the author of the respected, , which some parents have called the “read aloud Bible.” The book is packed with information — from what really makes kids love reading, to tips for luring kids away from electronics and onto the page, to hundreds of read aloud titles. The Handbook’s seventh edition will be published in the spring of 2013 and, at 71 years old, Trelease says it will be his last. We reached Trelease recently in his home in Connecticut and asked him to explain why reading aloud is essential for kids of all ages. Can you explain the link between reading aloud and school success?It’s long established in science and research: the child who comes to school with a large vocabulary does better than the child who comes to school with little familiarity with words and a low vocabulary.Why is that? If you think about it, in the early years of school, almost all instruction is oral. In kindergarten through second and third grades, kids aren’t reading yet, or are just starting, so it’s all about the teacher talking to the kids. This isn’t just true in reading the teacher isn’t telling kids to open their textbooks and read chapter three. The teaching is oral and the kids with the largest vocabularies have an advantage because they understand most of what the teacher is saying. The kids with small vocabularies don’t get what is going on from the start, and they’re likely to fall further and further behind as time goes on.
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How does a child develop a large vocabulary even before school starts? Children who are spoken to and read to most often are the ones with the largest vocabularies. If you think about it, you can’t get a word out of the child’s mouth unless he has heard it before. For example, the word “complicated.” A child isn’t going to say the word unless he has heard it before — and in fact to remember it, a child probably has to hear it multiple times. (That’s not true with swear words, of course. If a child hears his parent swear he’ll remember it the first time, and happily repeat it whenever he gets the chance.) But kids have to hear most words multiple times, so it’s important that their parents talk to and around them from the time they are very young, because that’s how they learn words.Reading aloud: an advertisement for booksSo parents need to talk to their children — but reading aloud is important, too. Because where are children going to be hearing the most words? In conversation, we tend to use verbal shorthand, not full sentences. But the language in books is very rich, and in books there are complete sentences. In books, newspapers, and magazines, the language is more complicated, more sophisticated. A child who hears more sophisticated words has a giant advantage over a child who hasn’t heard those words.
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Reading aloud also increases a child’s attention span. Finally, reading aloud to your child is a commercial for reading. When you read aloud, you’re whetting a child’s appetite for reading. The truth is, what isn’t advertised in our culture gets no attention. And awareness has to come before desire. A child who has been read to will want to learn to read herself. She will want to do what she sees her parents doing. But if a child never sees anyone pick up a book, she isn’t going to have that desire.Why do you think it’s important to read to older kids, too?People often say to me, ‘”My child is in fourth grade and he already knows how to read, why should I read to him?” And I reply, “Your child may be reading on a fourth grade level, but what level is he listening at?”A child’s reading level doesn’t catch up to his listening level until eighth grade. You can and should be reading seventh grade books to fifth grade kids. They’ll get excited about the plot and this will be a motivation to keep reading. A fifth grader can enjoy a more complicated plot than she can read herself, and reading aloud is really going to hook her, because when you get to chapter books, you’re getting into the real meat of print — there is really complicated, serious stuff going on that kids are ready to hear and understand, even if they can’t read at that level yet.Reading aloud to your kids is also are good way to grapple with difficult issues. For example, you can tell your child, “I don’t want you to hang out with so and so,” but that’s a lecture that will probably go in one ear and out the other. But if you read a book about a kid who gets in trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd, your child is going to experience that directly, and she’s going to experience it with you at her side, and you can talk about it together. You can ask questions like: “Do you think the boy made the right choice?” “Do you think that girl was really her friend?” When you talk about a book together, it’s not a lecture, it’s more like a coach looking at a film with his players, going over the plays to find out what went right and what went wrong.Books to blow your mindSomeone once said that books allow you to examine explosive situations without having them blowing up in your face. Books allow you to develop awareness of people outside your experience and develop a sense of empathy. When I was growing up, I wasn’t rich, but by reading books I learned that there are kids out there who are a lot worse off than me, kids growing up with real disadvantages. The wider your world, the more you understand and the more you can empathize.Another advantage of reading aloud: if you weren’t a reader yourself growing up, reading to your kids gives you the chance to meet the child you used to be and read the books you never read. I hear from people all the time, especially fathers, who say, “Wow! I never read The Secret Garden as a child, and I had no idea what I was missing!”I’ve had that experience myself, and I was an avid reader as a child, but I mostly read boys’ books, like The Call of the Wild. I didn’t read the classics like The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, so it was great to have the chance to read them with my kids.Do you think teachers should be reading aloud to kids even in high school?Yes, because if you stop advertising, you stop selling. Kids have to read for school but that’s not an advertisement for reading. Most of the material kids read in school, no one would read for pleasure. And if all your reading is tied to work, you develop a sweat mentality to reading, so by time you graduate you can’t wait to stop reading. You become a school-time reader, not a life-time reader. Of course, kids have to do a certain amount of reading that’s tied to work, but you don’t want kids to forget that there are books out there to make you laugh, make you cry, and move the soul.The writer Phyllis Theroux once said that high school is the last stop for gas before the Beltway of adulthood, so the lessons kids get in high school are really important. But in the present climate of testing, there is so much pressure on teachers that few take the time to read aloud. And that’s a real loss. Standardized tests have nothing to do with real life, which means that schools are becoming divorced from reality. The challenges I encounter every day as an adult have nothing to do with anything I learned on a test in school. When you reach a crisis in your life, or you encounter someone who needs help, how you react has a lot to do with your sense of empathy and compassion – experience with multiple-choice test questions is not going to help at all.So teachers are torn between what they know is right and what they’re forced to do by regulations. If kids’ only experience reading as drudgery, then they’re going to avoid it as much as possible. Of course, teachers are busy and have a lot of material to cover, but even if they only devote five minutes a day to the pleasure of reading, at the end of the year when you add those five minutes up, that will be what most kids remember.Are you disturbed by how ubiquitous electronics are and their impact on reading?Screens are addictive. You push a button and magic happens – what could be better than that? So it’s easy for kids to get hooked on screens.Parents need to set limits, because kids aren’t going to limit themselves. In too many households, one parent is watching the game, the other parent is online shopping, and the kid is in front of a screen, and before you know it, the kid hasn’t done any reading in years and the family’s intellectual worth is going down the drain. Boys play more than girls but girls spend hours
— probably more than boys do. The average teen spends 90 minutes a day text messaging, and that’s the average, which means lots of kids are doing even more.The distracted generationWe’re entering an age unparalleled since the age of G the world is changing faster than we can keep up with. Today, school districts that used to watch kids suffering as they hauled home 20 to 30 pounds of textbooks are turning to electronic tablets. A student can read a social studies textbook on the iPad. and tap on a hyperlink to, say, watch a PBS special on the Great Depression.That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is evidence that we don’t remember information as well when we read it on a screen. Yet people are on screens all the time. We’re raising the most distracted generation in the history of the world. The more distractions you add to the agenda, the less well you think. Technology may save space, weight, and time, but there is no science showing that it will save
especially if they spend all their time on screen and never open a book. So parents have to play a big role. It’s up to parents to , and to keep reading to kids and continue to plant and encourage their interest in books and reading.Books to read aloud by grade:
About the author
Connie Matthiessen is a San Francisco writer and editor whose work
has appeared in the
Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Health, San Francisco, WebMD, and other publications. She has three children (who provide a close-up perspective on great and not-so-great schools) and two chubby cats.
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＞＞＞完形填空。 It is very important to stay healthy. I have a n..
完形填空。
&&&& It is very important to stay healthy. I have a neighbor. She is an old lady. She can do all the housework,&&1 &newspapers, watch TV and search on the Internet to learn something new. I often see&&2&&do taijiquan in the morning and dance in the evening. She looks young and beautiful&&3&&she is over seventy. Last week a reporter from a magazine interviewed her and asked&&4&&she kept so young and healthy. She replied with a smile:&&&&& I have a secret of staying young and healthy. It is quite&&5 . Keep your mind active, take an interest in the world&&6&&you, and learn at least one new thing every day. Try to do different kinds of housework and dosports as&&7&&as you can. Don't think you are too old to go back to&&8&. I know a man who entered a medical college when he was 70 years old. He studied there for 6 years and now he is a doctor. Another man went toa tennis school at the age of 71 and now he is good at&&9&&tennis. Some people may say staying young is easy only for those who live in the future. In fact, no matter how old you are, you can make it. &&&& Please tell the story to your family. It would be a good start to&&10 &the lady's example. I hope all people will stay young and healthy.
(&&&& )1. A. look &&(&&&& )2. A. her&&&(&&&& )3. A. than&&&(&&&& )4. A. what&&&(&&&& )5. A. early&&(&&&& )6. A. under&&(&&&& )7. A. soon&&&(&&&& )8. A. place&&(&&&& )9. A. buying&&(&&&& )10. A. follow&
B. read&&B. him&&B. since&B. why&&B. dear&&B. around&B. busily&B. song&&B. losing&B. give&&
C. see&&&C. other&&C. though&&C. who&&&C. easy&&&C. above&&C. hardly&&C. school&&C. sending&C. make&&&
D. watch&& D. others& D. because D. how&&&& D. late&&& D. between&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& D. often&& D. dance&& D. playing D. bring&&
题型：完形填空难度：中档来源：重庆市中考真题
1-5&&&& BACDC&&& &6-10&&& BDCDA
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据魔方格专家权威分析，试题“完形填空。 It is very important to stay healthy. I have a n..”主要考查你对&&健康环保类阅读&&等考点的理解。关于这些考点的“档案”如下：
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因为篇幅有限，只列出部分考点，详细请访问。
健康环保类阅读
健康环保类阅读：本类型主要是围绕饮食健康、医疗卫生及环境保护等方面选取实际的材料来设题。体裁有记叙文、说明文、议论文和各种应用文。 健康环保类阅读题答题注意事项和技巧：应试生态环保类题目时，在理解文章的基础上，要重点突破——归纳主旨大意技能，因为推断是以整体理解为基础的推断能力。1.归纳主旨大意： (1)寻找具体段落的中心思想的方法是：找出每小段的主题句。主题句通常有这样的特点：①有一个话题(topic)；②有阐述控制性概念，偶尔也可在一段中间；③有的文章无明显主题句，主题句隐含在段意之中。这就需要读者进一步加工概括了。 (2)寻找整篇文章的中心思想的方法建立在寻找具体段落中心的基础上的。 应观察全文的结构安排，理解文章浓墨重笔写的“重心”，考虑文章组织材料及支撑性细节是服务于什么的，分析故事的发展结局都是围绕什么中心大意来安排的。 (3)典型错误：①忽视文章的结构；②混淆了中心与支撑细节或材料的区别；③忽视文章表意的倾向性；④漏掉了主要的特征词。 2.正确推理判断： 推理判断试题要求考生尽量考虑文中全部信息或事实，在通篇理解文章的基础上领会作者的言外之意，并作出正确的推理和判断。 (1)数据推断题 解答此类题，关键是要善于捕捉有关数字的信息，然后在透彻理解原文的字面意义和题意的基础上，运用自己的数学知识，对其进行分析、推算，从而得出正确的结论。 (2)知识推断题 根据文章中所阐述的细节，运用基础知识进行分析、推敲，从而得出符合文章原义的结论的一种推断方法。 (3)逻辑结论推断题 根据事实、论点、例证等一系列论据材料，不是根据自己的经验、态度、观点或爱好去理解文章的内涵。解答这类题的前提是要首先获得短文的主题思想或列举的具体事实，然后按题意要求进行推断。 (4)对作者态度、倾向的推断题 作者的倾向和感情往往隐含在文章的字里行间，或流露于修饰的词语之中，因此，在推断过程中，应特别注意文中作者的措辞。
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80371282003316112284807305449264459---Harry treats his secretary badly. ---Yes. He seems to think that she is the important pe——精英家教网——
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---Harry treats his secretary badly. ---Yes. He seems to think that she is the important person in the office. A. hardly B. least C. less D. most 【】
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How to apply (申请) for a free mailbox (邮箱)? First you have to connect to the Internet and go to the homepage of the ICP providing free mailboxes. Then you will find an icon (图标), an agreement about the rules for using the free mailbox will appear. If you want to go, click the icon “I agree”. Then you have to fill in a form about your basic personal data, and the name and PIN (密码) of the mailbox. The PIN is the key to the mailbox. After finishing these, you will get a mailbox like this：your name @ mail server (for example：tvguide@mail.cctv.com.cn. “tvguide” is the name of the mailbox, and “mail.cctv.com.cn” is the name of the mail server.). The mailbox is separated (分隔) into two parts by a separator “@”, which is read as “at”. The former part is the name of the mailbox. The latter is the domain name (域名) of the mail server. All mails to you will be received by the server and put into your mailbox. You can read these mails on any computer on the Internet in the world, if you have the name and PIN of the mailbox. If you want to send or receive an e-mail, you should first ____ . &&&&&& A. apply for a mailbox&& B. buy a computer &&&&&& C. go to the post office& D. fill in a form
When you get a FREE mailbox, you can send an e-mail ____ . &&&&&& A. by paying some money&&&& B. to anyone &&&&&& C. without paying money &&& D. anywhere The mailbox’s name in the e-mail address “.cn.” is ____ . &&&&&& A. ew&&&&& B. ew.com.cn& C. com.cn&&&&&& D. editor The writer mainly wants to tell us how to ____ in this passage. &&&&&& A. send a letter by e-mail&&&&& B. read the e-mail on computers in the world &&&&&& C. get a free mailbox&&&& D. find out one’s e-mail address We can find the similar information in the book “____”. &&&&&& A. Who Moved My Cheese&&& B. Surfing on the Internet &&&&&& C. Bill Gates’ Story D. Harry Potter
Let Harry play with your toys as well, Clare, you mustlearn to ________.A．support&&&B．care&&& C．spare&&&D．share&
Harry Potter stories are____both theteenagers and adults.
A．appealing to.
B．appeal to .
C．allergic to
D．appealing for
Almost two-thirds of children want their parents tospend more time reading to them before bed, and most prefer Mum’s storytellingto Dad’s, researchers said.They carried out a study that showed younger childrenaged 3-4 were most hungry for more stories, with over three-quarters sayingthey wished their parents read to them more often.More than half of all children aged 3-8 said storytime was their favourite pastime with their parents.&The results of our research confirm thetraditional activity of storytelling continues to be a powerful learning andemotional resource in children's lives,& said child psychologist RichardWoolfson.Storytelling ranked higher than television or videogames among pastimes for kids, and 82 percent said reading a story with theirparents helped them sleep better, according the survey of 500 children aged 3-8in Britain.The best storytellers were mothers who used funnyvoices to illustrate different characters or made their own special soundeffects to keep the story moving, researchers said.When mum and dad are not at hand, celebrities(名人) will do: over 30 percent of children said they wouldlike to hear a bedtime story from Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, with teenidols(偶像) Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus and Emma Watson.&It can be very difficult for parents to find thetime to read with their children, but these moments can help build strongrelations and play a vital part in their child's development,& saidWoolfson.1.The underlined word “pastime” in the passage mostprobably means &&&&&&&&&.A．old time&&&&&&&&& B．entertainment&&&& C．emotion &&&&&&&&& D．character2.The author develops the passage mainly by &&&&&&&.A．pointing outsimilarities and differences &&&& B．following the naturaltime orderC．comparingopinions from different fields &&&& D．providing examples andstatistics3.Reading a story with their parents helped most kidsaged 3-8 &&&&&&&&.A．grow stronger&&&&& B．become moreemotional&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& C．sleep better D．become more powerful&
短句翻译（共26空，满分13分）1.___________& __________ .The people all overthe country will help you rebuild& your homes.振作起来,全国人民都会帮助你们重建家园的。2.They are putting too much carbon dioxide into theatmosphere , which& ________ heat& ______& ________from theearth into space.他们把过多的二氧化碳释放到大气层中，这阻止了地球上的热量释放到太空去。3.You should never& _________& ________ whendriving a car.开车时绝对不应冒险。4.He could not __________&& ___________ hisabsence from school.他不能对他没去上学作出解释。5.It doesn’ _______&&________& _______ , I think it’s rather& beautiful. 对我来说，这一点都不丑。正相反，我认为相当美。6.She did not look happy but ________&__________& him .她瞪着他，看上去很不高兴。7.Harry has been out of work for six months, so he hasdifficulty in _________& _______&& ___________.&Harry 失业6个月了，因此他已经生活很困难了,难以谋生了。8.I had been waiting for you in the cold wind for 3hours, but you didn’t_________& _______ .我在寒风中等了你3个小时，但是你还没出现。9.I& ________& ________for the companyearlier in order to avoid the heavy traffic.为了避开拥挤的交通，我早早动身去公司了。10.She said she would be there at seven o’clock, andhe thought she would _________& _______& __________.她说她会7点钟到那儿，而且他认为她会遵守诺言的。11.I don’t want them to& _________ me&_______ her .我不想因为它们而想起她来。&
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