Speedy readers

Apologies in advance - I geeked out and included a graph with this blog entry!

A few days ago Daniel and I noticed that our little Grade 1s are already able to read. And I mean seriously read, not just recognise the letters of the alphabet. For example, they can look at simple rhymes or short paragraphs in Hungarian and read the words, even if they have never seen those words before. This is pretty amazing considering that they only started primary school last September. 

And if the fact that they have learned to read in only nine months isn't awesome enough, one of our colleagues informed us yesterday that most of the kids in Grade 1 were already able to read by Christmastime last year. So in less than three months, these kids were able to do what English-speaking kids take years and years to learn.

So, what's their secret? In spite of the fact that Hungarian is a bewildering language to Daniel and I, it's actually quite a simple language to read. This is because each of the letters of the Hungarian alphabet has a unique sound. Once you know the sounds for each letter, you can just sound out the word and hey presto, you are reading and your pronunciation will be correct every time. 

Unfortunately, as we well know, English is not like this at all. Many English letters have multiple sounds depending on their arrangement with other letters within words. And then, even worse, sometimes the same letter arrangements are also pronounced differently depending on the word. Take the words 'tough', 'bough', 'cough' and 'dough' - they all have the same four letters (ough) but in each word these letters have a very different pronunciation. It's crazy! I think this at least partly explains why it takes English speakers so long to learn to read.

Anyway, Daniel and I were wondering whether this fact gives Hungarian kids huge educational advantages. I mean, just think of all the classroom time that it must save. Teachers here probably don't have to spend years and years doing lots of reading practice or correcting poor pronunciation and spelling. Instead they should, in theory at least, have lots more time to devote to other areas, like science and maths. So we would expect Hungarian kids to be waaaaaaaay ahead of kids from English-speaking countries in these areas. But as the following chart shows, this is not necessarily the case. So I guess there goes that theory!

READING, MATHS AND SCIENCE EDUCATION SCORES IN OECD COUNTRIES (2009)

- Amanda