About a year ago, I was approached by a friend to join her in a Family Community Centre which was supported by an Indonesian education book publishing company. This community centre is trying to achieve its goal which is to help families grow in a better way, and the way to do it is to promote the love for learning in all families.
One of the program offered by the community centre is to help parents teach their children to read without the stress for the parents or the kids, which is using the Glenn Doman method. This is a method of teaching kids to read without pushing them to read letter-by-letter, ie. kids are familiarised with the words associated with things most familiar to them to start with.
For people in English-speaking countries, this method might not be a new thing, as English has been taught in a similar way, however in countries like Indonesia, where the words are pronounced as they are spelled, this is a very new method and not every parent ready to accept this method.
We used to learn to read by the letter written .. we start with the vowel.. A (ah) I (ee) U (oo) E (a) O (oh) .. and then we would follow the learning step with putting vowel with each consonant. Once we (kids) were considered ready, we would then start forming words, eg. I (pronounced 'ee') BU (prounounced 'boo') will make IBU (mother)..
With Glenn Doman method, from the start, kids are only shown the word in full 'IBU' .. and the teacher/parent will tell the kids that the word is meant to be read 'ee-boo' (mother), and kids are shown a set of 5 or more related words for a few days, then one-by-one, the words were replaced by other words in the same groups (family members, fruits, furniture, etc.). Once the kids have been familiarised with enough numbers of words and phrases, their brains click and they start to understand the logic of reading.
Amazingly.. this method is not only faster in showing result, it is also easier to apply (not much burden/stress for parents) and more interesting for kids (kids find it more exciting to be able to match the words to the actual things the encounter every day in their lives).
The key of Glenn Doman is only.. never attempt to TEST the kids! Once they are ready to read well, they will show it to everyone without hesitation! Parents just need to keep showing new and repeating familiar words to the kids every day, just as if the parents are letting the kids know what the words are (no intention to make them read the words).
For younger kids (up to 2 years old), starting with family members might be a good idea. However, my five years old, when he started KG-B, the first words that he loved were brands of electrical appliances (siemens, samsung, sony, nokia, altec lansing, etc.).. He started using the method in school mid-July 2008 and by the school break (end of September) he was reading parts of short stories in children magazines himself!
Another good thing about the Glenn Doman method is that parents can use it for multiple language at the same time and kids respond to each language's grammar differently/separately, without the parents need to firmly separate the teaching times. This happens because Glenn Doman method is based on familiarisation with words and the way they are read (not the way they are spelled).
Well.. I can say that I'm happy with the Glenn Doman method and my 5-year-old is also happy with it. Reading is not a burden/stressful thing for neither of us!
If you have any comments please leave them here.. or if you would like to know more about the method, you can visit my friend's blog at www.ccbintaro.blogspot.com
Hope this can help for any worried parents..
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