Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school What do you think about this peculiar skill?

My recently turned 3-year-old has a skill that I am not so sure what to think about.

She can read words spelled out to her orally at about a second grade level, maybe higher. Um, I guess in the past week she has started to read novel 6-letter words in this manner regularly. She has read bigger words as well. She can even do short sentences. She can read hundreds of words spelled out to her.

I wish I knew how she was doing it. I know she is not just memorizing, because she is reading completely novel words the first time they come up. But, I am not so sure she is actually sounding out the words in her head either, even though she does know how to read pretty well.

I don't think it is that easy of a skill because I tried some words on a couple of 6-year-olds who were emerging readers, like DD, and they could not figure it out. My DD could decode them instantly.

I am thinking that her brain is wired for this. What do you think? Do words spelled out just sound like the actual words to some people? Any other kids out there like this?

She is at least twice as good at this than actual reading. She cannot spell, and she cannot write.

Maybe her eyes can't manage reading on the page yet. Are these phonetic words following regular rules?

She does have an eye issue that might be interfering with normal reading. But, then she is also three so I don't try to expect too much from her. Then she goes and effortlessly reads hundreds of words like this without even seeing them...

Since posting this I have been trying to figure her out. I asked her a bunch of words. I even videotaped her doing close to a hundred for me.

I think she is just making really good educated guesses with the letters she hears. Maybe it is not so different from a child looking at the letters and making good guesses at the words.

Yes, she does best with words that are about six letters and less and follow simple phonetic rules.

LMNOP
I was doing the reverse with DS today - he was doing the Montessori crossword puzzle app - the kid reads at a very high level and has a huge vocab but was getting stuck on how to spell boat and tie so I was helping him sound out but then said picture the word in your head so you know what comes next and I couldn't tell if he could do it or not but maybe that's what your DD is doing to remember it. Pretty interesting.

DeHe

I think it shows a good working memory for audio and a basic understanding of the rules of reading. My son's eye development just wasn't ready for reading before K/1st, but he wished I had done more with the sort of reading you describe. His preferred learning style is auditory, but not sequential - sort of a big picture kind of guy.

Have fun!
Grinity

My son is able to read many words correctly on the first try and has been doing so since before 18 months. He has also been diagnosed Hyperlexic and does not seem to have any clue what the words mean as he reads them. I can't figure it out either. I think he may be memorizing parts of words and is able to put them together quickly in his head.
If your daughter understands what she is reading, then that is an awesome skill!!!

When I was in grade 8, I discovered that my ability to do this was way off the charts... in my remedial reading/spelling class

I was also unusually able with "turning one word into another," a specific example I remember was hearing "run" rather than "around" durring a spelling test (not a shockingly impressive example, but the moment where the teacher first noticed it). The teacher pointed out that I had the completely wrong word, and so I fitted the extra letters in around "run." Uh. I guess I'm also giving away just how bad my spelling was in grade 8 by admitting I was not surprised to find "run" on a spelling test. But anywho.... <whistles>

The point is: I have an unusual facility with "reading" words when spelled out by voice. I am virtually incapable of spelling a word out that way (I remember developing at least one serious stomach ache that I was FULLY aware was both real, and caused by the upcoming class spelling bee). I'm so bad at spelling I make a point of not apologizing for my errors, and not making a big point of spell-checking internet posts and emails. (course I'm in chrome right now, so AM spell-checking.) My auditory processing/memory has been assessed as very, very poor, and I would describe it as mildly disabling in every-day situations.

Wait, I'm supposed to be getting to the point: I think this is a peculiar skill, largely unrelated to adjacent-looking skills.

I don't think it suggests that your daughter is 2e (like moi) or anything, just for the record. But I wouldn't expect it to translate into what it seems like it should.

I don't know how she does it, I know how I do it, though. The same way I read text on a page. There is virtually no difference for me, if I have enough time to translate the sound I hear into the image of a letter. In fact, I understand speech better this way sometimes, because I don't have to hear the sounds as fast (there are a lot more parts of the whole sound that serve to confirm an accurate hearing, rather than add new info, using the radio alphabet would be the next step farther in that direction). So it's at least possible that her ability represents especially good visualization skills (where I test as extremely capable).

She's not me and all brains work differently, but I'd _guess_ it's just a quirk.

-Mich

My 13-year-old son enjoyed being able to identify words people spelled out for him from about age 2 1/2. When he was 4 and joined a musical theater group he got a lot of attention from other kids when they discovered he could do this. He was surprised when he found out other kids didn't have this skill. The older kids would spell out their hardest spelling words, usually science related words. Since a science encyclopedia was his favorite book at ages 4 and 5 he could get those words easily. When he was about 4 I started spelling out all of the words from some of the newspaper comic strips and we had fun with it. I could spell out the words very quickly without much time for him to sound them out and he would still get them right. At three he was spelling some words but they were usually smaller words than he could decode.

My son's eyes got tired very quickly up until about age 8 and he had vision therapy. He had trouble reading more than a paragraph without resting his eyes so I would just spell out the words for him for a while. I also put my finger underneath words for him so he didn't lose his place.

My son had trouble with handwriting because he had low muscle tone and weak muscles. His hands hurt when he had to do very much writing or coloring but it didn't have anything to do with his intelligence. When he was tested by an educational psychologist at age 7 his spelling ability was tested by having him write the words. The educational psychologist was surprised at how well he did on this test but I knew he could have done even better if they had tested him orally. His comprehension has always been very good also and he always used a much better vocabulary than most kids his age and even some adults.

I remember people asking me if my son knew phonics and I thought he must, because it certainly wasn't sight reading if he wasn't looking at the words and was just hearing them spelled out.

At age seven I could see that he noticed unusual spellings of words that sounded the same and he could usually give the correct spelling--like knight and night. Knight was one of the spelling words the educational psychologist gave him during a test and he got it right. The psychologist thought this was unusual for a kid who had just turned seven and had not been taught this word. At that time it looked like he had a really good visual memory for words. Maybe when he was younger he could see the words in his head as I spelled them out. None of the other kids in my family ever did this.

OP, I think that this is explainable a good deal of the time by a child having a good verbal vocabulary, and the spelling sounding enough like the word that the child can figure it out. The words' spellings don't have to sound just like the correct pronunciations, just close enough for the child to make a match to a word they know, which will be correct a good part of the time.

Think of it this way: when your child is pre-reading or in early reading stages, she has already developed the ability to remember sequences of sounds. Reading letters adds on a whole extra decoding layer on top of that, which increases the memory load and makes things harder-- and this is not even talking about beginning to blend sounds. Having someone else read the words, even though the individual letter sounds are different from the correctly sounded-out word, makes things simple by virtue of removing the letter decoding, and the letter sounds can still be matched to known words.

Re: remembering spellings of words read, I've trained my son to do that, and he seems to have improved to a large degree. My aim is to get him to remember words perfectly upon reading them the first time. I really don't care a whit about teaching him spelling from the perspective of intellectual development, as I know he'd wind up a perfect speller in time just by virtue of his attention to detail and the fact that he has a bent for it. Still, the local school seems to put a large emphasis on it, so it'll be good for him to stay (far) ahead of the pack.