R.E.A.D to Develop Baby-Toddler Reading and Writing Brains
婴幼儿读写能力发展的READ四原则

The acronym R.E.A.D sums up four easy-to-remember actions for parents to take when teaching babies and toddlers to read: repetition, enthusiasm, attention, and drawing. Adding appropriate soft-ware driven technology to these time-tested behaviors leads to happy early readers.
重复、热情、注意力和画画，婴幼儿阅读能力教育简单易记的四个步骤正好可以将首字母缩写成“阅读”(READ)。这些经过时间考验的步骤，佐以合适的软件技术，将会使您的孩子成为快乐地早期读者。

Repetition. Repeated readings of favorite books are a hallmark of early reading success. Long after you are exhausted reading favorite books, your baby or toddler will thrill in reading them over and over again. According to parents who are successful, a few favorite, short, easy, happy books might have been read two or three hundred times in the first three years of life.
重复。重复阅读喜爱的书籍是早期阅读教育成功的标志。不过，可能要在你早就厌烦读这些书很久之后，你的孩子才会很激动地反复多次地阅读。根据成功父母的经验，在孩子三岁之前，差不多有读过两三百次他们最喜欢的那些短小简单又快乐的书。

Babies love repetition, which initially encourages them to mimic your voice and babble sounds and mimic words. Other language-learning skills come into play such as new understandings of vocabulary and grammar. Over time, this mimicking behavior turns into higher-order concepts and understandings about the content of the books being read and eventually memory reading.
婴儿喜欢重复，首先可以鼓励他们模仿你的声音，让他们含糊不清地牙牙学语，模仿单词。其他语言学习技能如对单词和语法的全新理解也开始起作用。随着时间增长，这种模仿行为会形成对书中内容高层次的概念和理解，最后他们会开始记忆你阅读的内容。

Most importantly, the repeated readings are a time for interaction with the parent or caregiver, hands-on experience associating printed and spoken language, and physical contact–so important for babies and toddlers. Babies learn to anticipate what's coming next in a story or behind a flap in a lift-the-flap book. If you cuddle and share happy books with feeling, your baby associates positive feelings with reading.
最重要的是，这种重复性阅读对于婴幼儿来说，是一次交流感应的过程：与父母或看护人的交流，将书面语言与口头语言结合的亲身实践的经历，还有对他们很重要的身体接触。婴儿会学会去期待故事后文的发展，或者想看看翻翻书的插页后面藏着些什么（小编注：翻翻书是儿童认知图画书，每一页上都藏了一些小插页，翻开可以看到里面还有有趣的画和文字）。如果你抱着他/她，和他/她分享书中的快乐，宝宝会将阅读与积极的情绪联系在一起。

I'm finding that many parents are having success with soft-ware driven word games to complement book reading. In only about five minutes a day, these games with the baby or toddler in the parent's lap in front of the computer are much more thrilling than traditional static word cards adding customization, sound, and animation to repeated exposure of important words in baby's world. My nose, Mom's hair, Dad's foot, and sound, pictures, and animation of other babies introducing the word clap can rock baby's world! Babies love the repetition, anticipation of what's coming next, but most of all they love your attention, the physical contact and bonding. Computer word games are a great activity for the fathers and grandfathers who often say they don't know what to do with 8- to 12-month olds.
我发现有很多的家长已经成功使用文字游戏软件来为书籍阅读加以补充。每天只用花5分钟左右，抱着宝宝坐在电脑前玩这些文字游戏，会比传统静止的文字卡片有趣得多，为这些重要单词重复出现在宝宝世界时增加了个性化、声音和动画。我的“鼻子”，妈妈的“头发”，爸爸的“脚”，还有其他宝宝介绍“鼓掌”时的声音、画面和动画，简直可以改变宝宝的世界。婴幼儿喜欢重复，喜欢期待下面会发生什么，但是他们最爱的还是你的注意力、身体接触和你跟他们之间亲密的联系。电脑文字游戏，对于那些表示不知道怎么跟8到12月大的婴儿打交道的爸爸和爷爷来说，是非常好的创意。

Enthusiasm. Many experts agree that talking to your child and having frequent read alouds, surrounded by talk about books during book sharing, are the most important brain-simulating activities in parenting leading to activation of social, hearing, visual, emotional, and linguistic systems all at once.
热情。许多专家都认为，家长和孩子讲话，经常大声阅读，在看书的时候谈论书中的内容，这些对孩子来说都是最重要的大脑刺激行为，可以同时激活孩子的社会、听觉、视觉、情感和语言系统。

The other E's in this step are enticement, exploration, engagement, and explosion. By enticing your child with fun reading activities, exploring new books, and engaging her in the process, her vocabulary, knowledge and love of learning will explode.
这一步骤中还有四个E：诱惑、探索、参与、激增。用有趣的阅读行为做诱饵，吸引她探索新的书籍，让他/她参与到这个过程中来，这样她的词汇、知识和对学习的热爱就会大大增加。

Attention. When you read or write with your child, you are constantly making decisions about how to direct his attention. Start by having a conversation with your baby about what you are reading and pointing out what's interesting. Later by calling attention to sounds, meaning, rhythm or musicality of language, expression, feelings, letter naming, and letter formation, you focus a child's attention to the many different aspects of language, reading, writing or spelling. The key is to do a variety of targeted reading and writing activities with your child that are appropriate and fun for his phase of development.
注意力。当你和孩子一起看书或写作时，你会经常想应该怎么吸引他的注意力。开始先和宝宝来段对话，告诉他你正在读什么，并指出书里有什么有趣的东西。然后唤起他对声音、意思、语言的节奏和音乐性、表情、感觉、字母名称、字母组合等的注意，你就可以将宝宝的注意力集中到阅读、写作和拼写等语言的不同方面上来。这个过程的关键是要与宝宝一起做大量的目标阅读和习作行为，其中的内容要合适和有趣，适合他现阶段的发展需要。

Drawing. Since holding a baby-safe crayon is a milestone for 12 months of age, your child might be ready to scribble on paper long before you think she's able. Early scribbling is one precursor to early writing which can lead to reading. Some children write first and learn to read by exploring writing. With early marking and scribbling, she is showing an internal desire to communicate, joy in expressing ideas, and the urge to make meaning. Drawing and pretend writing-both two dimensional and representational-can open the gate to early literacy.
画画。能拿起蜡笔画画对12个月大的宝宝来说是里程碑事件，宝宝们远比你想的要早得多就能在纸上涂鸦了。早期涂鸦是早期写作的前兆，宝宝们也可以阅读了，许多孩子都是先开始写再通过探索来学习阅读的。早期的涂涂画画表示她内心有交流的欲望，很乐意表达想法，也很迫切的想要做点有意义的事情。画画和假装写作是具有代表性的两个方向，开启了早期读写的大门。

This week I am in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, and Nashville sharing my ideas and strategies with parents about the importance of early reading. As the new school year begins, it becomes evident how crucial parents are to their child's educational future. Children may be going off to school and spending their day with their school teachers, but the first and most important teacher is the parent.
这一周我在美国各地和家长分享我关于早期阅读的观点和策略，早期阅读真的很重要。随着新的学年开始，家长们就会明显地看到早期阅读对孩子的教育未来起着怎样关键的作用。孩子们也许会长大去上学跟学校的老师度过每一天，但家长才是孩子的第一位也是最重要的老师。