When very young children interact with their favorite stories, they embark on an exciting journey of early literacy. They naturally love to pick up books, enthusiastically flip through the pages, point out characters by name, and label the actions happening on each page. Through joyful repetition, like mimicking the sounds of a word or rhythmically naming colors, children rapidly build their vocabulary and develop print awareness. They begin to recognize that the world around them is filled with words, and they master physical skills like directionality, quickly learning to turn an upside-down book so that it is right-side-up.

It’s incredible to watch early literacy in action. These early childhood skills lay the foundations for reading readiness once children are school-aged. Indeed, many school programs build on a spoken language foundation and move quickly to letter-sound (phonics) work because most children already come to school with a robust vocabulary, familiarity with speech and sound patterns (phonology), innate usage of the rhythmic flow of the language (cadence), and grammar.

This is why the claim by Dr. Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist with expertise in reading, language, and learning, in a recent blog on his website highlighted that teaching phonemes (units of sound) as isolated, artificial units without grounding in language can be counterproductive.