Learning through play is well recognised as one the most effective way to learn. After reading this post, I did a mini online research on how learning through play can help English learning from journal articles. I found a journal article which include some interesting findings. Jin et al. (2014) investigate that with proper teaching strategies and adapting learning through play appropriately, students’ motivation towards learning English can be further enhanced. It is because students are delighted and excited in acquiring English through this way. This can also cultivate students’ interest in English through reading, as it is a compulsory thing we need to do every day.
I would like to share one of my own personal experience here when I started learning English: my nanny who brought me up showed me flash cards with pictures when I was 14-month-old. I still remember I was attracted by those diagrams and I love learning English since then.

Just some thoughts,

Lawrence

References
Jin, L., Liang, X., Jiang, C., Zhang, J., Yuan, Y. & Xie, Q. (2014). Studying the motivations of Chinese young EFL learners through metaphor analysis. ELT Journal, 68(3), 286–298.

Therefore, I suggest that there are other ways to make literacy acquisition become a more engaging and meaningful experience, such as through storytelling, bed-time stories and making scrapbooks. Parents can enrich their children’s experience by giving them more control over their learning, for example, letting them hold the book and turn between pages, name things in the pictures, mimic the sounds of animals, finish the end of some sentences or guess what will happen next. The parents can also encourage and help their children to make their own scrapbooks, where they can later on write down some basic words and sentences.

To sum up, I believe that early reading should be all about having fun, and the parents should view it as a great opportunity to have bonding time with their kids, as well as a great way to develop their children’s cognition, imagination and literacy skills.

Secondly, I have also noticed that reading books has somewhere lost its charm among the children with the advancement of the technology. Earlier the children used to read the story books, cartoon books or their text books, newspapers. But now even the course books are in the form of e-books, cartoon books have been replaced by the tv shows, newspapers by the news updates on the phones.

I remember that in my school one period was the reading period, in which we were supposed to bring a book of our own choice and read it. This school practice developed my reading habit. This same practice should be done by every school so that children develop the habit of reading books again. This will not only develop their reading skills but will also enhance their knowledge and will also keep them away from the electronic gadgets for some time.

I understand that caregivers want to take care of the books, and children do make messes occasionally. However, if they spend more time wiping books, won’t children associate books with cleaning, rather than enjoying reading uninterrupted? And consequently, they are turned off from reading for fun?
Letting children experience reading as a joy and a privilege is important, especially when they are young. Yes, they should try to take care of their/other’s belongings, but home and libraries are just that – not museums trying to preserve books forever. If there are a few marks here and there, but the child is engaged with a book and enjoying themselves, I think that’s the main thing.

Reading should be the lens for children to explore where they look at and have a further vision. On the contrary, if parents try to set reading as a task and force their children to have a broad view, children might consider reading a routine mission and gradually lose interest in it. Anyway, helping children gain interest in reading and curiosity to what interests them is critical when parents intend to motivate children in reading.

Besides, many researches show that children tend to take their parents as the role models and imitate their behaviors. To encourage children to read more, parents may need to involve themselves in reading since their children have the tendency of replicating their attitudes towards reading and then doing or thinking as they do.