Premature Reading

“Premature and incorrect use of printed materials damage the student’s accent.  First, if the student sees the word before he hears it, he will attempt to pronounce it using the phonetic rules he is already familiar with, and of course the pronunciation rules of English applied to any language yield terrible results.  If this continues uncorrected, the student runs into the second hazard: his reading builds bad habits of pronunciation that become ingrained.  In addition, focusing on written lessons first accustoms the student to translate in his head first, and only speak afterwards, which slows both the recognition and production of sounds and greatly impedes the journey to native-like fluency” (A Charlotte Mason Approach to Learning Languages:  Moving Beyond the Textbook [Part 4] - By Study and Faith). 

Starting with an emphasis on optimal and lengthy aural instruction when learning a foreign language is not always typical in standard classes. It requires a bit of a leap of faith: it is far less measurable than worksheets and tests. You cannot see what is happening in your student’s brain the way that you can see a page full of correct answers. Neither does it boil down to nice numbers at the end of the term, and you probably won’t have a tidy list of vocabulary words learned. What you can see is how well your child responds as he starts to slip new words into his everyday speech from things he has been learning. Children will increase steadily and gradually especially when consistent exposure to auditory material is applied at home.