Word power

Ph.D. says tots better off with an early start

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You can't start too early where teaching a child to read is concerned.

That is the view of Robert Titzer of San Diego, and he means it -- the earlier, the better.

He recently put in an appearance before a packed house at the Lied Children's Museum on Las Vegas Boulevard North and told scores of parents that waiting to teach reading until a child enters first grade may put that youngster way behind the curve.

Even as toddlers, perhaps only a few months old, Titzer said, "Tens of thousands of new connections are forming in the baby's brain every second. The time you put in during early life will come back to you thousands of times over."

Even if a baby can't talk, he said, he or she can listen. Thus, talking to a child, and focusing on what the toddler is actually interested in -- a hanging toy, a pet cat, whatever -- can open pathways to verbal and visual understanding at the earliest ages.

Simply by repeatedly describing what the child is looking at or playing with can enhance the child's beginning vocabulary several times over, Titzer said.

Early on, it may take a while to teach a baby its first 50 or so words, but then the youngster will begin learning words after hearing them only once or twice. Later on in life, said Titzer, learning words actually becomes more complex and requires greater effort.

He added with a smile, "It's also important that you don't use words in front of them that you don't want them to know."

One parent in the audience, Las Vegas resident Shelley Urbanski, mother of 10-month-old Olivia, said Titzer's approach is in line with her education. "I took Psychology 101 classes, and they teach you about this," she said. "They teach you that in the first five years, you learn more than at any other time in your life."

Starting early, Urbanski said, simply makes sense.

Titzer advocated speaking in complex sentences to babies, using adjectives and avoiding simplistic sentence structures.

Where reading aloud is concerned, he said "Winnie the Pooh" has lots of complex sentences while, by contrast, "Curious George" books tend to be simple.

The more a baby learns to respond verbally, the more it can develop the needed tongue and mouth control to formulate more complex words and structures.

When a baby babbles unformulated sounds, Titzer said, "Reinforce the ones that sound like words."

Dump the pacifier as well, he advised. "You want to encourage your child to make tongue and mouth movements," he said. "It will really help them have more tongue and mouth control."

At the same time, babies will begin picking up the rudiments of grammar simply by listening to the rhythm of the language used. As an example, he said, many parents might not be able to explain exactly why "ing" may be added to a verb, but a baby can learn the practical reason for it simply by listening and processing what it hears and sees.

All of which is fine where verbal skills are concerned. But Titzer said those skills are important where early reading comes in.

"The earlier the child is taught to read," he said flatly, "the better the child will read."

As early as 2 1/2 months, a baby begins tracking visually, and that is the best time to start, he said.

"Ninety percent of babies have that at three months," he said.

Have a child point to written words as they are spoken, Titzer suggested. "By 13 months a child can point," Titzer said.

A video, part of a set his Infant Learning Co. produces, demonstrated the ability of youngsters to recognize written words at very early ages.

In the video, Titzer would hold up a sign with a word on it -- "ear," or "foot," for example -- and the toddler would immediately point to that body part.

One father in the video remarked about his child, "At 18 months he was reading books, signs, menus -- anything he could get his hands on."

Titzer's videos go beyond mere flash cards. A baby watching the video sees the word, hears it spoken and sees what it represents.

Titzer stressed, however, that his technique is no quick fix. "This does not happen overnight," he said. "It takes many months. It generally takes six months. You need to be consistent for a long time."

Marsha Omelina of Las Vegas, in attendance with her daughter Madelyn, 15 months, said she saw Titzer in San Diego some years ago and that his technique worked for her family.

"About five or six months," she said, "Madelyn was able to recognize words. They hold the attention span. They touch on phonics and grammar at the same time. We got the videos when she was two or three months."

Madelyn, she said, will point to objects in order to communicate her needs or wants. "We still show the starter videos," Omelina said.

Titzer also decried the standard first-grade fare of one-syllable, three-letter words with a vowel in the middle and a consonant at each end.

Omelina mentioned that her child has learned to recognize and understand words as complex as "hippopotamus."

A child should be taught to read, not words that are necessarily simple and easy, but words that reflect the actual flow of the spoken language, Titzer said.

Ironically, he added, despite his development of the video system, he is overtly anti-television, and he didn't have much good to say about other educational videos.

"Most of the baby videos have little or no educational value," he said.

He also questioned whether medical personnel ought to be given much weight where reading is concerned. Titzer said he does not give medical advice, and that parents should not get advice about reading from pediatricians.

Titzer said that by a child's fifth birthday, he or she ought to be introduced to the library, where some books may be used to teach better reading skills, while others may be employed simply to encourage reading for the sheer joy of it.

The dangers of not encouraging children to read are serious, Titzer said. In California, he said, half of the school students read below their grade level, and that can be almost an impossible hurdle to surmount as times goes by. Of those not reading at grade level, he added, only one in eight ever catches up.

His techniques, said Titzer, can even be used in teaching young children a second language.

"I've had babies learning in English and Japanese," he said. "I think it will actually reduce the confusion when they're doing it in two languages."

For more information on Titzer's video series, visit www.infantlearning.com.