The Path to Fluent Reading: A Developmental Timeline

Late in the first year of life, infants begin to isolate the sounds of their native language from other languages. For instance, an English-speaking baby will get better at hearing the difference between the often-used “l” and “r” sounds, while a Japanese baby, whose native language does not differentiate between the sounds, will get worse at hearing the difference. However, infants who get regular interaction with a native speaker of another language will keep the ability to identify sounds in that language, too. These differences in language-related sounds can lead to challenges if children learn to read in a language with very different sounds than their native spoken language.

Toddlers and preschool age children begin to recognize stories that they have been read previously and will "pretend" to read them, including repeating real or similar sentences on a page and turning pages at the correct point in the story. Children who have memorized a story or are pretending to read do not neccessarily recognize individual words or sentences, or read the same sentences when presented in a different context. Reading books with adults can help children develop oral vocabulary and recognize "book language."

How many syllables are in the word "kitten"? How many sounds are in the word "shape"? About half of children can identify the number of syllables in a word, separate individual sounds in a word, and combine given sounds into a word by age 4.

About half of children can distinguish and name individual sounds in a word by the end of age 5, and can sound out some written words. Yet they are still learning phonics and spelling rules that help them understand that, for instance, in "shape," /sh/ is one sound and the "e" is silent.

By 6, children recognize common writing and spelling conventions and use them when reading. They are more likely to believe a nonsense string of letters could be a real word if it follows appropriate spelling conventions. For example, one study found 6-year-olds picked the nonsense word "pess" over "ppes" because a double letter is more common at the end of a word than the beginning.

Children have mapped the letters, sounds, and meanings of many words together in memory and can understand them by sight rather than sounding them out. Studies find that clear knowledge of spelling and writing conventions make this process faster and more efficient, and a lack of these spelling skills can cause reading delays for students with strong phonics skills.

By age 8-10, children process common words either heard or written equally quickly, and with similar speed and accuracy as adults. But children still rely more on phonological processing systems in the brain to do so than do adults.