Regardless of our culture, we all learn by using our senses and our experiences. In school we learn from what we see (visual), what we hear (auditory), what we say and do (kinesthetic and motor), and from the experiences we bring to each lesson.Many of us rely on one sense more than the others. A visual learner needs to see everything or read it. An auditory learner learns best by listening to others or hearing himself reading loud. Kinesthetic learners need to write out what they see or hear, keep lots of notes, move their bodies, or manipulate learning materials. Most of us use a combination of these methods, depending on what we are trying to learn.

When we are very young our experiences are limited to family, home and the immediate environment. Teachers find that children who have had a wide variety of experience before coming to school learn academics more easily. This is true everywhere.

To be successful, a reading program needs to be based on a learner’s background and general cultural experiences. Since the first goal is to teach the child to recognize and understand a written form of language, it is important to stick to familiar concepts in the early phase of reading and writing. Learning to read is made more difficult if the program confuses the learner with new concepts that he does not know readily from his culture and experience. After the child learns to recognize the sounds associated with the alphabet and combinations of letters, develops some skills to attempt new words, and begins to sight-recognize familiar words, he will be ready to start learning new concepts (a later phase of reading and writing).

For most students in most cultures, although speaking their native language adequately to participate in the family and community occurs early and within a relatively short time, acquiring reading and writing competency to succeed in advanced academics continues for more than a decade. Acquiring academic competency in a second language is made easier by having reading/writing competency in a mother tongue. Where sounds and graphic representations of a second language differ significantly from the first language, acquisition of reading and writing skills is expected to take a substantial amount of time – years, in fact. While developing a wide vocabulary and evolving an ability to understand written academic material involves a long period of time, acquiring phonics skills needed for simple decoding generally requires a relatively short time. An investment in developing phonics skills in young learners has large payoffs in that children are able to apply those skills to word attack, becoming more independent learners.

We find that even for children learning to read and write English as their first language it is necessary that they learn phonics to succeed in using English in academics. Phonics alone is not sufficient because too many English words do not follow phonetic rules. However sight-recognition of words by itself is also not sufficient since no one can have knowledge of all English vocabulary. A combination of sight-recognition and phonics is essential for successful learning of written English. Since sight-recognition can only go as far as a learner’s current (or past) experience, phonics is necessary to carry the learner on to new reading experiences.

Vocabulary, both heard and spoken, begins with the very young child, as the mother speaks to the infant. Vocabulary grows as the child develops social interaction with family and friends. Social language is the foundation for academic language but it is not sufficient for success in school. Acquiring an academic vocabulary and the reading/writing competency in mother tongue (as well as additional languages) requires years of practice and is as diverse as the specialized subjects studied.

Overall, it is vitally important that teaching materials and programs accommodate the varying rates at which different children learn and the varying styles that are the preferred learning modality (as mentioned earlier). Finally, although adults generally view education as work children must do, success is achieved more readily when the early learner experiences the process as FUN. Every effort has been made to design the suggested materials and methods so that they will engage each child and be fun. The experience of success is further supported when teacher, parent and tutor feel comfortable with the materials and methods and can convey enjoyment of them to the early learner.