Any language can be learn if there is a need to know the language. Reading and writing happens by assimilation not by the milestone of age. As parents we can design the environment but that alone may not suffice if the child does not has the need to learn the language.
My son, now 11 yrs old. He started his journey of English as a language when he was few months old. We would read pictures with him. As he grew he would select loads of books before sleep for us to read no matter how tired we were. Sometimes selecting repetitive, sometimes new but no less than 7books to read. We would sleep before him, he will wake us up to listen. He would spend time with books. We never gave him formal training to learn language. He started writing because he wanted to write ‘Mummy, Papa, and Didi’. He wanted to write because he needed to write his name in many places.
He still did not get any formal training to read and write. But he would listen a lot, since speaking in English was in the environment. He went to Jaipur and needed to understand Hindi to be able to communicate and understand his Grand parents, he learnt to understand the language of Hindi. 7/12 years and he will still not write or read by self.
He needed to learn to read about ships to make his own ship models. He made friends with reading – he would read hoardings while travelling, he would observe other people reading, he would spend hours with books, he would ask the words to read. And he just started reading, He picked up Harry potter at the age of nine.
He still will not write. He saw someone writing cursive, he liked the beauty of the script, he started practicing cursive. He practiced and practiced and wrote and wrote. He wrote what he wanted to write.
At Aarohi he needed to write in many places – notes to write instructions to conduct sessions, notices to express his thinking, summary to make presentations, documentation to compile his week. He just started writing and now he writes pages and pages.
