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Home
Who Is Talking?
Discovery?
How do I use it?
To download
Before you start
Phonics vs Whole Language
Why a Patent?
Is RTR an invention?
Just an experiment?
Plans and Hopes
Shareware Agreement
Final Words
References
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How?
The key to activating your baby's Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) is for your
baby to
pay attention
to communication - to be emotionally involved in it.
We all surround our babies with verbal communication
from their first moments
of life. Although it is difficult for them to segment the flow of speech into
single words for understanding, and even more difficult to control breathing
and mouth and tongue to produce speech, the babies manage it by age 1 to 1.5
years.
We surround our babies with written language also, but not in such a way that
they notice it as communication.
The Right Time Reader method helps them notice the written language in the
right way, at the right time,
so they will learn it even as they learn to speak. The reader program will
show pictures on the screen like those in ordinary children's books, with a
caption below the picture.
It will look like this:
With your baby in your lap, slowly read the caption and left-click the mouse,
or tap the spacebar. Each mouse click or press of the spacebar advances the
emphasis to the next word.
Your baby will see that the only thing on the page that changes as you speak is
one word, which gets larger.
There is no pointing finger or even a moving
cursor to distract attention from the word itself. [The cursor can stay on the
"next" button at the bottom right hand corner of the picture, where a
left-click will fetch the next page. It never needs to
move from there if you use the spacebar to shift emphasis from one word to the
next, which I find most convenient.]
Just sit down at the computer once a day (more or less, at your convenience),
with your baby in your lap, and go through one of the books (*.ubk files) using
the Right Time Reader program.
Or go through just a part of one of the longer books.
You will be exposing your baby to the written language in the same way that
you already do with the spoken language.
As your baby comes to know that
communication from you is associated with spoken words, it will also be clear
that each word has a visual pattern, as well as a sound.
In the first few months, your baby may not pay much attention to the computer
screen. Many other things compete for a baby's attention. That's okay, the
first part of the process is happening anyway. Later, infants go through stages of strong interest and disinterest in particular books, activities, and toys - go with the flow here, and never force the issue. You are trying to expose your baby to information about the printed word at just the right time - when baby is interested. Over a four-day Christmas visit, I tried to go through a book with Jennifer, and unlike a month earlier, she wasn't interested. Her new preoccupation with the printed word is to grab and chew the nearest example, and a newspaper anywhere in the room was a distraction. No problem. This too shall pass. Even if there are weeks or months when your baby is not interested, just give it an occasional try, and you will eventually hit the right time!
Also, the traditional book-in-lap experience remains important.
RTR can show your baby that the lines of print are a key part of the message, and establish the structure of the message, making the on-paper book an even more useful tool than before.
Exposure to RTR makes traditional books more meaningful
by showing how they contain their message - in the print, not in the reader's mind.
PLEASE TAKE SPECIAL NOTE:
The RTR program relies on exposure,
not hard work or compulsion.
The only real effort required is for you to find the time in your day
to expose your baby to the written language. For any parent,
there will be lots of times when it is simply not convenient - so don't do it
then.
You already know how you naturally expose your baby to the spoken language -
you don't shout at the baby, and you don't force yourself to talk when you
don't feel like it. You don't demand that your baby pay attention to speech
lessons, and the same holds for the RTR sessions.
I know that this is common sense that any parent would live by anyway.
But I am stressing and repeating it here and in the rest of this page because
I want everyone to know that I know it, and to know that
this program does not involve, and should never involve, any element of
coercion or difficulty.
If you are not enjoying an RTR session, neither will your baby, and nothing
good will come of it.
In fact, that is one major reason that we need more material - more books set
up to be read by the reader program - we need to keep parents entertained and
happy also!
The RTR method has no lessons, no rules, and nothing to memorize. It requires
none of the intellectual apparatus that your baby is still busy developing.
But it does depend on a good emotional state,
so that your baby feels okay about what is happening and pays attention.
As long as you are relaxed and enjoying what you're doing, baby will get the
message that something good is happening. Use the good times, and avoid the
fussy times (baby's and yours!),
even if you can only manage a session every couple of days at first, or even
just once a week. Any exposure is better than no exposure. Even if you have a
period of a month or two when you cannot use RTR, no harm is done. This is not
graduate school. Just resume the sessions when you comfortably can.
However, to the extent possible, try for regularity. Regularity will establish
a pleasant routine, so that baby knows just what is going to happen: a nice bit
of lap-time.
Babies like predictability.
Predictability and familiarity tell baby that there is nothing to worry about,
and help pattern the neural networks that are developing in baby's brain.
What would be boring repetition for an adult mind, or even a four-year-old, is simply good brain exercise
for an infant.
Think how boring a workout can be, yet how beneficial it can be for your body.
It is the physical aspect of your baby's brain development that you are encouraging and guiding with RTR.
Think of it as jogging or 'pumping words' for baby's brain.
Some periods are more critical than others
This graph represents my best horseback guess,
based on book-learning and my experience as a child, parent, and grandparent. The curve marked with squares is for most infants, and the one marked with triangles for those who may face developmental challenges such as the ones that produce some kinds of dyslexia.
For infants who may face special challenges -
those whose development may follow a trajectory that produces less capability to take in the printed word and process it for its meaning -
it is much more important to receive early and frequent exposure
to stimuli that will strongly encourage and direct the development of the neural systems that will be needed for reading.
With normal development
of visual-neural-sound-meaning systems, an infant will likely not require as much directed attention as early.
By the age of 9 or 12 months, exposure will be maximally important for almost all infants.
They will be quite aware of the meanings of many spoken words, both singly and in sentences, even though they probably can't produce much speech yet.
They are at the perfect age to recognize the equivalence of the words they hear, and the words they see.
Beyond age 3, the child will understand the pointing finger, and be able to learn reading with ordinary books and parental attention, so the importance of RTR declines. At the stage when reading is becoming established, RTR's role can change also, to allow more participation of the learner. With some help, the child can alter existing books and even create new ones. This kind of empowerment can happen even before his coordination is sufficient for handwriting.
For the earliest months -
The shorter books need only about five minutes to go through, even counting
setup time. So you can fit a session in with a busy schedule, and not feel that
you are sacrificing some other activity.
Even if your baby is not looking at the screen much
in the first couple of months, the sound of your voice reading the story during
lap-time at the computer is forming a memory of a predictable, nice time. It is
even likely that your baby will memorize the sound of your voice saying
"Scipio the cat is sleeping" long before noticing the words on the
screen. Then when baby does notice those words, and their behavior, there is
nothing new left to learn, except the connection between the written words and
the already well known sounds.
This is as it should be - one thing at a time.
At about 6 months
, you will notice that your baby is looking at things with much more evidence
of purposeful intent. Baby's eyes and head will turn towards sounds, and baby's
gaze will stay on interesting things even if they move, or if baby gets moved.
This is a particularly important period. Use baby's most alert times in front
of the screen, going over familiar books and introducing new ones. You will
know when baby is paying attention to the story, and when
not.
Never force the issue. These sessions are supposed to be times when you and
baby are having fun and establishing communication. How can that happen if you
show that you can't get the message that baby wants a different book, or some
other activity entirely? Baby's wants come first!
I have already noticed that my granddaughter will sometimes maintain interest
through two repetitions of the same page, and sometimes wants to go quickly to
the next page.
I try to be sensitive to her clues and to remember that communication is a
two-way street.
When she lets me know that a session is over, it is over.
RTR is exposure to interesting communication, not boot camp for baby.
When it is time for a break, take a break!
Home
The current URL is http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~parsonst/index.html
This file was last modified 26-Dec-2001
To get in touch, email me:
 parsonst@ihug.co.nz
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