I love that moment when my children reach that age when they all of a sudden take a book in French or Italian and have a go on their own at reading it. It is usually happening once their English – their school language- is consolidated enough for them to start exploring the other languages they verbally know. Before that stage, I would randomly read in English, French or Italian to them, depending on the book they fancy that night, but it is only English books they would make the effort to read by themselves – looking only mostly at pictures for books in another language.

Then the day happens when their curiosity takes over and they want to read the words and not only look at the pictures. By then, they had very limited awareness of the way sounds are written in French and Italian, as I avoid teaching them reading and writing in another language than English until they are confident enough in that language. There is a reason why primary school education in France and Italy starts the year a child turns 7: both languages are so grammatically challenging that you need to wait for the children’s minds to be mature enough to comprehend the points of grammar. It is almost impossible for a child to read in French without a good understanding of the concepts of subject, verb, complement, adverb and so on. An example? You don’t pronounce the “ENT” ending in a word when it is a verb conjugated at the third person plural, but you do in all other cases: “Les lents serpents glissent silencieusement sur le ciment” (only the syllables in bold are pronounced).

While they read for the first times a book in French or Italian, I can almost see the reading mechanism processing in their mind. First, they look at the picture, then they start pronouncing the letters the way they are familiar with, taking into account that the sounds are different from English (for example, the letter A is always A in French and Italian, like APPLE, never AY like BABY). As they make some mistakes along the way, misreading a word or using a wrong combination of sounds, making the whole sentence meaningless, they come back to it and try on the right association of letters until they have the right sound to make a word they know exists, and so they can understand the sentence. Of course, it takes a couple of seconds. From time to time, they do bump into a word they can’t decipher because they don’t know it, but as long as they are not too many, they keep on reading, making sense in any case of the whole story. This is why when the level of the book is not adapted, children do give up as too many unknown words can’t be read and the story loses its meaning and finally its interest.

This process is slightly different when reading a book in English, as the reading methodology differs due to the construction of the English language, allowing the children to be officially introduced to reading at 4 years old. Children are first acquainted with simple sounds like consonants and vowels, which, put together, form simple words: CAT, MAT, MAP, TAP… Most complex common words, which don’t follow the rules of the consonants and vowels sounds but are often found in simple stories, are learned by heart through games: I, WE, LIKE, ARE, TO, DO… Only little by little, more complex sounds are introduced, which associate more letters together: AY, AW, OU, EA… And only then, the more capable readers can start moving onto the reading mechanism that I have observed with my children reading for the first time in another language than English.

If only we could then enter their minds and see the millions of connections operating in their brains! Actually, I almost know how it feels, as I have recently decided to refresh my very rusty Spanish knowledge by reading books in Spanish. The first pages and even chapters were a struggle, most of all as I tend to read in the evening in bed, not a good time for concentrating on foreign sounds and words. But once I got over the frustration and accepted to be carried by the story only, I truly enjoyed exploring another language through literature and enriching my mind with new concepts and vocabulary. If you are currently learning a foreign language, don’t be afraid to try: start with something rather easy but at the same time interesting – the story needs to catch your attention, so you won’t give up at the first difficulty. Consequently, children books might not be the best choice, look for short stories written for learners or books for young adults. Forget the dictionary and your traditional expectations of understanding, and just let be filled with the words which slowly but surely will make sense and transfer you to another world of language…