This is a situation whereby a child doesn’t read loudly. Instead, the child reads quietly to himself. This may involve silent speech or subvocalization. One can define silent reading as the internal speech made when he’s reading a word, thus letting him envision the word’s sound as it’s being read. With silent reading, a reader can reduce his cognitive load. This will help his mind to access meanings and let him understand and remember what is being read. Though some people may connect subvocalization with one’s lip movements, it primarily refers to the movement of muscles related to speaking, not the actual movement of lips. Most subvocalization can’t be noticed (unless machines are used for the purpose) even by the individual who’s doing the subvocalizing.
Silent reading improves a child’s understanding because it helps him concentrate on what he’s reading rather than focusing on the pronunciation of individual words. When a child reads silently, he’ll create mental pictures of the topic being talked about. Additionally, silent reading doesn’t need the child to read one word at a time. By encouraging a child to read silently, parents or teachers can help him develop the strategies he’ll need for reading faster and with improved comprehension. This is what reading efficiency is all about. Thus, with silent reading, a child would read any text with optimum attention to meaning.
Since silent reading focuses on comprehending the content without the added burden of paying attention to pronunciation, it helps develop the skills of reading for a purpose. Silent reading also helps a child retain thoughts into his subconscious mind, which he can use in his daily life.
Several research results have shown that people read in sense groups. This means that an individual roughly reads multiple words together in groups to ensure they make sense. Within these groups, his eyes will tend to stop at the content words, such as the nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., which have independent meaning. However, his eyes will tend to skip over the function words or the grammatical words like articles and other determiners. Thus, by developing silent reading skills, a child would be able to read more efficiently.
By developing the habit of silent reading in children from an early age, parents can make them eager and willing to read whatever is given to them in any form – either online or offline. This is sure to bring several benefits their way.
