Last time, I talked about using different techniques to influence your children to read more accurately instead of guessing the pronunciation or just simply rushing through the reading. Speaking of rushing, here’s another technique you could try to get your children to slow down…
(3) Ask him to read at a sloth’s pacing.
Let them watch the trailer for Zootopia, the one that features Flash the sloth (https://youtu.be/bY73vFGhSVk). After they are done, ask them to read at the same speed as the animated character.
Just
like
this…
(4) Turn reading into a challenging but rewarding game.
Let your children read something, and whenever he makes an inaccurate pronunciation, shout a cheerful buzzing noise like it’s a game show, i.e.: “ZZZZZZZZ-wrong!” Mark down how many times he misread or mispronounce something. Ensure that your children could see this tally while playing the game.
Set a number of buzzes that your children must not trigger, and if they could trigger fewer buzzes than that number by the end of the game, give them a reward (the reward can simply be verbal praises). If your children manage to reread a word correctly on their first retry, then you could tell them that the buzz doesn’t count to further encourage them.
This exercise introduces stakes to the practice of pronunciation. By penalising an inaccurate reading with a negative reaction, acknowledging his accurate ones, and rewarding attempts to pronounce correctly, you are building up a motivation in your children to read anything as accurately as possible.
You could even make it like a video game by decreasing the target amount of buzzes your children must avoid when they get better at pronouncing. Inform them that they have leveled up like a game character, hence the game has become harder.
Next time, I shall share with you more advanced techniques to further influence your children’s pronunciation skills. Be sure to watch this space for more helpful advice!