How old were you when you learned to read?

[look.sky.ward]

2 y/o.

 

[gromit]

I think pretty solidly by 1st grade, at least starting to learn in kindergarten.

 

[gromit]

I remember my dad reading the Sunday comics with me as a kid and my mom reading bedtime stories like Little House on the Prairie, etc.

 

[prplchknz]

they started trying to teach me how to read in kindergarten or pre k (don't remember which) and i didn't learn til the beginning of 2nd grade

 

[Smilephantomhive]

I read sentences in Kindergarten which I was about 6, and really sucked at reading until 6th grade (I could read books, but did poorly on those reading tests).

 

[SearchingforPeace]

I didn't talk until I was almost four, but started reading around the same time as I started talking...

 

[miss fortune]

not exactly sure... my mom was an elementary school teacher and taught me pretty early so that I'd quit pestering her to read to me when she was busy doing other things

I actually got in trouble in kindergarten because of it... I'd been banished to sitting at my desk for recess for a week for turning some sort of lame semicircular teeter totter over on another kid who really had it coming (he was about twice my size and I wanted off of the damned thing... he wouldn't get off so that my end would come near the ground, so I jumped off and it flipped over on him... I probably got in trouble mostly because I couldn't stop laughing about it!) and I brought a book in with me to keep myself amused. The teacher came over and asked what I was doing, so I told her I was reading and she told me that I couldn't read yet because nobody learns to read until first grade. I told her that I was most definitely reading and she called my parents in for a conference about me lying. She learned at that point that my mom was a teacher the next district over Bitch never did apologize though

when I got older and read To Kill a Mockingbird I totally identified with that part of the book!

 

[Hawthorne]

I have no idea when I actually started reading but I started memorizing books around 3 and pretended to read them but I was only looking at the pictures and repeating the words my mom said about that specific picture.

 

[Frosty]

Don't know how well I actually read, but I legitamately mostly self taught around 3 or 4 out of a growing awareness and fascination. I always had a book with me- and my parents loved to show me off. When I got to elementary school, it was caught that I read peculiarly- instead of reading every sentance as it was- the black dog runs, I would read them often as 'dog black does run'. I got diagnosed with mild dyslexia around that age, though I am not sure if I really believe it, though I still do have an awful time reading sort of ambiguous handwriting, if it is cursive or messy I really have to squint

 

[windoverlake]

Don't know how well I actually read, but I legitamately mostly self taught around 3 or 4 out of a growing awareness and fascination. I always had a book with me- and my parents loved to show me off. When I got to elementary school, it was caught that I read peculiarly- instead of reading every sentance as it was- the black dog runs, I would read them often as 'dog black does run'. I got diagnosed with mild dyslexia around that age, though I am not sure if I really believe it, though I still do have an awful time reading sort of ambiguous handwriting, if it is cursive or messy I really have to squint

I like your sentence better! Not only is it more dynamic-sounding, but I like that 'dog' precedes its colour. The dog is a dog first, and its colour is incidental and secondary.

 

[Fury]

Two years old! I've entered a reading recital during pre-school and won against first grade students. I think since then I committed to reading a lot - as a child I bought lots of reference books such as encylopedias, almanacs and atlases since those were the books I enjoyed the most, which is probably why my mind has the most random facts and trivia, lol.

 

[Andy]

I was about 14 when I learnt how to read and write.

 

[prplchknz]

I have no idea when I actually started reading but I started memorizing books around 3 and pretended to read them but I was only looking at the pictures and repeating the words my mom said about that specific picture.

i did the same thing with dr.seuss books, i would memorize them open to the first page and recite the whole book.

 

[prplchknz]

I was about 14 when I learnt how to read and write.

can't tell if this post is serious.

 

[Hitoshi-San]

I pretty much learned how to read when I was being potty trained. As in, the potty trained process involved books. So I was 2, going on 3 when I started to read but didn't write until I was in kindergarten (5). I always remember being good at reading and with spelling/grammar, but it took me until I was like 7 or 8 to write numbers and letters correctly. I learned how to type when I was 5 or 6 too and surprisingly was better at that. I think I just made up words and translated them into English and put about twenty spaces between words

To this day, I still never have the same handwriting style as I did 6 months ago. Normally, if I change how I write a letter or number it's because I couldn't read it if I wrote in a hurry.

 

[Yama]

I knew the basics before kindergarten, but didn't start learning reading seriously until kindergarten was underway, so, age 5. The way they tested us was by making us read aloud. I sucked at reading aloud so they always gave me easier assignments while all my classmates were in the "advanced group". Joke's on them though, because all the way up through college if asked to read aloud, I'm one of the few students in the goddamn classroom who can read faster than at a snail's pace.

 

[Riva]

Just around the average age for me. Was never a smart kid I was.

I don't clearly remember when I learnt to read (I think it was in my reception year in school) but I remember a consciousness of 'I can read anything now' when I learnt to read. I felt powerful with a great sense of accomplishment to be able to read.

E5!!!

Did you hear this song playing in the background when you have that conscious thought?

 

[Riva]

^

The feelings induced but listening to the above music is the same feeling I had when I first learned how to masturbate.

 

[Andy]

can't tell if this post is serious.

It is.

 

[rmrf]

It's interesting to consider what it really means to 'know how to read' because it depends on what you're reading.

In the most basic sense, learning that you are able to encode sounds in visual symbols and having a basic phonetic vocabulary, probably around 3 or 4. Infantile reading is quite different because words are not been interpreted as a whole, but read phoneme-wise. General fluency probably around 6. To be able to read at an adult level, probably like 13.

I think a lot of adolescences and adults aren't able to read fully, by that I mean, the process of reading itself is fully developed, but the vocabulary is small. Like on facebook etc, in comments, my sort of lettered INTPi-ish prose people will often be "i can't read that", so I have to pretty much write my point and then substitute out words that could be considered too ornate (or 'smart'). I feel the touchscreen culture has made people very lazy with how they express themselves and it's a positive feedback loop because if the language they are taking in is sloppy, so to will their output. The point I'm making with this tangent, is that I think when you truly learn how to 'read' is when you no longer want to take the path of least resistance. You enjoy words for their aesthetics, and when you see a word you don't know, you appreciate the opportunity of learning it.

Here in New Zealand, the English curriculum is very poor at least compared to say the US. Never was taught to diagram sentences, never had spelling tests, didn't really have the rules of grammar spelled out in any depth, very rarely we were prescribed things to read. The focus was on literary techniques - camera angles in movies. You watch the same movie multiple times and then you write an essay on it. The actual writing (quality of text, spelling, grammar etc) isn't the salient part, but the interpretation of the movie. I wish I were joking but English in New Zealand is primarily watching movies.

Knowing I wasn't going to get much from school (it bothered me a lot that my vocabulary felt lacking, especially when reading technical sort of stuff) I really made a self-driven effort to maximise my literacy by learning new words every day, writing INTP-ish prose on a regular basis, taking vocabulary tests online.

Ending my ramble, I really truly learned to read (at least what I consider true literacy) by around 13 or 14 because it was then that I could read anything I wanted without having to look words up.

I don't want to come across as snobbish or elitist, I just find it a bit sad the expressive tools of language are somewhat underutilised.