For most children, it is easy to learn to read faster. Their reading rate is often a matter of habit. But to begin, you may need to help them change some of their existing habits.

Here're some tips which you can help your children:

Get them to pay attention when they read. Many children read while they are doing other things or they are reading in an environment where there are many distracting activities going on.

For example, some children read while the TV is turned on loudly or where there are other children playing around them.

Active reading takes effort. Parents can help their children to cultivate good reading habit by having strict rules that they should never do serious reading while doing other activities such as watching TV or playing with their toys.

As much as possible, provide them a conducive reading and learning environment where there are minimum distraction. For example, switch off the TV at home or get other kids to play outside the house when your children are doing serious reading.

Do a preview of the book together with your child before he starts the actual reading. These often help him pay better attention and get more out of the textbook reading time. A preview usually takes between 1 to 2 minutes, depending on the volume of information.

To do a preview you:

- scan through the title of each chapter in the content page.

- look at all the headings, subheadings and marked, italic or dark print.

- look at any pictures or illustrations, charts or graphs.

- quickly skim over the passage, reading the first and last paragraph and glancing at the first sentence of every other paragraph.

- close the book and ask your child: what is the main idea and what is the author's purpose.

By doing the preview, your child will get a good general ideas of the materials. If he has a general idea of what the passage is about before he really read it, he will be able to understand and remember the passage better.

For older children, parents should teach them the technique of doing preview so that they can do it by themselves at any time without the help from their parents.

Article by Alvin Poh, founder of Learning Champ, a parenting wesbite that provides information and resources to parents, who want to help their children develop the important skills and mind set for a brighter future -> http://www.alvinkh.per.sg/learningchamp

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