Essay on Effects of Reading and Comprehension

Essay on Effects of Reading and Comprehension Essay on Effects of Reading and Comprehension My ability to write this paper and the reader’s ability to comprehend what is written are capabilities vastly under-appreciated. Imagine a comprehension state of a child between the ages of four to six, now think of the knowledge capacity of an adult between the age of eighteen to twenty. The leap in reading and comprehension skills is almost too vast to deem possible. Since the beginning of time it has been vital to communicate, without comprehension of others and interaction with like species we would be an inevitably solitary and archaic race. The building blocks of modern intelligence begin with reading and the ability to comprehend that reading. Just like with a child, who after conquering fundamental physical success, must move on to the building of the brain in order to be a productive individual capable of basic communication. Intelligence is built off of the ability to achieve what is so often underappreciated: the ability to read, write and comprehend. There are many processes to teaching a child to read, however one depiction of the process is given in four phases: the pre-alphabetic phase, partial alphabetic phase, full alphabetic phase, and consolidated alphabetic phase. (Bainbridge, 2011) These particular stages are already dependent on a child have phonemic awareness, where the child is aware that speech is made up of individual sounds. (Bainbridge, 2011) All individuals included in literate society have more or less partaken in these stages of learning and have accomplished the awareness levels necessary for the stages. It is very likely, however, that these processes through which our brains have undergone are not consciously remembered. As children most of society perhaps remembers beginning to understand our favorite storybooks, but the actual duration of which we struggled to grasp the concept of sound and writing is no longer with us. Therefore it would seem that this leap in cognitive capability came easily, which is ha rdly the case. The modern world is lucky to have such orchestrated processes and stages to follow for their models of linguistic success. Once upon a time, a time not so long ago, such studies did not exist. The origin of language is a topic that has hardly commenced to a conclusion, however new studies by biologist Quentin D. Atkinson declare that the origin of language may date back up to 10,000 years ago in Southwest Africa. (Wade, 2011) Atkinson has threatened the many theories that language origin did not date back further than 9,000 years ago. (Wade, 2011) Atkinson, who is an expert at applying mathematical equations to linguistics, uses phenomes rather than words to determine patterns in languages of the world. (Wade, 2011) Because an African click language Atkinson discovered has over 500 phenomes, it has been declared the first language. Wade, 2011) With regard to the controversy of language origin, it is something to be said that there are so many theories. No one can argue that language is not complex and valuable, or that something can be said for the extensive building that has commenced since original communication began. As language and communication relate to knowledge and intelligence, there is much to be said, but all concerning the question: How can multi-level intelligence and large knowledge recollection occur without fundamental cognitive development? The