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Comment by dgritsko | Hacker News Reader

I've also anecdotally heard good things regarding "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" -- does anyone have direct experience with both that book and "Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach" (and if so, a recommendation for one over the other)?

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I'm currently using "Teach your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons." with my 3 year old. He hasn't had trouble with the reading, but a few of the exercises were too long for him.

It uses the DISTAR method which seems to have the most empirical evidence supporting it. (The controversy over DISTAR appears to me to be that it's boring for the teacher)

I concur. We used that book to teach three of our children to read at ages 3 to 4 and it is mind numbing. It worked for our kids though. One of them was reading "The Hobbit" when she was 5 years old and except for being a professional musician she's more or less a normal young adult now.

I used it on two kids. They now both score on standardized tests as reading far in advance of their grade level. This leads to difficulties wherein much of the material available at their level of technical proficiency does not match with either their maturity levels or with their specific interests.

Neither of them actually finished all 100 lessons. At some point, they both preferred moving on to actual books rather than doing the remaining lessons. So a little boring for the student as well, apparently.

I had the same exact experience with 2 of my sons. Will start the third (5) on it (Teach Your Child to Read...) this summer.

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