Reading is the key to school success, and like any skill it takes practice. A child learns to walk by practicing until he no longer has to think about how to put one foot in front of the other. A great athlete practices until he can play quickly, accurately, without thinking. Tennis players call that “being in the zone”. Educators call it “automaticity” A child learns to read by sounding out the letters and decoding ( 辨识 ) the words. With practice, he stumbles less and less, reading by the phrase. With automaticity, he doesn’t have to think about decoding the words, so he can concentrate on the meaning of the text. It can begin as early as in the first grade. In a recent study of children in Il l inois schools, Alan Rossman of Northwestern University found automatic readers in the first grade who were reading almost three times as fast as the other children and scoring twice as high on comprehension tests. In the fifth grade, the automatic readers were reading twice as fast as the others, and still outscoring them on accuracy, comprehension and vocabulary. “It’s not I Q, but the amount of time a child spends reading that is the key to automaticity,” ac c ording to Rossman. Any child who spends at least 3.5 to 4 hours a week reading books, magazines or newspapers will in all likeli hood reach automaticity. At home, where the average child spends 25 hours a week watching te le vision, it can happen by turning off the set just one night in favor of reading. You can test your child by giving him a paragraph or two to read aloud - - something un f amiliar but appropriate to his age. If he reads aloud with expression, with a sense of the meaning of the sentence, he probably is an automatic reader. If he reads haltingly, one word at a time, without expression or meaning, he needs more practice.