The Read-Aloud Handbook

by Jim Trelease

Let me make an analogy here. Inside a child’s brain there is a huge reservoir called the Listening Vocabulary. You could say it’s the child’s very own Lake Pontchartrain, the famous estuary outside New Orleans that overflowed because of all the water brought by Hurricane Katrina. That extra water breached the levees and tragically flooded New Orleans. We want the same thing to happen but not in a tragic way—this time the levees will be breached inside the child’s brain. The first levee would be the Speaking Vocabulary. You pour enough words into the child’s Listening Vocabulary and it will overflow and fill the Speaking Vocabulary pool—thus the child starts speaking the words he’s heard. It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever say a word if you’ve never heard the word. More than a billion people speak Chinese—so why not the rest of us? Because we haven’t heard enough Chinese words, especially in our childhoods. The next levee is the Reading Vocabulary. It’s nearly impossible to understand a word in print if you’ve never said the word. And finally there’s the Writing Vocabulary. If you’ve never said the word or read the word, how in the world will you be able to write it? All the language arts flow from the Listening Vocabulary—and that has to be filled by someone besides the child. Simple.