When I was four, I could “read” pretty well. However, when I say “read” I don’t mean in the normal way. Ever since I was a little kid, my parents would read Thomas the Tank Engine and Angus books. I specifically remember some of the Angus books that were read to me when I was a little kid. For those who don’t know, Angus was a little Scottie dog who constantly went on adventures. In retrospect, Angus didn’t have very good owners, because he was constantly either getting in trouble or getting lost. My parents would read these stories to me so many times that I eventually ended up memorizing all of the words in the stories. I got to the point that I would “read” these pictures books back to my parents straight from memory. I didn’t know how to actually read, but I was fantastic at “reading” these Angus books back to my parents. Fortunately, I learned quickly how to read things that I hadn’t just memorized, and am now an avid reader. My parents still tell me about the millions of times that they read these same picture books to me, and I can now look back on those times and say they were my first experience with literacy.
This reminds me of an experience I had volunteering at my neighborhood library. They ran a program in the summer that encouraged children to read by giving them small prizes for every book they read. Children would be paired with an adult who would listen to them read the book as well as help them out with any difficult words.
One of the kids, who was known by the faculty to have difficulty reading, somehow was able to read through a large amount of books quite well, without any intermediate phase between lack of skill and advanced ability.
It turns out he would have an older sibling read the books to him and had been using a Talk Boy voice recorder toy to make himself a set of books on tape to memorize the stories. He even made a tapping noise on a table during the recording when he had to turn the page so nothing would look suspicious.
It was an impressive scheme for a six year old. Eventually he did go about it the honest way and now reads at his grade level.