Also - don’t feel like you have to be a reading expert to help someone learn to read.
The big big thing is phonics. If you can sound it out and have been speaking English your entire life, you’ve probably encountered the word by now. Of course there are a lot of obnoxious exceptions and patterns and rules but if you just start with slowly sounding things out with them you’re 80% there. We currently have a literacy crisis in the US in part due to a long discredited “whole language” model where children were deliberately not taught phonics, so this alone can be the miracle cure if there aren’t other obstacles (eg dyslexia, which is profoundly under diagnosed)
Other big thing is finding things that catch their interest. It can be very hard to find material that is at a low literacy level but is also actually interesting to an older child/teen/adult. Comic books and manga are absolutely spectacular for this purpose because the pictures help support understanding - you can give them higher level material which will be more relevant to them. I read like I breathe because I read the Hobbit as a child and needed to up my game to get past “A Knife in the Dark” in Fellowship before the movie came out.
The practical thing there - find books to read out loud with them that are compelling. Give them the fattest hit of how powerful the written word can be so that they’ll keep coming back for more. I always display subtle fandom swag or bring up a couple of popular phenomenons so I can recommend something they already like.
I’m not a reading specialist - none of this is based on much formal training in that, but I am good at other pedagogy and have been in the position to need to teach all ages how to read.
Helping teach someone how to read is one of the most profoundly good things you can do as a person, imho. You’re giving someone the tools to improve their life in so many ways. It’s honestly really fun to do as well.
Your local library probably has literacy initiatives you can get involved in, if this sort of thing calls to you!
Also - don’t feel like you have to be a reading expert to help someone learn to read.
The big big thing is phonics. If you can sound it out and have been speaking English your entire life, you’ve probably encountered the word by now. Of course there are a lot of obnoxious exceptions and patterns and rules but if you just start with slowly sounding things out with them you’re 80% there. We currently have a literacy crisis in the US in part due to a long discredited “whole language” model where children were deliberately not taught phonics, so this alone can be the miracle cure if there aren’t other obstacles (eg dyslexia, which is profoundly under diagnosed)
Other big thing is finding things that catch their interest. It can be very hard to find material that is at a low literacy level but is also actually interesting to an older child/teen/adult. Comic books and manga are absolutely spectacular for this purpose because the pictures help support understanding - you can give them higher level material which will be more relevant to them. I read like I breathe because I read the Hobbit as a child and needed to up my game to get past “A Knife in the Dark” in Fellowship before the movie came out.
The practical thing there - find books to read out loud with them that are compelling. Give them the fattest hit of how powerful the written word can be so that they’ll keep coming back for more. I always display subtle fandom swag or bring up a couple of popular phenomenons so I can recommend something they already like.
I’m not a reading specialist - none of this is based on much formal training in that, but I am good at other pedagogy and have been in the position to need to teach all ages how to read.
Helping teach someone how to read is one of the most profoundly good things you can do as a person, imho. You’re giving someone the tools to improve their life in so many ways. It’s honestly really fun to do as well.