READING ALOUD 15 MINUTES A DAY TURNS KIDS ON TO READING

Most parents know what their children's reading levels are. But what about their listening levels?

"Listening comprehension comes before reading comprehension, and it's usually two to three years ahead," said Jim Trelease, author of the best-selling 30-page booklet "The Read-Aloud Handbook."

Thus a child reading on a fourth-grade level may be able to comprehend books written for a sixth-grade level if the material is read aloud.

Trelease became an avid reader through the encouragement of his father. "My dad used to read to me all the time," Trelease, the father of two children, said. "It's no secret that children begin reading on their own early in life when their parents read to them when they were very young."

Trelease said he continued the tradition his father started by reading to both of his children, who are now grown and in college.

The author and founder of Reading Tree Productions, a lecture and film service, said statistics show that children who read on their own go on to become successful students. "And children who watch too much television don't score as high on tests as children who read a lot," he said.

Trelease compared sentences written for television scripts and those found in two randomly selected children's books. "Seventy percent of the sentences written for television scripts had simple sentences or sentence fragments," he said. "The children's books I looked at had mostly compound or complex sentences."

Trelease, who has also penned "Hey! Listen to This" and "Read All About It!" will address parents, teachers and the general public March 4 at Southeast Missouri State's University Center from 9 to 10:30 a.m.

His appearance will be part of the third annual Parenting Conference. This year's theme is "Bridging the Gap." The conference will take place from 8 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. and is presented by the Cape Girardeau and Jackson school districts.

For 20 years Trelease was an award-winning artist and writer for a daily newspaper in Springfield, Mass. During this period he visited hundreds of classrooms as a school volunteer, talking to students about the joys of reading.

On his way out the door of one classroom, Trelease noticed a children's book written by Marilyn Sachs called "The Bears' House." "I had just read that book to my daughter, so I was curious to find out if anyone in this class had read it," Trelease said.

"I put down my briefcase and drawings, and I went back and said, `Who's reading this?' Three girls raised their hands. So I said, `Don't you just love it?' For the next hour I just sat on the desk as we talked about 'The Bears' House' and other books."

The teacher subsequently informed Trelease in a thank-you note that as soon as he left every child in the class couldn't wait to get to the library.

"That bothered me," Trelease said. "It bothered me that they weren't ready to break down the doors to get to the library every day. From then on, I always saved time to ask the class what they had read lately."

Trelease was beginning to see that children whose teachers read aloud to them were reading on their own. "I began to wonder if there was a connection between how much you read to children and how much they wanted to read to themselves," Trelease said.

Upon further investigation into professional reading journals, he found a wealth of research to support such a notion. He asked friends, neighbors and colleagues at the newspaper if they read to their children.

"They all thought that reading aloud was something you did when the kid wouldn't go to sleep, and that television worked just as well. Maybe that was because they were never read to as children."

Trelease provided some alarming reading statistics:

-- Sixty percent of 11th graders are unable to comprehend writing on the level of the New York Times.

-- Thirty percent of the nation's largest companies are collectively paying $25 billion annually to teach remedial math and reading to employees.

-- Eighty percent of 21-year-olds are unable to comprehend a college textbook.

-- Federal and state governments spend $300 million annually in assisting illiterate adults.

-- Sixty percent of the nation's prison inmates are illiterate and 85 percent of juvenile offenders have reading problems.

-- Sixty percent of U.S. adults report television viewing as their greatest pleasure.

-- Forty-four of U.S. adults do not read a book in the course of a year.

-- Half the adults in this country no longer read a daily newspaper, placing the United States 19th in newspaper readership, behind nearly all of the modern industrial powers.