Children's Reading Guide: From /m/ and /a/ to a First Storybook

The spelling method starts with letter names: be, a, em, es. Asked to read the word baba, a child says be-a-be-a and then has to turn four names into two syllables. That translation step is where many children stall halfway through a word, stare at the card and guess. Letter names carry extra sound with them: be has a vowel trailing after the consonant, em has one in front, and that extra vowel sneaks into the blend when the child tries to put the word together.

The sound method, known in most books as phonics, cuts out that step. The letter b is introduced as a short /b/, the letter a as /a/, and when the two are said quickly one after the other, the child's ear hears ba straight away. Indonesian suits this approach well because its spelling is regular: a given letter is read with almost the same sound wherever it sits in a word. The exceptions are few, mainly the two sounds of the letter e and pairs such as ng and ny, and each one gets its own stage later in the sequence.

Letter names still have their place; they simply come later. Once a child blends syllables with ease, names can be learned as labels, handy for talking about letters while writing their own name or singing the alphabet song. In the early weeks the adult helping sticks to sounds only, even when pointing at letters on a shop sign or a snack wrapper, so the child works with one consistent system.

After the vowels, the child meets the consonants that turn up most in everyday words: /m/, /b/, /p/, /t/, /s/, /n/, /l/ and /k/. Three or four in a week is plenty, and each new one arrives after the previous ones feel solid. Consonants from the child's own name are often chosen first, since that name is the word they see written most, on books, bags and bedroom doors.

When spoken, consonants fall into two groups. Some can be stretched out for as long as you like: /mmm/, /sss/, /nnn/, /lll/. Others only exist for an instant: /b/, /p/, /t/, /k/, /d/, /g/. The stretchy ones make blending much easier, because the child can run /mmm/ straight into /aaa/ without a gap. That is why ma and sa are so often the first syllables a child manages to read, with ba and ka arriving a few days later.

The most common slip is adding a vowel to the short consonants, so /b/ comes out as buh or beh. That extra sound travels into the word: a child who says buh and a tends to read bua. The adult models a crisp, clean /b/, just a small pop of the lips with no vowel after it. A game of hunting for objects that start with the same sound, such as meja, mangkuk and mobil for /m/, ties each sound to real things around the child.

Blending is the heart of the whole process of learning to read. The adult lays the m and a cards side by side, says /mmm/ while sliding a finger towards the a, and carries on into /aaa/ without a break until ma can be heard. The child copies the finger movement and the sound. After a few rounds the stretch gets shorter, until the child says ma in a single beat. The pairs then vary: mi, mu, sa, si, and later ba, bi and bu.

Once open syllables flow, two of them are joined into a whole word: bo and la make bola, su and su make susu, ro and ti make roti. Words are taken from objects close to the child, and the object is shown as soon as the word is read. The moment a child realises the writing on the card means the glass of milk on the table is when reading starts to carry meaning for them. Swappable syllable cards help too: changing la in bola to lu gives bolu, and the child sees for themselves that one changed syllable changes the meaning.

A common snag at this stage is guessing from the picture. The child sees a cat and says kucing without having read a single letter, and from the outside they look fluent. To check, the adult covers the picture and asks the child to read syllable by syllable. Words with no picture, and made-up words such as mibu or sola, show whether the child is really blending sounds or still leaning on memory.

Indonesian has four letter pairs that stand for a single sound: ng as in bunga, ny as in nyanyi, sy as in syukur and kh as in khusus. A child used to one letter making one sound has to learn that these two letters are read together. The tell-tale sign of trouble is easy to hear: bunga read as bun-ga, with /n/ and /g/ pulled apart. That is why ng and ny are printed on a single card in a single colour, so the eye takes them in as one unit.

The order of practice follows how often each sound appears in children's reading. ng comes first because it is in so many familiar words: bunga, tangan, burung and pisang. Then ny, in nyamuk, nyanyi and banyak. sy and kh mostly appear in borrowed words that turn up less often, so they come later. Words such as tangga and mangga add a twist, since ng is followed by another g and the words are read tang-ga and mang-ga.

The diphthongs ai, au and oi are two vowels gliding within one syllable, as in pantai, pulau, kerbau and koboi. What makes them tricky is that the same two vowels can also split across two syllables: pantai is read pan-tai, while main is read ma-in and laut is read la-ut. The term diphthong is for the adult to know. For the child, practice means building the habit of trying one way of splitting a word, listening to the result, and trying another split when the word that comes out is unfamiliar.

Being able to read and wanting to read grow along separate tracks, and a child who can blend words still needs a reason to pick up a book. PISA 2022 placed the reading score of Indonesian students at 359, against an OECD average of 476. A study by Anderson, Wilson and Fielding (1988) found that time spent reading books outside school was the best predictor of growth in children's reading ability. The practical upshot is simple: children who enjoy reading practise more often without being asked.

Book choice follows age. Preschoolers aged 4 to 6 enjoy picture books, short fairy tales and lift-the-flap books. Early primary readers aged 6 to 8 do well with levelled readers, child-friendly comics and short serial stories. Older primary children start choosing children's encyclopedias, adventure series and magazines. A Scholastic report found that 91 percent of children say their favourite book is one they picked themselves, so library visits work best when the child has room to roam the shelves. Comics count as real reading, since they train story sequence and dialogue.

Surroundings matter too. A small reading corner with cushions and good light, a shelf at the child's height, and covers displayed facing outwards all lead to books being picked up on the child's own initiative. Reading aloud at a fixed time, such as before bed, stays valuable well after the child can read alone. Three habits are worth avoiding: rigid page targets, reading as a punishment, and correcting every word while the child is enjoying a story.