[wccrawford]

I am also a life-long avid reader. I didn't really understand what makes learning to read so hard.

At least, until I started learning Japanese. After a few years of that, I realized that the pain I was feeling while reading Japanese kids' books is what all kids feel when learning to read initially. It's just been so long ago that I've forgotten it.

In short, reading slowly is very painful. You know that others can read quickly, but you can't. You know that there's a good story there, but it's constantly interrupted by trying to pronounce things, trying to remember what words mean (or worse, looking them up!), or skipping them and trying to figure out what they mean from context.

It's way more painful than you remember.

Something that encouraged me to read with outside motivations would be welcome to me. So that Kindle kids app actually sounds awesome to me as a middle-aged adult right now.

[ThomPete]

Kids don't learn if they start early enough they absorb (just like with your mother language) the problem is that the later we start the harder it becomes.

[IIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

Does it matter? Even if I don't remember the feeling, it must have been as hard for me as for everybody else. So with that variable being about equal we are back to the discussion. Why would some people need "tricks" and/or pressure when others do it all on their own?

Also, I learned one other language - English - (I'm a German speaker) when I already was an adult, and pretty late too. I didn't have enough proficiency for daily life until I was almost 20, and even from there I had a decade of learning (example: no problems reading Stephen King - then I started The Lord of the Rings and for the first fifty pages had to consult the dictionary at least a few times per page; same with the jump from a newspaper like the SF Chronicle to The Economist, the same thing happened, again). But I never needed - or got - external motivation.

I'm not trying to make the (useless) point that everybody should have that kind of intrinsic motivation, I'm just saying this in response to what I think is your misunderstanding of the direction I took in my original comment. Remember my original reply was specifically about the use of "gaming" style of learning, make everything a goal and award points and use an app for that (which has become a popular topic in a much wider context over the last decade, it's even suggested for corporations).

[wccrawford]

We don't need to do more than put a book in front of anyone for them to learn things. But it's hardly the best way to do it.

If gamification helps a kid learn to read faster and happier, why not do it?

[IIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

> why not do it?

I just watched a Twitch stream, two gamers casting Starcraft 2 games. Each time they got a donation - the main source of income of many streamers on Twitch - they were very very nice to the person making the donation.

I sure see the need and that that is what they have to do, but the whole thing is cringeworthy. There are two scenarios here for someone being nice to other people:

- They are nice because they feel like being nice

- They get a reward - they get paid

At least to me which one feels natural and nice and which one feels like an abomination and awkward and unnatural is quite clear.

The whole concept of "reward", of getting "paid" (does not have to be money), sure has taken off. There have even be suggestions to pay kids to go to school.

But mostly, I already made my points so I refer back to my original comment in response, have we come full circle?

If you rely on outside rewards it is not the same result at all. If you are nice because you are paid instead of because you are a nice person and like the other person, or if you read because you get a reward instead of because you want to read, I claim that this is not the same outcome by a long shot.