Why you should turn on the Subtitles
Turn On The Subtitles or 'TOTS' is a proven way to increase your child's reading age. Recent research reveals that: "subtitles can more than double the chance of kids becoming proficient readers."
The benefits to children are significant, and an increase in reading age can significantly contribute to a child's success in exams, 11 Plus, GCSE's, and other education.
Endorsed by celebrities and politicians like Sir Lenny Henry, Sally Hawkins, Stephen Fry, Rachel Riley, Sandi Toksvig, Sanjeev Bhaska and Boris Johnson, to name but a few, the Turn on the Subtitles campaign is now helping over 300 million children worldwide including those with dyslexia.
This revolutionary new way to enhance your child's education is free, easy and requires only two minutes of your time.
Evidence shows that as soon as children can decode basic phonemes, they begin to benefit in reading development, vocabulary, and grammar acquisition by listening to words while seeing the words written simultaneously.
For generations, parents have bought children books where buttons can be pressed to hear the words while the story is being read. Now, this technique can be used in a passive subliminal way while children are relaxing and enjoying their favourite programmes. They feel no pressure to learn and do not see it as "work".
Many leading boarding schools have turned on the subtitles for their residential and day students and report growing success. This is seen as the norm, and within a short time, the students forget they are learning.
Stephen Fry, a well-known advocate of expanding and empowering the minds of the young and not so young, is actively trying to persuade parents to use this free tool to help their children succeed.
The people behind the campaign
The Turn on the Subtitles campaign began when two dads, Henry Warren and Oli Barrett, looked into ways to help their own children increase literacy skills during the lockdown.
Like many parents, they were working from home and passionately cared about their children's reading development. Time is a real issue when trying to work with children, but this requires none of your time and has great benefits.
Researching into the topic, they found in an Indian study of 2350 children that when subtitles were tuned on for only 30 minutes a week, reading proficiency rose from 34% of the children being labelled "good readers" to 70% being labelled "good readers."
"It's a no brainer, like sneaking vegetables into dinner."
That's what we want! Good readers who are not battling with their parents over working at home and reading when they could be watching TV.
This campaign has gone viral with media platforms such as the BBC, Sky, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube kids and Tik Tok, all working to increase the availability of subtitles in their programming.
So, with nothing to lose and only happy, successful readers with stronger vocabulary, spelling and grammar to gain, we at Jacqui Robinson Education whole-heartedly support the Turn on the Subtitles campaign and commend it to you without reservation to our parents, who all look for significant pieces of advice and the opportunity to gain where 11+ and GCSE results are concerned.