Reading

I

Introduction

Reading, uniquely human activity closely linked to mark-making and record-keeping abilities. Many societies have developed symbolic and linguistic systems to write and record information and ideas that others could read and interpret, later or elsewhere.

Reading is an activity characterized by the translation of symbols, or letters, into words and sentences that communicate information and mean something to the reader. The goals of reading are wide-ranging, but essentially the reader aims to understand the meaning of a written text, evaluate its significance, and use what he or she has read to enhance his or her knowledge, effectiveness, or pleasure.

It is well established that language and thought are closely interlinked. Reading is, indeed, one of the mind’s most complex achievements. It involves sophisticated cognitive and linguistic skills and has been described by the cognitive psychologist Ulrich Neisser as “externally guided thinking”. As a reader reads a text, he or she interprets the content while being simultaneously guided and influenced by the author.

In order to be able to read, the reader must be aware of and follow the conventions of writing used in the text. For example, English flows from left to right; Japanese from top to bottom; an inverted question mark precedes a question in Spanish, the opposite of the English convention; and while English writing rests upon the line, Punjabi script hangs from it.

In literate societies, the ability to read and interpret texts has rewarded readers with higher social status and greater economic benefits than those who are illiterate. Even when in a minority, literate people usually have better access to positions of social, political, and religious power. Comparisons between literate and non-literate social groups carried out by the social anthropologist Jack Goody have suggested that the development of literacy has affected the ways in which people conduct themselves, communicate, and think.

II

The Reading Process

Reading a text involves several factors. The first is the process by which the eye and the brain perceive text. Readers thus bring to a text both their perceptual and conceptual abilities. The part of the eye called the fovea picks up the words being read in a few hundredths of a second. While the brain is processing this information, the eye has already moved on to the next few words. Therefore, the eye is always a phrase or two ahead of what is registering in the brain. At the same time, the reader’s eyes look backwards to check meaning. This is known as regression. Apprentice readers use this tactic a great deal, which slows their fluency. Average readers progress to be able to comprehend over 200 words per minute.

As most readers read a page they tend to read the centre of the page, depending on context and peripheral vision, to deduce the first and last words on each line. Similarly, if one in five words is deleted, the reader can use the meaning of the text to guess which words might be missing.

Another factor is the nature and maturity of the reader’s affective or emotional response, with reading success influenced by his or her attitude, confidence, motivation to read, and desire to make sense of the text.

A reader’s knowledge is also crucial, as understanding a text can depend upon how closely it reflects his or her experiences of the world. For example, someone who has never seen snow, in reality or in pictures, cannot appreciate an author’s meaning in using the word “snow”, even if he or she is able to sound out the word. Likewise, a reader brings to a text knowledge and understanding of reading behaviour and experience of language. Familiarity with genres or types of text and their forms and conventions will affect his or her ability to understand them easily.

In addition, a text makes particular demands on the reader, who has to decode it using four main reading strategies—syntactic, semantic, visual, and phonic or graphophonic. First, syntactic strategies depend on the reader’s knowledge of language structures and grammar. Familiarity with language patterns helps a reader guess which words are most likely to appear next on the page.

Semantic strategies involve the reader trying to make sense of a text, using his or her desire to understand and powers of prediction to guess what unfamiliar-looking words may be. If a reader guesses wrongly, the sense of the sentence may be lost, so he or she will use semantic strategies to try out other possible words.

Visual strategies are used by readers when visually perceived information (for example, layout features, still or moving images, illustrations, diagrams, particular typefaces, or the use of colour) is used to suggest or support meaning.

Phonic or graphophonic strategies are used when readers understand the relationship between the sounds of a language and the symbols or letters that represent speech. For example, a child needs to know that “ch” represents a certain speech sound, or phoneme. Some graphophonic relationships are consistent and straightforward, but many, such as “ough”, in English, are unreliable. Dependence on graphophonic strategies alone would be insufficient, so the reader needs to use semantic and syntactic strategies as well to decide whether “bough” refers to the branch of a tree, the sound made by a ghost (“boo!”), something used to tie the hair (“bow”), or a sandy colour (“buff”).

Although it cannot be disputed that readers use phonic skills to decode unfamiliar words, reading schemes and teaching styles that focus overmuch on a purely phonic approach have proved to be unhelpful because they distort language so that it does not read naturally, depriving children of familiar language structures and patterns.

The text itself is partly responsible for a reader’s success. The subject matter and language level, the legibility of the script or typeface used, the presence or lack of visual support, and the author’s style are all factors that influence the way a reader encounters and makes sense of a text.

Successful reading involves combining these different types of knowledge, skills, and strategies at a pace fast enough to maintain fluency and accurately enough in relation to the author’s ideas and intentions. Young readers show a tendency towards either accuracy or fluency but neither learning style seems to inhibit children’s reading development.

It is recognized by educators and linguists that reading non-fiction, as distinct from reading fiction, requires of the reader different reading strategies. Narrative forms the basis of most texts, but non-fiction also uses a variety of textual devices such as diagrams, tables, and glossaries to present information. The reader has to understand the conventions of non-fiction in order to make the information his or her own.

III

The History of the Teaching of Reading

The teaching of reading has been a cause of controversy for many years, particularly since the introduction of state education and the universal aim of mass literacy.

From the 14th century onward, most children were taught the alphabet with the aid of a small wooden paddle, called a Horn Book. During the 18th and 19th centuries, reading primers, designed specifically to introduce children to reading, appeared. The 20th century saw a wide range of graded readers and reading schemes and materials published.

Educators have attempted to refine the ways in which children are taught to read, devising comprehensive and tightly structured programmes and materials. Before 1950, the alphabetic approach was the basis for most teaching. Children would learn the names of the letters and begin to identify words by putting letters together. This led to the one-letter-one-sound method (OLOSM), whereby children read words letter-sound by letter-sound, often producing a word that bore no phonic relation to the word read aloud.

Another approach, used widely after World War II and commonly known as Look and Say, attempted to widen the young reader’s sight vocabulary. Flashcards were used to help children recognize whole words.

During the 1960s and 1970s various different approaches were implemented. In Britain some educationalists even introduced a new alphabet called the Initial Teaching Alphabet, or ITA, to try to make the early stages of reading more logically phonetic. This approach enjoyed a brief spell of popularity with some teachers, but has since been abandoned. Another system, Breakthrough to Literacy, was introduced in the late 1970s. Emphasizing the close links that exist between reading and writing, teachers used word cards to help children build up and read their own sentences, in sentence-maker holders. Several teachers still use these materials in their classrooms. There also emerged a new approach that was based upon psycholinguistic theories, the premise being that reading is essentially a process of making sense, with readers bringing to texts their knowledge of the world, language, and texts.

In Britain, the apprenticeship approach, effectively outlined by teacher Liz Waterland, evolved from these new views on the reading process. Teachers began to look for texts that would be more meaningful to children than graded readers. Where teachers used commercially produced or “trade books” instead of reading primers, they were seen to be advocating what came to be known as a Real Books Approach.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, this approach was challenged by those advocating a phonics-based system, who have blamed the Real Books Approach for alleged falling literacy standards. In truth, most teachers have used a combination of methods. There is, in any case, little concrete evidence to prove that standards of literacy are declining. However, in modern times, numerous distractions compete with books for children’s attention. Surveys have shown that many children prefer to watch television or play computer games instead of reading. Despite this, the market for children’s books supports the publication of thousands of new titles each year and has begun to develop tape, video, and CD-ROM versions of books.

A

Learning to Read at School

In literacy-dominated Western cultures, it would be almost impossible for any child to reach school age without appreciating that reading is an important, useful, and socially accepted activity. Most schools aim to encourage pupils to see reading as a valued activity, capable of enhancing the reader’s pleasure, widening his or her knowledge, and enabling him or her to function successfully in society, productively, and as an informed and responsible citizen. Schools aim to teach children to move from being inexperienced readers who require considerable support to readers who are able to read a wide variety of texts for different purposes.