L517 What is reading?

What is Reading?

Most of us think of reading as a simple, passive process that involves reading words in a linear fashion and internalizing their meaning one at a time. But reading is actually a very complex process that requires a great deal of active participation on the part of the reader.

To get a better sense of the complexity of reading, read what some experts in the field have said about the reading process:

What do we read? The message is not something given in advance--or given at all-- but something created by interaction between writers and readers as participants in a particular communicative situation.
- Roy Harris in Rethinking Writing (2000)

Reading is asking questions of printed text. And reading with comprehension becomes a matter of getting your questions answered.
- Frank Smith in Reading Without Nonsense (1997)

Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game. It involves an interaction between thought and language. Efficient reading does not result from precise perception and identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time. The ability to anticipate that which has not been seen, of course, is vital in reading, just as the ability to anticipate what has not yet been heard is vital in listening.
- Kenneth Goodman in Journal of the Reading Specialist (1967)

Literacy practices are almost always fully integrated with, interwoven into, constituted as part of, the very texture of wider practices that involve talk, interaction, values, and beliefs.
- James Gee in Social Linguistics and Literacies (1996)

As you can see, reading involves many complex skills that have to come together in order for the reader to be successful. For example, proficient readers recognize the purpose for reading, approach the reading with that purpose in mind, use strategies that have proven successful to them in the past when reading similar texts for similar purposes, monitor their comprehension of the text in light of the purpose for reading, and if needed adjust their strategy use. Proficient readers know when unknown words will interfere with achieving their purpose for reading, and when they won't. When unknown words arise and their meaning is needed for comprehension, proficient readers have a number of word attack strategies available to them that will allow them to decipher the meaning of the words to the extent that they are needed to achieve the purpose for reading. Reading is also a complex process in that proficient readers give to the text as much as they take. They make meaning from the text by using their own prior knowledge and experiences. Proficient readers are constantly making predictions while reading. They are continuously anticipating what will come next. Their prior knowledge and experiences with texts as well as with the world around them allow them to do this. It is this continuous interaction with the text that allows readers to make sense of what they are reading.

In this course you will learn about the complexities of the reading process. Understanding the reading process is essential if you are to be an effective content area reading teacher. You will also learn ways to effectively support your students' efforts to read and comprehend your reading assignments, as well as to become proficient independent readers outside of the classroom.

If you have any questions about how to post to Oncourse or what your responsibilities are for posting to Oncourse, please visit the L517 Posting to Oncourse web page.

HOW WELL DO YOU READ?

ORIGINAL POSTING--By the end of the day on Wednesday of this week post your response to the following topic on Oncourse.

The following is taken from: Goodman, K. (1996). On Reading. Portsmouth, NH; Heinemann, pp. 38-41.

DIRECTIONS:

Read the following paragraph through once and only once.

When you've finished, look away from your computer screen. Then rewrite the story as best as you can remember.

Don't reread the story until you are directed to!

THE BOAT IN THE BASEMENT

A woman was building a boat in her

basement. When she had finished the

the boot, she discovered that it was

too big to go though the door. So he

had to take the boat a part to get

it out. She should of planned ahead.

Did you have any trouble understanding this story? Probably not. It's pretty predictable: it's a familiar situation and the meaning is within your conceptual grasp since you know about boats, basements, doors and amateur builders.

I have a hunch that some of you may have been a bit bothered by a typo or two in the story. How many typos did you notice? DON'T LOOK BACK! NOT YET! And if you didn't notice any typos, don't worry--you may turn out to be among the more proficient readers!

On Oncourse, post the following information:

Explain what it is that you think people do when they read.
What do you think it means for someone to be a "careful" reader?
Post your rewritten story. (The one you wrote after reading the story above just once.)
Post any typos you remembered seeing when you read. If you didn't see any, just say so in your posting.

RESPONSE TO PARTNER'S POSTING--By the end of the day on Friday of this week respond to your partner's posting.

DON'T READ THE STORY AGAIN JUST YET! I'll have you do that in a minute. But do go read your partner's posting, then come back here.

Did you or your partner spot boot where you expected to find boat? Some of you saw boot but read boat anyway. That's because you were predicting boat so strongly that you decided to reject the typo.

Did you or your partner write he in your re-written story instead of she? You may have noticed that the story slips up and refers to the woman as he. But because you knew that the story really had no male character, it was unlikely that you included a he in your story. Again, you probably just rejected the typo while reading because you were predicting she.

If you only noticed two typos in the story, it was likely these two. Boat and boot look alike and both are nouns. He and she also look alike and are both pronouns. Yet in spite of these commonalities, you likely spotted the errors because they violated your strong expectations with respect to meaning. Our brains focus on making sense in reading. That also helps to explain why you might not have noticed the remaining "errors" in this text:

The story says a part instead of apart. Did you or your partner notice? The two-word noun phrase, composed of the article a and the noun part, can't fit grammatically and doesn't make sense. You may have missed this because your expectation of what was coming in the text, based on the meaning you were constructing, was so strong that all you needed to see was some of what you expected, enough to confirm your prediction. Notice I'm talking about predictions, inferences and confirmations here, not accurate word identification. Your focus is not on recognizing words but on making sense of print. You are constructing meaning.

You and your partner probably thought you saw through in line four, but it actually says though. Did you write "through the door" when you rewrote the story? If so, you've provided more evidence that reading isn't seeing each letter, noting the sequence of letters, deciding what the word is, and then going on to the next word.

Now look at the last line of the story, where you'll find should of instead of should've. The latter is the contraction for should have. Of is a very common word with an unusual spelling for its usual pronunciation. The <of> and <ve> both represent the same sound pattern, but they have very different grammatical functions; of doesn't make sense after should. Graphically, this error should have been the easiest to detect, since the visual difference is greatest. Again it's the strength of your prediction and your focus on meaning-making that kept you from perceiving it (if you didn't).

There is a sixth error. If neither you nor your partner spotted the sixth error, see if you can find it. YOU CAN GO BACK TO THE STORY NOW! While you're looking at the story, take note of the other five errors I've already pointed out.

Did you find the sixth error?

Look at the end of line two and the beginning of line three, where the is repeated. A whole extra word! Why was it so hard to see if reading is a careful, successive recognition of words and letters? It isn't that your eyes don't see both words, but that your brain rejects the likelihood. The eyes are tools of the brain. The brain tells them where to look and what to look for. It decides what to attend to and use from what the eye reports. The brain is completely in charge of all human information processing. So, when your eye sent the input for the repeated the, your brain's response was: "Don't get sloppy. I've got that information already!"

On Oncourse, post the following (in response to your partner's first posting):

Do a quick comparison of the number of errors your partner saw and the number that you saw.
Comment on whether or not your partner's rewritten story and your rewritten story indicate whether you both seemed to understand the story. Which seems more important, finding more of the errors or coming away with a good understanding of the story?
Assuming that neither you nor your partner caught all of the errors in the "boat" passage after reading it once, does that mean neither of you is a "careful" reader? Explain.
Talk about ways in which this exercise changed (or reinforced) your understanding of what we (good readers) do when we read.

RESPONSE TO RESPONSES --By the end of of the day on Sunday be sure to read your partner's (and anyone else's) response to your posting. If anyone has asked you a question, be sure to answer it.

Reading Assignment

Lecture

What is Reading?

Oncourse Activity