Reading

I

Introduction

Reading, activity characterized by the translation of symbols, or letters, into words and sentences that have meaning to the individual. The ultimate goal of reading is to be able to understand written material, to evaluate it, and to use it for one's needs.

In order to read, one must follow a sequence of characters arranged in a particular spatial order. For example, English flows from left to right, Hebrew from right to left, and Chinese from top to bottom. The reader must know the pattern and use it consistently. Ordinarily, the reader sees the symbols on a page, transmitting the image from the eye to the brain, but reading also can be accomplished by touch, as in the Braille system, a printing method designed for the blind that involves raised or punched dots.

Reading refers to activities as varied as a first grader's struggling with simple sentences in a storybook, a cook's following directions from a cookbook, or a scholar's attempting to understand the meanings of a poem. Reading exposes people to the accumulated wisdom of human civilization. Mature readers bring to the text their experiences, abilities, and interests; the text, in turn, allows them to expand those experiences and abilities and to find new interests. To reach maturity in reading, an individual goes through a series of stages, from readiness to adult reading ability.

II

Reading Readiness

The earliest stage, readiness, encompasses the skills that young children usually acquire before they can profit from formal reading instruction. Children acquire knowledge of the language and of letter names; they learn that spoken words are composed of separate sounds and that letters can represent these sounds. Parents can aid in the process by reading to children, thus acquainting them with the more formal language of books, pointing out words and letters, and making them aware that words in a book can tell a story or give information. Other readiness skills are acquired through word and rhyme games. Play with language apparently helps young children focus their attention on the sounds of words as well as on their meanings.

---

---

Children also learn about other aspects of written language. At younger ages they can distinguish their script from that of other languages, recognize commercial logos, engage in “pseudoreading” with familiar books, and so on. It has been suggested that these early “reading” behaviors contribute to later reading success.

In kindergarten or first grade, children are often given readiness tests that measure abilities in language, knowledge of letter names, and skill in matching words and letters. High scorers on these tests usually become good beginning readers, but children with low scores may or may not do well in reading. Experienced kindergarten teachers can often predict first-grade reading abilities as well as or better than readiness tests.

III

Beginning Reading

In the first grade, children begin to learn the printed equivalents for the spoken words they know. Some schools and reading textbooks teach the child to recognize whole words and stress the meaning of the text. Others first emphasize the study of phonics—that is, the sounds represented by individual letters—and the development of independent word-recognition skills. Nearly all current programs combine both techniques; they try to teach a child to recognize words and to learn phonics. For more than 60 years, research has shown that early, systematic phonics instruction produces high reading achievement, at least until the third grade. The most common means of instruction is the basal reading program, consisting of a reader, workbook, and other associated materials. These readers have been criticized as not containing sufficiently high-quality literature and as not meeting the child's needs for meaningful content. Defenders have suggested that a limited vocabulary is necessary in the beginning so that children can concentrate on learning to recognize and sound words.

In the early elementary grades, children read stories and selections containing common words already familiar from speech. With practice, most children read with increasing fluency and understanding. The different reading levels in a classroom may lead to the grouping of readers or even to an individualized approach that adapts instruction to each reader's abilities.

IV

Development of Skills

In the mid-elementary and junior high school years, emphasis shifts from reading stories with known content to reading more difficult materials that teach the child new ideas and opinions. At this stage, silent reading for comprehension and study skills are emphasized. This shift from learning to read to reading to learn is especially important because the student must now begin to use reading skills to learn facts and concepts in social studies, science, and other subjects. Making this shift is difficult for some students, and their reading scores may increase at a slower pace than in the primary grades.

Some educators see reading comprehension as a series of subskills, such as understanding word meanings in context, finding the main idea, making inferences about information implied but not stated, and distinguishing between fact and opinion. Published programs based on this view purport to divide reading into as many as 350 different subskills to be mastered during the elementary grades. Managing such a program, including the administration and scoring of tests for each subskill, and providing sufficient practice for each subskill can be difficult for a classroom teacher.

Some have suggested that an excessive emphasis on subskills leads to worksheets crowding out children's opportunity to experience literature. These theorists tend to treat reading comprehension as a general ability not made up of specific skills. Programs based on such theories stress broad, extensive reading; understanding of word meanings; and development of reasoning abilities.

In high school and college, reading materials become more abstract and contain a larger, more technical vocabulary. At this stage, the student not only must acquire new information but also must critically analyze the text and achieve an optimal reading rate based on the difficulty of the material and the purpose of the reading.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain