READING (comart2)

1.What is Reading?

- "Reading" is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning from them. When we read, we use our eyes to receive written symbols (letters, punctuation marks and spaces) and we use our brain to convert them into words, sentences and paragraphs that communicate something to us.
Reading can be silent (in our head) or aloud (so that other people can hear).
Reading is a receptive skill - through it we receiveinformation. But the complex process of reading also requires the skill of speaking, so that we can pronounce the words that we read. In this sense, reading is also a productive skill in that we are both receiving information and transmitting it (even if only to ourselves).
2.What are the factors that affect reading?

-Factors that affect reading include but are not limited to: rate of comprehension and retention, bad spelling, hyperactivity, poor self-esteem and lack of coping skills. Intellectual and developmental learning disabilities are often seen in students while learning how to read, and symptoms progressively get worse without appropriate resources.

A person affected by learning disabilities may also be intimidated to write or speak up and may be slow at processing, experience difficulty trying to balance, experience coordination gaps, and exhibit poor handwriting. There are resources to assist students with learning disabilities, including evaluation, additional help with appropriately trained teachers, and tutoring within, before or after the school day.

3.What are the types of Reading?

There are several types and methods of reading, with differing rates that can be attained for each, for different kinds of material and purposes:

·        Subvocalized reading combines sight reading with internal sounding of the words as if spoken. Advocates of speed reading claim it can be a bad habit that slows reading and comprehension, but other studies indicate the reverse, particularly with difficult texts

·        Speed reading is a collection of methods for increasing reading speed without an unacceptable reduction in comprehension or retention. Methods include skimming or thechunking of words in a body of text to increase the rate of reading. It is closely connected to speed learning.

·        Proofreading is a kind of reading for the purpose of detecting typographical errors. One can learn to do it rapidly, and professional proofreaders typically acquire the ability to do so at high rates, faster for some kinds of material than for others, while they may largely suspend comprehension while doing so, except when needed to select among several possible words that a suspected typographic error allows.

·        Rereading is reading a book more than once. "One cannot read a book: one can only reread it," Vladimir Nabokov once said. A paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research (Cristel Antonia (2012)) found re-reading offers mental health benefits because it allows for a more profound emotional connection and self-reflection, versus the first reading which is more focused on the events and plot.

·        Structure-proposition-evaluation (SPE) method, popularized by Mortimer Adler in How to Read a Book, mainly for non-fiction treatise, in which one reads a writing in three passes: (1) for the structure of the work, which might be represented by an outline; (2) for the logical propositions made, organized into chains of inference; and (3) for evaluation of the merits of the arguments and conclusions. This method involves suspended judgment of the work or its arguments until they are fully understood.

·        Survey-question-read-recite-review (SQ3R) method, often taught in public schools, which involves reading toward being able to teach what is read, and would be appropriate for instructors preparing to teach material without having to refer to notes during the lecture.

·        Multiple intelligence's-based methods, which draw upon the reader's diverse ways of thinking and knowing to enrich his or her appreciation of the text. Reading is fundamentally a linguistic activity: one can basically comprehend a text without resorting to other intelligence's, such as the visual (e.g., mentally "seeing" characters or events described), auditory (e.g., reading aloud or mentally "hearing" sounds described), or even the logical intelligence (e.g., considering "what if" scenarios or predicting how the text will unfold based on context clues). However, most readers already use several intelligences while reading, and making a habit of doing so in a more disciplined manner—i.e., constantly, or after every paragraph—can result in more vivid, memorable experience.

·        Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) reading involves presenting the words in a sentence one word at a time at the same location on the display screen, at a specified eccentricity. RSVP eliminates inter-word saccades, limits intra-word saccades, and prevents reader control of fixation times (Legge, Mansfield, & Chung, 2001). RSVP controls for differences in reader eye movement, and consequently is often used to measure reading speed in experiments.

4.What are the different levels of reading comprehension?

-The Three Levels of Comprehension

The Literal Level

The literal level focuses on reading the passages, hearing the words or viewing the images. It involves identifying the important and essential information. With guidance, students can distinguish between the important and less important ideas.

Question: What did the author say?

Example:  Where did Henry’s family go on vacation?

The Interpretive Level
At the interpretive level, the focus shifts to reading between the lines, looking at what is implied by the material under study. It requires students to combine pieces of information in order to make inferences about the author's intent and message. Guiding students to recognize these perceived relationships promotes understanding and decreases the risk of being overwhelmed by the complexities of the text being viewed, heard or read.
Question: What was meant by what was said?

Example:  Why did Henry roll his eyes when his dad started to play

      the guitar?

The Applied Level
Understandings at the literal and interpretive levels are combined, reorganized and restructured at the applied level to express opinions, draw new insights and develop fresh ideas. Guiding students through the applied level shows them how to synthesize information, to read between the lines and to develop a deeper understanding of the concepts, principles and implications presented in the text.
Question:  How would the author’s message apply to other situations given what you memorized and understood at the other two levels?

Example:  If Henry’s friend Tom was the one playing the guitar, do you             

           think Henry would have rolled his eyes? Why or why not?

5.What is the process of reading?

The Process of Reading

Reading is a language-based skill. As such, it requires the processing of language that is decontextualized from any ongoing event. Decontextualized language is characterized by the fact that the speaker and listener do not directly share the experience being communicated. The speaker must create the context through language, as in narration. It is not surprising, therefore, that poor readers also exhibit poor narrative skills, especially with linguistic cohesion (Norris & Bruning, 1988). The narratives of poor readers tend to be shorter and less well developed than those of better readers.

Reading is the synthesis of a complex network of perceptual and cognitive acts along a continuum from word recognition and decoding skills to comprehension and integration. Beyond the printed page, a skilled reader draws conclusions and inferences from what he or she reads. Of all the factors involved in early reading success, early exposure to reading by parents and a literate atmosphere at home seem to be most important.

Several steps are involved in reading and reading comprehension. Both oral language and the written context play a role in word recognition and in the ability to construct meaning from print (Gillam & Gorman, 2004). Comprehension emerges from the interaction of letter, sound, word meaning, grammatical and contextual processes, and a reader's prior knowledge.

The first step is decoding the print, which consists of breaking a word into its component sounds and then blending them together to form a recognizable word. Words are then interpreted based on grammar, word meanings, and context. There is an interaction between the print of the page and linguistic and conceptual information brought to the task by a child (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001).

While phonological skills are essential for decoding, other areas of language—syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics—are needed for comprehension (Nation & Norbury, 2005). Comprehension require the active reader to be concerned with self-monitoring, semantic organization, summarization, interpretation, mental imagery, connection with prior knowledge, and metacognition of knowledge about knowledge, to name some of the skills involved.