What Is Reading And What Makes A Good Reader

A simple but problematic definition to reading is the following

"Reading is the ability to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately".

This definition is inadequate to an ESL reading professional since (Grabe & Stoller, 2002);

. It does not underscore the idea that there are several purposes for reading . It does not include the idea of the many different strategies of reading that lead to comprehension . It does not convey any sense of the cognitive processes of reading and . It does not describe how this process of drawing meaning varies or not with regard to proficiency in a second language. This paper and the consequent research will be many concerned with the last two of these points and how they relate to word recognition however a quick review of the first two follows. Purpose of Reading A person who picks up a book must make a decision regarding what he wants to do with the book. For example, when many people pick up a book they may . look at the front cover to ascertain the type or difficulty of book . turn the book over and examine any blurb on the back for a general idea of the contents of the book . they may scan the table of contents to determine what the book has to offer and/or . they may skim the introduction to get a general idea of the writing style.

Any or all of these first 'peeks' will lead the reader to make a decision about first whether he will continue reading the book and the purpose or purposes that underlie his need or desire to read the material.

Reading Strategies Reading strategies are those things we deliberately choose to do that will help us with the reading purpose. They are mostly consciously applied tasks that use practiced and usually unconscious skills as their base. These unconscious skills would include many of the bottom-up processing skills (to be discussed later) that fluent readers take for granted such as phoneme recognition. While there are many reading strategies her is a list of a few. 1. Previewing the text 2. Making/checking predictions 3. Summarizing 4. Skimming 5. Scanning 6. Guessing a word from context 7. Making inferences 8. Checking for details

The Cognitive Processes of Reading - What makes a good reader

Reading is an interactive cognitive process using both top-down processing and bottom-up processing (Eskey, 1986). Top-down processing is a holistic procedure and refers to the predictions we make about what we see on the page based on our experience technically know as schemata. Bottom-up processing is an analytical procedure and refers to how a reader builds up words from sounds and letters (decoding) and linking these words into sentences (Nuttal, 1996). A good reader combines these two processes interactively, by sometimes reading quickly with the 'mind's eye' and sometimes slowing down to reflect on unfamiliar words or difficult passages. To do this, readers take in information with the eyes and then in an instant the brain must make sense of it from what it already knows and construct a meaning for it (Eskey, 1986). Studies (Eskey, 2003) tell us that a good reader does this in chunks called saccades, which are the short, jerky movements of the eye. This 'chunking' is also important when it comes to comprehension. Our short term memory can only hold 5 to 7 units of something at a time. Reading in chunks allows us to hold more information than reading in words (Eskey, 2003). Consequently, the reader who is chunking and gaining meaning by chunks will have a much greater comprehension rate than the word by word reader who has to try to attach meaning to every single word. A slow reader (one who reads word by word) reads with little understanding since he taxes his memory and thus is unable to retain enough information to get the message of the text (Bell, 2001). Thus, fluency and comprehension go hand in hand. There is; however, more than the ability to 'chunk' that separates the good reader from the weak reader. Good readers are also confident readers. To a confident reader, reading is an enjoyable process. Nuttall (1996) has an excellent diagram in her book, which illustrates the philosophy of the benefits of confident reading (Figure 3). Readers in the vicious circle who read slowly don't understand what they read; consequently they don't enjoy reading and in the end just don't read. Nuttal's vicious and virtuous models demonstrate how important speed is to becoming a happy confident reader. Figure 3. The Vicious & Virtuous Circle of Readers (from Nuttal, 1996) In sum, a good reader is a confident reader who possesses the cognitive abilities to quickly view the printed page in chunks and translate what is seen into something which has meaning.