| Reading is a very complex mental activity, so a good reader requires expertise in a wide range of different skills. Reading is also a process, and like all processes, it is only as good as its weakest part. The reading process can be compared to a production line at a car factory. The factory can only produce cars at the speed of the slowest production team. For example, if the team of workers putting on the doors take a long time to do their task, they will create a bottleneck which will slow down everyone else. Similarly with quality- if the team who tunes up the engine doesn't do a good job, then the car won't run well, even though all the other teams did high quality work.
The major stages in the reading process are as follows -
- Firstly, the reader looks at the page to get an image of the letters down the optic nerves, into
the brain, then into the short-term memory so that the images can be decoded into recognisable words.
- The next step is to put the words together into sentences so that the ideas can be understood. These ideas then need to be understood in relation to the paragraph, section, chapter and book in which they occur.
- It doesn't stop there, once the information has been fully understood, the reader must process that information by analysing it, categorising it, remembering it, and so on.
Reading becomes more enjoyable as you become more proficient at the various stages of the reading process. For example, most slow readers enjoy reading magazines much more than books. This is because books are not as enjoyable to read if you take a long time to read them.
There are three main reasons why reading is more enjoyable if you read faster:
- Firstly, if you read slower than you usually think, you will find reading gets boring after a
while, so you will keep losing your concentration.
- Secondly, if, you, read, at, a, slower, speed, than, people, usually, talk, it is much harder to get good comprehension, and so you will tend to forget what you have read. (The extra commas were placed to give you the feel of reading without fluency.)
- The third reason why reading books slowly is not enjoyable is that it is time consuming, so,
unless you have a lot of time, it may take months to finish a book.
As far as comprehension and analysis of what you read is concerned, we read different material
such as TV guides, news papers, insurance contracts and novels, with different levels of understanding. And as we move up the education ladder, through school, university, and into employment, higher and higher levels of analysis are required with our reading, so we need to learn
more sophisticated comprehension skills.
We are specialist teachers of reading and can provide expert advice and training for all stages of the reading process. Contact us when you have finished getting information and discuss
your specific needs with us directly.
To recap, reading is a complex process with a number of separate stages, and that weaknesses at just one stage can slow down and weaken the whole
process. For more detail on various aspects of reading click on the topics below.
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