What is Reading?

 

Reading is making meaning from print. It requires that we:

  • identify the words in print—a process called word recognition
  • construct an understanding from them—a process called comprehension
  • coordinate identifying words and making meaning so that reading is automatic and accurate—an achievement called fluency.

Sometimes you can make meaning from print without being able to identify all the words. Remember the last time you got a note in messy handwriting? You may have understood it, even though you couldn't decipher all the scribbles. Sometimes you can identify words without being able to construct much meaning from them. Read the opening lines of Lewis Carroll's poem, "Jabberwocky," and you'll see what I mean.

JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.'

by Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

Whether you are encountering those words for the first time or you recognize them from Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky,” they probably do not flow trippingly from your tongue. Are those hard or soft Gs in “gyre” and “gimble”? What are “borogoves,” and how do they behave when they’re “all mimsy”? Does the fact that it’s “brillig” make you happy, angry, anxious, or just befuddled?

If befuddlement sums up your reaction, you are on your way to understanding the plight of young readers as they try to make sense of unfamiliar text.

After a student reads this first stanza, the teacher can ask him:

  • What did the slithy toves do?
  • Where did they do this and when?
  • How were the borogroves during this time?
  • What was the reaction of the mome raths?
  • Fill in the blank: "The borogoves were _____.
  • What things were outgrabing?"

The student may answer all of the questions correctly, but has he comprehended the material? In the limited literal sense, yes, because he has accurately retained and repeated the the information.

When we read a nonsense poem, such as "Jabberwocky," we can infer meaning to words purely from our understanding of grammar. Although the questions do not make sense, we can still answer them. Some students operate in the same way when they are reading text.

To find out whether he has related language to meaning, the teacher would ask questions such as:

  • How can you help your teacher be mimsy tomorrow? (application)
  • Explain how a tove becomes slithy. (analysis)
  • Which is better, outgrabing or gimbling? (evaluation)
  • Did the poem make you feel brillig? Why or why not? (appreciation).

The student cannot answer any of these questions, because he has not related the language of the poem to any meaning. Therefore, he has not truly comprehended the material.

Gub and Ton

Once upon a time a tawndy rapsig named Gub found a tix of pertollic asquees. So chortlich was he with his discovery that he murtled a handful to show Kon, a cagwitzpat. "Pagoo!" cried Kon. "With these you could treeple a frange!" "No," smiled Gub, "I think I’ll just paible a catwicine."

This story, at its heart, makes little or no sense, but if it doesn't make sense, how do we read it? Most of the individual words probably have no meaning to you, and yet you "read" them. The passage as a whole does not make much sense, and yet you treated it just as you would treat a passage that makes perfect sense--you examined and decoded each word in turn, just like you would do with any sensible passage.

These words did not make much sense once you decoded them, but you understood that there was nothing wrong with the way you decoded them; there was something wrong with the words themselves. You did not try to substitute words that did make sense--nor did you attempt to impose a meaning. You accepted that either the passage does not make sense, or it is written in a language you do not understand (perhaps you assumed it was Gaelic or Old English).

Finally, sometimes you can identify words and comprehend them, but if the processes don't come together smoothly, reading will still be a labored process. For example, try reading the following sentence:

It             isn't                 as                    if           the                 words
      are               difficult           to                identify           or         understand,      but            the                 spaces              make          you           pause          between            words,                  which            means     your            reading                   is                     less               fluent.

So...what is reading?

Reading is the fluent coordination of word recognition and comprehension.

Quite an achievement for a six year old!

adapted from "Decoding and the Jabberwocky's Song" by Sebastian Wren and "What is Reading?" by Diane Henry Leipzig.