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January 10 - April 14, 2024
reading and listening are the same art—the art of being taught.
The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection. The reason for this is that reading in this sense is discovery, too—although with help instead of without it.
the distinction between instruction and discovery (or between aided and unaided discovery) is important because most of us, most of the time, have to read without anyone to help us. Reading, like unaided discovery, is learning from an absent teacher. We can only do that successfully if we know how.
The first level of reading we will call Elementary Reading.
The second level of reading we will call Inspectional Reading.
Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically.
first level is “What does the sentence say?”
“What is the book about?”
Upon completing an inspectional reading of a book, no matter how short the time you had to do it in, you should also be able to answer the question, “What kind of book is it—a novel, a history, a scientific treatise?”
third level of reading we will call Analytical Reading.
ABC method, known as the phonic method.
sight method
the pendulum has swung back again toward phonics, which indeed had never entirely left the curriculum.
“reading readiness.”
Reading readiness includes several different kinds of preparation for learning to read.
The child who is not yet ready to read is frustrated if attempts are made to teach him, and he may carry over his dislike for the experience into his later school career and even into adult life.
Delaying the beginning of reading instruction beyond the reading readiness stage is not nearly so serious,
second stage, children learn to read very simple materials.
At one moment in the course of his development the child, when faced with a series of symbols on a page, finds them quite meaningless. Not much later—perhaps only two or three weeks later—he has discovered meaning in them;
this discovery of meaning in symbols may be the most astounding intellectual feat that any human being ever performs—and most humans perform it before they are seven years old!
third stage is characterized by rapid progress in vocabulary building and by increasing skill in “unlocking” the meaning of unfamiliar words through context clues.
the fourth stage is characterized by the refinement and enhancement of the skills previously acquired.
the mature stage of reading, should be reached by young persons in their early teens. Ideally, they should continue to build on it for the rest of their lives.
He has mastered the first level of reading, that is all; he can read on his own and is prepared to learn more about reading. But he does not yet know how to read beyond the elementary level.
Remedial reading instruction was therefore provided, sometimes for as many as 75% or more students.
approximately 40,000 freshmen entering the City University of New York in the fall of 1971, upwards of half, or more than 20,000 young people, had to be given some kind of remedial training in reading.
Remedial reading instruction is not instruction in the higher levels of reading. It serves only to bring students up to a level of maturity in reading that they should have attained by the time they graduated from elementary school. To
A good liberal arts high school, if it does nothing else, ought to produce graduates who are competent analytical readers.
Summary of Inspectional Reading
