READING : WHY & HOW

‘Reading maketh a full man….’ Said Francis Bacon in one of his essays called “Studies”. Ever since the beginning of the intellectual civilization being able to decode the printed material and enjoy te mysterious, ever-benefiting world of reading has been fascinating and a major source of intellectualization psychic improvement. Technically reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning from written texts. It is a means of language acquisition, of texts comprehension, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas.

 The importance of reading and comprehend the printed world has been indisputable and inevitable too. It is an ever going process that greatly contributes to the development of a comprehensive and wholesome personality of a child by improving the four basic skill in them:

Ø  The oral comprehension

Ø  The written comprehension

Ø  The oral production

Ø  The written production

Reading is an excellent source of acquiring knowledge and entertainment that helps us improve not only reading skill and speed but it changes our general language proficiency and attitude towards reading and language learning also. Now, when we live in a world of printed words, reading becomes much more important for it provides us new ideas, new information, a strong supportive hand to our ideas, and the best kind of aesthetic pleasure and entertainment. Moreover this ability to read, to comprehend texts, to derive pleasure and argument from it, and to be able to reproduce it logically and meaningfully separates up from other animal and makes us men. Reading is a source of great personal and aesthetic pleasure. It helps us reduce our stress and enrich our intellectuality. They also have an ornamental value as they add confidence and oratory skill to one’s personality. Basically if we go on to list why should we read, we can have the following broader points which categorically incorporate the reasons and importance of reading. Reading is important and inevitable because:-

Ø  It helps in increasing our language competence

Ø  It provides a larger platform for learning and acquiring knowledge

Ø  It helps in building a rich diction for readers

Ø  It helps in exploring new worlds and horizon of experience

Ø  It is a process of mental stimulation and improves thinking

Ø  It is good means of stress reduction and entertainment

Ø  It enhances thinking ability and analytical skills

Ø  It develops better writing ability and skills

Ø  It provides abundant aesthetic pleasure, entertainment and tranquility

However, it is also apparently important to realize that one should not read merely to be able to argue and contradict others. Nor should we read books with a mind setup to believe whatever we find there. Nor yet should we read in order to obtain material for conversation or just for the sake of acquiring fuel for the cheap arguments. Rather we should read books in order to ponder over what we read and to judge the value of what the books contain. Very rightly Francis Bacon has opined in one of his essays:

            “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe ad take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.’

And to weigh and consider we must have a practical experience and approach towards the ideas and concepts presented in the text. Without practical approach either we cannot be able to use the knowledge gathered from the reading or we would be very impractical and hypothetical while implementing them. Concisely we should keep the following dos and don’ts in our mind while pursuing serious reading;

Do read to

Ø  Acquire lots of knowledge, and ideas

Ø  Judge the value of the ideas presented in the book

Ø  Enable you for better writing and communication

Ø  Have pleasure and make the best use of your leisure

Ø  Enhance your personality

Ø  Be able to analyze judiciously and logically

Ø  Understand life, people and society in a better way

Ø  Abstain from backbiting & criticizing others

Don’t read to

Ø  Contradict and confute

Ø  Believe everything that we find there

Ø  Obtain chief material just for conversation

Ø  Acquire fuel for the sake of the argument

Now the second and perhaps even more important question is how to read? Of course the question does not refer to the beginners who have just started joining the letters and reading out the test in a broken way as smaller children do. When I say how to read, it refers to the group of mature readers.

To get the best benefit and pleasure of reading one should have a proper plan since the very beginning and one should adhere to the plan consistently too without making any alteration. The very first and the most important thing in this regard is to consider and identify the areas of interests. This is because the printed world is so vast that the ultimate outcome would be almost insignificant if we read randomly selected materials or anything that we come across. Once we have identified the areas of our interests, we should start with an easier text with a low rate of unknown words so that one could get more pleasure as well as perception of ideas and concepts and morals conveyed ad then gradually switch over to more serious books. This process of moving from easier to difficult levels of text would further strengthen our interest and broaden our expertise in that particular area.

The second thing to consider is what process should we follow in order to read the text? There are basically two ways of reading:

Ø  Oral reading i.e. reading out the text vocally and loudly

Ø  Silent reading i.e. reading the text with eyes without making sound

And you will find lots of debate and argument about which process to follow. I am not intending here to make any conclusion and give any verdict about which method should we follow because both the processes mentioned above are having some strengths and some weaknesses and selection may differ from person to person depending upon individual’s habit and likings.

An objective comparison between the two above mentioned processes shows that silent reading is the best way of reading after certain stage. Of course oral reading is good for primary stage as it helps improving pronunciation and clarity of speech, but at a mature level it hinders the comprehension of text as the co-ordination between mind and reading orally does not remain in proper tune. Moreover presence of sounds often disturbs the concentration and disrupts comprehension.

On the other hand silent reading is multi-process step involving, recognition and interpretation of text, awareness of structure, and speed of reading. In silent reading readers can develop a perfect tuning between eyes and mind without hindrance as readers are quite unaware of their eye movement. Mind remains absorbed with th meaning of the text without realizing that eyes constantly move and pause. Absence of sound further helps us in concentrating more on comprehending the text mentally. In a nutshell, it can be said that longer concentrated period of silent reading build vocabulary, increase structural awareness, improve comprehension skill and promote confidence, positive attitude and motivation for further reading.

One more problem which disturbs and distracts us from reading is meeting unknown and difficult words which should be considered properly and solution should be included in the strategy that we might develop at the beginning of our serious reading. A reader can opt many ways to deal with this problem. Some possible solution could be one of the following:

Ø  Every time referring dictionary while reading

Ø  Leaving out the words and concluding the meaning by assumption

Ø  Reading on and coming back to dictionary

Referring dictionary every time we meet a difficult word breaks the concentration and the sequence of interpretations which ultimately lead up to the lack of interests and de-motivate us. Leaving out and assuming are not at all good as it misleads out interpretation and also deprives up from vocabulary enhancement. Therefore among all these, the way of reading on and coming back to dictionary appears to be the best from my point of view. So while reading one should keep a pencil and a paper in hand to note down the words and later on refer dictionary. The other faster option is just to underline the words in the text itself and refer to dictionary later on. However this option may not be suitable to a reader who loves keeping the books neat and clean.

So in this way, I hope, we can have the best possible pleasure and benefit of reading and also we can improve our knowledge and intellectuality.

Rajiv Ranjan.

Principal 

Simultala Awasiya Vidyalaya Bihar

M.A.Eng. ; B. Ed.;Ph.D.

P.G.D in HR