A complete conception of “reading” cannot be approached from speed or from comprehension, in an isolated way, since the two elements complement each other in an active and dynamic way as the process of reading itself.
This complex process has its beginnings from the intentional activities that are carried out from the first days of life, passing through the preschool level and extends throughout the academic life of the student, however its foundation must be ensured at the level of basic Primary and perfect it during high school and middle school.
The reading process is a complex process that has its beginnings from the intentional activities that are carried out from the first days of life, through the preschool level and extends throughout the academic life of the student, however, its foundation in the level of basic Primary and perfect it during secondary and middle school.
One of the factors that affects the quality of readers who are trained in school, lies in the non-structuring of good reading habits in an intentional and conscious way. For the most part, the bad reading habits that we possess are not the product of an intentional teaching process by our teachers, rather they were acquired by the lack of a structured process that will help us form the habits to become good readers..
Among the bad habits that we have, not being the one with the least incidence, is subvocalization.
This ranges from whispering oral reading to the accompaniment of a whisper, audible mentally, parallel to the reading of the text, sometimes passing through an imperceptible movement of our lips or tongue into the oral cavity.
This bad habit makes it much more difficult to understand the text read.
Involuntary rereading of the text is common for all, which occurs when our eyes return, uncontrollably and erratically, on the text that has already been read, generating a systematic loss of time and a decrease in the retention and comprehension of the text.; in the same way, reading affects us when when we return to the next line of the text, our view is confused with the previous or subsequent line.
When we look at another person when reading, we can notice a series of small "jumps" that the eye makes as it passes through the different lines of the text, if this series of movements are numerous when passing through a line, the reading is slower and consequently the levels of retention and reading comprehension decrease considerably. In some cases, the amount of these movements or jumps is equal to the number of words read. This constitutes another of the bad habits that we must eradicate to become an effective reader.
For some experts, reading speed is not important, for others a quick reading is the only way out for a good reader. However, there are minimum levels of reading speed that a good reader must handle, which must be cultivated, or expressed in a better way, "trained" from the beginning of the learning process to read.
According to psychological theories, the capacities of the human brain have been widely known, it can read the signs, symbols or stimuli that it encounters in the outside world through the senses, hearing, taste, smell, touch and sight.
In the same way that a musician understands the chords of a melody and identifies the various nuances during its performance, or how a wine taster through smell and taste manages to perceive fermentation time, harvest and many other characteristics in taste and wine bouquet, or as many Colombians do, in the aroma and flavor of coffee, the good reader uses sight to bring the information from written texts and images to the brain for interpretation and analysis.
If this information is perceived in a fragmentary way, that is, by words or small groups of words, the possibility of a total understanding of the text read is seriously affected.
It is known that there is a non-verbal language and it is through sight that the brain reads the information from the images of the environment to infer messages in a glance, a gesture, facial expressions and body postures.
In this regard, psychologists have great ability to read this information when carrying out a personnel selection process or simply in interviews with their patients. He has been trained to read those signs or signs.
Both the musician, the wine taster and the psychologist, just to mention these three cases, need a process, complex, intentional, systematic, conscious and not short in time, of disciplined training. Learning to read at the indicated speed and with high levels of comprehension requires similar training in the same way.
Ensuring what the indicated level of reading is, would be to pigeonhole whoever initiates the training process, however this can vary from 350 to 800 words per minute, but it will necessarily depend on two factors:
In the first instance, the type of reading that you do according to your personal needs.
That is to say, if the reading carried out is for study, information or simply probing the text in order to select the sections that are required to carry out a specific work or for textual production; and secondly, the individual learning rate of those who enter training, generally influenced by their perseverance, personal motivation and interest in increasing their reading speed and, like the flight hours for airplane pilots, the hours of practice or reading to be done.
As an academic and after observing in various educational institutions in the country the positive change that is generated in students, when their levels of speed and reading comprehension improve, it is possible to determine minimum levels that students can read in a certain grade or age, but this can become a limitation. Therefore it is better to consider that in general terms a child can advance to his own limits if he has the support, motivation and stimulation that are required at the right time.
The great motivators of the contemporary world and the scholars of human resource management in large and small companies, have determined from psychology and experience that the best way to eradicate a bad habit is the formation of a new and good habit. habit. Regarding the formation of this new habit, opinions vary from a coinciding point, it is done from the constant, sequential, systematic and intentional repetition of a particular action, with determination and discipline.
For this reason, the formation of new and good reading habits requires a directed, intentional and programmed process that allows the reader to carry out concrete, clear and precise actions. These actions are systematized in procedures or exercises that must be carried out with commitment and dedication, accompanied by the corresponding record and socialization of achievements or progress.
As a final consideration, it should be clear that effective reading implies full understanding of the information read.
This understanding from the academic point of view should allow the reader three aspects:
- A high level of retention of information of the literal type or localized understanding of the text, that is, the realization of a local understanding of its components, such as the meaning of a paragraph, of a sentence, the meaning of a term within a sentence, the identification of subjects, events or objects, mentioned in the text, the recognition of the message or meaning of images and gestures in it, the recognition of the meaning and function of signs such as quotation marks, or question marks.
It is considered as a first entry to the text where the denotative function (assigning the literal meaning of words) of the language is privileged, and its function within the structure of a sentence or a paragraph. This way of reading also has to do with the possibility of identifying relationships between the components of a sentence or a paragraph.
Basically the reader the reader must develop three basic skills:
a) Recognize or identify subjects, events or objects, mentioned in the text or the recognition of the literal meaning of a word, a phrase, a gesture, a sign, etc., by way of transcription or identification.
b) Translate or rework the meaning of a word or phrase using synonyms or different phrases without altering the literal meaning.
c) Identify and explain the syntactic and semantic relationships between the components of a paragraph or in a sentence. (coherence and cohesion)
- Achieve a high level of global understanding of the text read, that is, develop the ability to make inferences, obtain information to establish conclusions that are not explicitly stated in the text, by establishing different types of relationships between the meanings of words, sentences or paragraphs, understanding the meanings of the text and recognizing relationships, functions and links between the components of the text: temporal, spatial, causal relationships, coreferences, substitutions.
Aspects such as coherence, that is, identifying the global theme of the text (macrostructure) and following a thematic axis throughout the entire text; and the cohesion, identification and explanation of the coherence and cohesion relationships between the components of the text to make the inferences, are fundamental in this type of reading comprehension.
In the same way, the reader, in this process of inferring information, must resort to the knowledge they possess, as well as the possibility of identifying the type of text: narrative text, argumentative text, explanatory text, procedural text, and the explanation of how it works. of the linguistic phenomenon (the logical function of a component of the text, the communicative function of the text in general, the way in which information is organized in the text…).
- Finally, the reader must be able to relate the text read with others in terms of its form and its content to take or assume, based on the content of the text, a position in front of it by developing a point of view, that is reach an Intertextual reading level. For this, it is necessary to identify the intentions of the texts, their authors, characters or voices present in them and recognize their content, their historical and communicative context. It is fundamental to identify the Intent and the superstructure, to explore the recognition of the communicative intentions that underlie the texts as well as the recognition of the type of text in response to the intention of communication.
Therefore, a complete conception of "reading" cannot be approached from speed or from comprehension in isolation, since the two elements complement each other in an active and dynamic way as the process of reading itself.
Reference sources
Publication of the Ministry of National Education and ICFES: READ AND WRITE AT SCHOOL
