1.
The problem of illiteracy
Illiteracy
is a very serious national and international problem. It is not just limited to
India or Asia; it is world-wide. The latest information by UNESCO shows that 50
percent of the world's children of primary and secondary school age are not going
to school at all. More than 40 per cent of the world's adult population-about
800 Million-is estimated to fall below the level of functional literacy, when
the criterion of 4th grade level of reading ability is used. In the last half
decade, the criterion for functional literacy has been raised to sixth grade level.
That is, a person should have at least six years attendance in school to be functionally
literate. Obviously, raising the years of formal school has placed more persons
in the ranks of the illiterate by definition.
A few examples of the level of illiteracy in different countries may be helpful
to show the magnitude of this problem. Of the five and a half million inhabitants
in Algeria over 15 years of age, four million, nearly 80 per cent are illiterates.
Out of the 435 millions in India, about 300 million are illiterates. Only 5 percent
of the entire population of Ethiopia is able to read. Illiteracy rate is estimated
to be over 50 percent in 62 of the member countries of the United Nations.
2.
Changing role of literacy in the world
Illiteracy has always existed,
it grows daily more malignant as a social evil. In the earlier times with its
traditional form of living, inability to read was hardly a handicap. It was a
simple society, mainly agrarian and people learned to read for utilitarian purpose
or to read religious books. But those times have changed with the coming of the
industrial revolution. Today, the use of the results of technical development
has been more and more necessary for survival everywhere, and therefore, illiteracy
has become increasingly serious. As ploughs are being replaced by tractors, there
will be fewer and fewer jobs available for unskilled illiterate workers in any
part of our technical civilization. There is also a high correlation between poverty
and illiteracy, both going hand in hand with superstition, malnutrition and endemic
disease.
3.
Explosion of knowledge and reading
Every ten years knowledge doubles.
Teachers have to know a lot more today-five or six times more than when their
parents were in school. A recent study conducted in U.S.A. shows that 85 percent
of the children who are at present in the early elementary schools, will, when
they graduate from college, go out into jobs which are not yet invented.
4.
Subject area demands in reading
With the growing technological and social
complexity of the world, many more subjects are being included into the curriculum
- not only into the school and high school but colleges as well. For example,
in a sampling of high schools in the U.S.A. 800 different subjects are taught.
Teachers
Are Interested in Improving Reading Ability
In the U.S.A., the movement
of improving the reading skills of students started out with improving the skills
of those persons who were having difficulty in learning to read. This was in the
beginning. Now this is no longer the only direction of the newer programmes. Present
programmes also take good readers and prepare them to be superior readers, because
it is the person possessing superior skill who will be able to do a superior job
in his chosen profession.
1.
Teachers are interested in the concept of readiness for different kinds of reading
The idea of readiness is not a new concept. We must know what it takes to be able
to read in order to know how to improve that reading. For example, we have to
know what readiness skills a person should have to be able to read in social studies,
in literature, in mathematics and in various curriculum areas.
Take the area of vocabulary. What is a student does not know the vocabulary of
a particular field? He will not be ready to read extensively in the field until
he learns how to master its vocabulary. Take the field of physics for example.
What if he does not know the meaning of the terms of 'force', 'atomic energy'
and all such specific vocabulary? He will not progress far until he improves his
readiness by mastering the language of the field.
He may not know the meaning of the words that make up the writings of the discipline.
Therefore, meaningful vocabulary is certainly one of the readiness needed. Sometimes
a word has a different meaning in a subject area-different from the general meaning
of the term. For example, take the word root in botany and in mathematics and
the 'root' of the problem as we generally use it. So although one may know the
general meaning, one has to learn the specific meaning of the word in a specific
field.
2.
Organization of the materials
The knowledge of the way in which materials
are organized is another kind of readiness skill needed. Does he think how the
materials are organized? Different materials are organized in a different way.
For example, Shakespeare organized his plays in a different way than a chemistry
professor would have organized a chemistry textbook. If one were to read aloud
a chemistry textbook, the use of language in rhythm, pitch and intonation would
be entirely different from the way he would read a play. And the general organization
would be quite different. The way one reads a history book is different from the
way a mathematics textbook is read. A different approach has to be used, for the
concepts are different; paragraphs are put together differently, the reasoning
is different; problem solving is different from one field to another. So to be
able to find the kind of organization the author has used, another kind of readiness
is needed.
3.
Skills
Skills required in each area are different. The reader must know
the particular kinds of skills that are needed in the specific subject area. For
example, reading in science and mathematics may require specific steps of reasoning
and special attention to detail. Reading in social studies calls for skills in
organizing facts in order to understand time/space sequence or cause and effect
relationship. Consequently, a person who is to read successfully should have those
specific skills which are required in the particular area, in addition to his
general reading ability.
Teacher
must know the science of reading
Reading
is a fairly new science. Much of the research in reading has been done in the
past few years unlike other sciences which have a long heritage of research. The
first study of how people learn to read was done by JAVAL in 1879. He studied
the eye-movements in reading. He discovered that while reading, the eyes move
in discrete jumps across the line of print. The eye does not sweep across the
page smoothly. Rather it moves and stops, then moves and stops. This discovery
by JAVAL brought about the invention of the eye movement camera by which we can
record on film the way in which the eye operates.
In this camera a light beam is reflected into the eye as the eye moves across
a page of print, and that light is reflected into the film of a movie camera.
This camera showed that while reading there is fixation. That is, the eyes focus
and stop, see what they stop on, and then move to the next word or words and stop
again. The eyes move and stop as many as five or six or seven times across a line
of print. Then there is a return sweep. Then the eyes do it all over again.
There is also a duration of fixation-that is, the time the eyes stay still during
a fixation. The eyes must remain stationary in order to record words. Then they
jump to the next point and then there is another duration of fixation and so on.
The average length of fixation, when the words are seen, is from 1/8 to ¼
second.
The inter-fixation movement, i.e., the time when the eye moves between fixation
or stop, is about 1/25 of a second. It was found that only about 6 percent of
total time of reading is spent in movement.
Then the eyes were also found to make regressions during reading, that is, the
eye goes back to pick up along the same line of print words that were missed the
first time over. A poor reader will make many more regressions than will a good
reader. It is estimated that a good adult reader makes about one regression (backward
movement) for every three or four lines, whereas a poor reader makes three or
four per line.
There are two ways of measuring the number of letters or words the eyes can see
at one fixation. One method is by the use of the Tachistoscope, an instrument
that flashes letters or words for a short duration of 1/25 or 1/50 of a second.
Without training on the tachistoscope, a person can se and report three or four
single letters or around two words. After training, a person can see and record
six to eight single letters or five or six, or even more words during this single
tachistoscopic flash.
The other method of measuring the number of words seen per fixation is by use
of the eye movement camera described above. Here is was found that the number
of words seen per fixation during reading was one, and no more than two, words.
It was supposed for several years that because the span measured by the tachistoscope
could be improved by training, that this training automatically transferred to
the span used in regular reading. So it was commonly said that a person who had
training with the tachistoscope could learn to read right down the centre of the
page and see all the words of the line on each pile.
But in actual practice it does not work that way. TAYLOR's experiments
with his eye movement camera showed what happens when the eye is in its saccadic
and fixation movements. It showed the difference in the fixation and saccades
when one reads a continuous line as opposed to reading a discrete number of letters
or a fixed number of words. The mind, when reading, must pool all the information
being received and associate it with past experiences related to it. Therefore
in actual reading of continuous text the mind can deal with only about two words
at a time. In the span measured by the tachistoscope, which is a discrete span,
not having continuous text that precedes it or follows it, one can learn, by training,
to see large wholes. But when the eye is in motion to read a continuous text something
else happens in the 'computerized' function of the brain, narrowing the span so
that comprehension can take place. This second span that the eye movement camera
measures when the eye is in the process of reading continuous text is called the
span of recognition. The span of perception measured by the tachistoscope can
be as large as six to eight words, but the span of recognition is only about two
words.
Table
of Eye Fixation, Regressions, Duration of Fixations, Average
Span of Recognition
and Average Rate of Comprehension from
A Sample of more than 6,000.
| Grade
Level | 1st |
2nd |
3rd |
4th |
5th |
6th |
JA |
HS |
C |
| Fixations
per 100 words | 240 |
200 |
170 |
136 |
118 |
105 |
95 |
83 |
75 |
| Regressions
per 100 words | 55 |
45 |
37 |
30 |
26 |
23 |
18 |
15 |
11 |
| Average
Span of Re- cognition (in words) | .42 |
.50 |
.59 |
.73 |
.85 |
.95 |
1.05 |
1.21 |
1.33 |
| Average
duration of fixation (in seconds) |
.33 |
.30 |
.26 |
.24 |
.24 |
.24 |
.24 |
.24 |
.23 |
| Average
rate of com- prehension (in words per minute) |
75 |
100 |
138 |
180 |
216 |
235 |
255 |
296 |
340 |
The
above Table by TAYLOR indicates clearly what we have discussed
in the preceding pages. Note the 'College' column. In a 100 words, the average
college student fixates 75 times along the lines of print or seven or eight times
per line, not once or twice as has been advertised by some programmes. Notice
also that as regressions, indicating that good readers make fewer regressions.
The span of recognition is, at the college level only 1.33 words per fixation.
This figure is derived by dividing 100 words (words in the sample) by the number
of fixations. Note too, that the duration of fixation does not change noticeably-only
a tenth of a second from the first grade on. The final listing in the Table has
to do with rate. TAYLOR's sample of college students were shown to read at 340
words per minute. This figure is somewhat higher than is reported by other studies
which tend to show college students reading around 280-300 words per minute.
Earl A. TAYLOR: 'The Spans: Perception, Apprehension, and Recognition'.
American Journal of Ophthalmology, 44 (October 1957), 501-507.
However,
because it was believed for a longtime that the span of perception transferred
directly to the span of recognition many of the courses for speed reading were
set up on this basic assumption. So in the earlier programmes much training was
given in perceptual span training with the tachistoscope. But as was said before,
a broader perceptual span (tachistoscope span) does not give a broader span of
recognition as measured by the eye movement camera. Physiological and psychological
constructs of the eyes handle the two situations quite differently.
But
continuation of this idea has developed many newer pieces of equipment-such as
the reading accelerator E.D.L. Controlled reader, etc., to mention a few. As early
as 1940 Iowa State University as well as Harvard University had developed programme
of continues text on 16 mm. Films.
TAYLOR's and other studies were aimed at studying the eye-movements and the
visual process involved in reading. But it was Francis P. ROBINSON at the Ohio
State University who made some early studies on the problem of comprehension-the
problem of how one really learns from his reading, not how a person learns to
say, or recognize, words. Present research oriented courses on efficient reading
are based on the ideas developed as a result of ROBINSON'S studies. For example,
the idea of surveying or previewing first before we read; the idea of asking questions
during that preview; the idea of reading then to answer these questions and to
select the rate of reading which is related to our purpose and to our need; then
the idea of reciting after we have read to make sure that we know what we have
read and then reviewing or looking again, scanning those items that we missed
in the first reading. ROBINSON found that the most common method used by teachers
to improve the reading, that of reading a second time if they did not get at the
first time, was not a sound practice at all. He showed that in the first reading
the mind becomes set to the ideas that one has learnt in the first reading. The
configuration or the Gestalt of that whole reading is so well set in the mind
that the second reading does not appreciably teach any more than the first reading.
For example, when the sentence 'Paris in the Spring', was read by a group of students
the mind was set so much that even in the second reading they again made the mistake
of leaving out the second 'the'. Because the mind has a way of setting itself
at the first exposure, it does not like to change the earlier impression. That
is why it is important to set your impression first by skimming. Then the mind
will operate on that impression to gain such knowledge as it should during that
first reading. Skimming or reviewing first and reading secondly with questions,
is a much better technique than a second reading.
Many people claim that newspaper articles or other articles can be read at the
rate of 30,000 to 40,000 w.p.m. But this is not a fact according to research,
for it shows that there is a psychological limit of how many words the eye can
take in per minute. A study made of a programme that claimed to raise speeds to
30,000 or 40,000 words, showed that students gained only 20 percent increase over
their original rate. The New Delhi results based on the scientific method, on
the other hand, showed a 125 percent increase over the original rate. The fact
is that the eye moves in a mechanically consistent way, and that it moves from
one point to another, and takes in about two words per fixation as it reads. It
was found that after taking into consideration the movements and fixations in
continuous reading that the maximum rate the eye can take up is only 800 w.p.m.
When people claim they can read at the rate of 30,000 to 40,000 they are not reading
the material; they probably are skimming it.
One of the earliest scientific studies on rapid reading, dated, even before the
statistical facts about rapid reading was known was done by Paul WITTY. He asked
the students to read any easy reading material 30 minutes a day. They were to
read as rapidly as they could and to make a summary after every reading. The students
were encouraged to read extensively in different subject matter. After one semester,
results in testing showed that the students had increased in the rate of reading
by 50 percent and also improved in comprehension. The programme was continued
a second semester and students showed even greater improvement. This and a good
many other studies have shown since 1930 that one of the best ways of improving
reading is simply doing that very thing-reading. As was said earlier, these students
improved their reading just by reading simple materials.
Some of the commonly used tools for rapid reading are the reading accelerator
and controlled readers. They have a cohesive effect by keeping the class together.
They have an effect of creating motivation through a novel approach. But like
any other audio-visual aid they are only aids to good teaching and they do not
teach in and of themselves. So it is not necessary that one must have these machines
to teach rapid reading. The idea is to teach to become a more flexible reader
by selecting ideas on the printed page and not reading everything, and being able
to do that carefully and discretely and with good judgement and to do it very
rapidly. And so we are teaching the skill of preview skimming, overview skimming
and scanning. Many programmes have shown how they have improved successfully the
rate of reading with better comprehension without the use of the equipment. But
these instruments have their use in pulling the class together and in motivating
the students, and is a kind of incentive. But nothing is happening visually that
could not happen by your own determination to improve your skill of rate of reading
by simply forcing yourself to read faster. Machines can make it interesting but
cannot add to the process.
Teaching of rapid reading for adults on a wider scale was started in 1952 simultaneously
at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Chicago. Since then literally
thousands of courses have been taught-with machines and without machines.