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The Importance of the Act of Reading” by Paulo Freire essay

Decent Essays

4

Bredahl

Harlie Cheyenne Bredahl

Professor Peter Epps

Composition II

08 September 2014

I"The Importance of the Act of Reading" by Paulo Freire, describes the importance of the act of reading beyond numerous experiences in his life as a child, a teenager, and an adult. Freire begins his article by taking readers back to where he was born, in his home city Recife, Brazil. He uses very itemized imagery to describe the trees, the house and the atmosphere of where he grew up and how the text, words, and letters were incarnated in the series of things, objects, and signs. He describes the trees, the house and the atmosphere of where he grew up and how the text, words, and letters were incarnated in the series of things, objects, and …show more content…

Schools often require reading materials containing unfamiliar subjects to students. Recognizing that there is significance for critical understanding of the text itself as well as the act of reading, this explains why many students today struggle with reading material that is not relevant to their lifestyle. Freire portrays that by the statement, "reading the world precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world" (Freire 286). A person should read their world, and then interpret it. They can then use their existential experience of the world to connect to what they are reading in print, and better understand it.

"Reading a text as pure description of an object, and undertaken to mechanically memorize the discrimination, it is neither real reading nor does it result in the knowledge of the object to which the text refers" (Freire 284). When a teacher gives a reading assignment, the students that read to memorize the text likely do not gain the significance of what that literary work contextually attempted to deliver, nor is it necessarily understood by the reader. If a student was really taught the significance and meaning of the text instead of mechanically memorizing it, the student should have better outcomes both with gaining the insight of the assignment and the memorization of key points. Mechanistically

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