What Is Reading: Why Reading Is Important?

Reading can provide many benefits to the reader. One of those benefits is the expansion of the reader’s vocabulary. The more a reader reads, the broader the reader’s vocabulary.

Standard 4: The student will analyze text for expression, enjoyment, and response to other related content areas.

Many students who struggle with reading ask why should we read, what is the point? The point is that being able to read opens you up a whole new world of knowledge and imagination. But to have that new world opened up you need to be able to comprehend what you are reading. The primary goal of reading is to determine the meaning of

Reading: Locates, understands, and interprets written information in prose and documents--including manuals, graphs, and schedules--to perform tasks; learns from text by determining the main idea or essential message; identifies relevant details, facts and specifications; infers or locates the meaning of unknown or technical vocabulary; and judges the accuracy, appropriateness, style, and plausibility of reports, proposals, or theories of other writers.( 134 USDOL)

A text is the content in a message or any printed material. There are basic ways that are used in reading to make the learner gain, retain, and understand the content. For instance, one way is by applying the top, down, and bottom up strategy; which people use in their native language. Reading involves, previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, guessing and paraphrasing (Tsai 120).

“Put Reading First” talks about the most important elements of reading such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The article explains the purpose and importance of these concepts, due to the idea of how hard it is for some children to read. It also offers the idea of instructional strategies to use for the concepts. For example, Phonemic awareness is being able to hear, distinguish between the sounds being heard, and make sounds in spoken words. This involves understanding that some words have the same beginning sound or segmenting the beginning and ending sound in the words. The article also goes on about the individual breakdowns of the concept such as graphemes and phonemes. It then goes over the strategies

In the article written by Patricia L. Scharer “What is reading?” she says “reading is not a simple way to decode 26 letters or 26 sounds, but instead it is a process to achieve knowledge about how letters and sounds relate” (pág. 7). Reading is more than decoding individual words; certainly someone can read in a language with it is not his/her mother tongue, however, her/his understanding would be totally absent. Understand and comprehend are words that the readers would like to achieve within the act of reading. Letters and words will be the path to acquire a better understanding, but the act of comprehension is more challenge for the readers, not on the page, but in the brain. One definition that the article “What is reading” consider to

The read/write learner is advised to: develop lists, make outlines, obtain study guides, take notes, and write words to the notes several times. It is also recommended to read notes silently, rewrite and paraphrase ideas into other words. Converting graphs, charts, and diagrams into worded statements help the student with a strong read/write preference to understand the meanings contained in the visual material. Meaning is found in words; therefore the student with a read/write learning preference should search for words that describe the meaning of a concept by breaking the concept into textual points. (Fleming, n.d.).

Chapters 6 through 9 discuss strategies that aid in comprehension. These chapters dive deeper into strategies that will help a reader’s comprehension while thoroughly explaining strategies that should be implemented in a classroom. One main point is that readers should follow their thinking tracks and explore their thinking and be able to notice when they are straying away from the meaning of the reading. It’s important that students are able to make connections while they’re reading. Another main point would be that questions help clarify and unlock a deeper meaning while reading. Visualizing and inferring is an important aspect for reading because it helps aid in understanding. Comprehension strategies allow readers to know a variety of tools that are beneficial.

Listening is to coherent speaking as reading is to effective writing. English and all other language irrespective of nation or dialect is a totality of four skills: Listening, reading, writing, speaking. Underwood (1989) simplified the definition of listening to "the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear" (p. 1). Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening comprehension as ―the ability to understand the spoken language of native speakers.''

Reading is one of the most beneficial activities a man can do. Out of reading, man can be able to discover new things, concepts, places and people. More so, reading is a way to relax our mind and soul, going deeply through the world of story and improves our thinking and internalization process.

Reading is believed to be an easy task, something we all learning and develop through the years as we grow, however, is it really that simple? To reading and understanding are both essential when a student begins to read. It is a complex action that requires a multitude of different actions/components, all working at the same time, to become a successful reader. The components that are pertinent to reading are: comprehension, oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary. Without these components, reading may very well be irrelevant because it does not make sense to read and not understand what is being transmitted/relayed. According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), “a combination of techniques is effective for

Reading helps in mental development and is known to stimulate the muscles of the eyes and it is also an activity that involves greater levels of concentration and adds to the conversational skills of the reader.

Reading is an act of perception, analysis, and interpretation done by the reader to get the message to be conveyed by the author in media writing. According to Farr (in Dalman, 2013: 5) suggests that "Reading is the Heart of Education, the reading of reading comprehension is an essential prerequisite for mastery and enhancement of students' knowledge, so after reading the text the reader should be able to understand the text. First, give information, for example by reading newspapers and magazines, secondly, give entertainment, for example by reading a novel.The third one, most importantly reading can provide new knowledge.The book can provide understanding as well as entertaining and providing information.

According to J. Harmer in his book The Practice of English Language Teaching, “receptive skills are the ways in which people extract the meaning from the discourse they see or hear”. In the following text the main skill which is going to be practiced is reading, the sub skills will be reading for gist and details, also using new vocabularies in the context. Enhancement of receptive skills will increase the rate at which students comprehend English language and allow students to practice