In yesterday’s post I looked at a recent ‘study’ about how ‘we’ read (with a rather jaundiced eye). This got me to thinking about how this very complex action has been measured over the years. Whenever there is any attempt to quantify how we read it comes under two kinds of measures. The first is simply having people read a piece (usually short for the convenience of the measurer) while being timed. It would seem that how fast we read is indicative of something of value. The second is to read a comparable piece and then (with no recourse to return to the article) answer questions about what you just read. This is called a reading comprehension test. Most of you have undergone both of these sorts of tests while in public schools…
As a means to detect if a student can actually read at all, these two testing methods are plausible measuring devices. Beyond this, and the notion of what reading actually is comes into view… I have so many different modes of reading material, that I actually don’t think I could adequately list them all. So much of what we read is of so many different formats, lengths, relative importance’s (to us) that any attempt to measure in any meaningful way the quality of how we read is almost impossible.
I find that this is quite similar to trying to measure how well we converse…Imagine a test of your conversation ability, where you have only 5 minutes to talk to a complete stranger… while this may determine differences between many of us, what exactly does it show about our ability to communicate? This is how I see some of these reading ability tests…they show something, but it is quite a bit less important that it would seem.
I have quite a few categories of reading methods, which depend mostly upon what I am reading. For instance, if I were reading a classic of literature (let’s say…Moby Dick by Melville), I would certainly be taking my time to try to ‘get’ as much as I could from this novel. The idea that there is any value in trying to read through this piece as fast as one can sounds quite ridiculous. On the other hand, as I consider the topic of ‘slow’ reading, I deal with something like a Math textbook in a far different manner too… IN this case, it is all about trying to understand a new concept of execution of a technique… I could easily see rereading the same page several times (as needed).
My point is that both of these methods may be of some value if you are dealing with long, complex pieces whose value may be large. In comparison, I couldn’t see using these more laborious methods to read People Magazine (as an example of the mundane…). Some articles I run across online, in magazines, or in newspapers deserve only a cursory scan, others may need a complete reading, and the fact of the matter is that this is a quite fluid activity where I make these decision on the fly. How would you measure this sort of decision making, especially since it has great impact upon reading?
Yesterday I was reading over a ‘test’ where there were (only) 24 people as subjects. There were required to read a selection of short pieces by Ernest Hemingway on a variety of different platforms. The mere fact that (1) there was no raw data for us to be able to evaluate the validity of this study, (2) the relatively small sample population, and (3) for me, the most important part; even if you can use pieces of literature of this convenient length to measure something, what does this imply for longer pieces, or for more complex, or challenging pieces?
The answer to this question is pretty close to zero… the fact of the matter is that this over-covered ‘scientific’ study serves only to further discussion and debate about the validity of using eReaders…that’s all… I guess that this was the fastest and easiest way to get this point out into the mainstream of print media (whether online or old media). In this sense, I can see some validity in this topic, although I would have preferred to not have been inundated with so many copycat pieces. There are plenty of other topics worth discussion with relation to reading such as: ‘Is there any trend in the amount of reading that people do now versus the past?’ Have there been any changes in the length or complexity of reading material that are used in popular culture, in newspapers, magazines, or popular novels? How much of a difference is there between the spoken and written language; has this changed in any perceptible ways since…let’s say WWII?
Of course, some of these are leading questions, they point to how much school students read, the forms, the lengths and complexity of material in high school and college.
While there has been a lot written about how the latest generation is much more attuned to visual information, the fact is that reading is still a great determiner of ultimate success in today’s culture. We have been very slowly falling behind for much longer than the advent of the internet. I only say this to emphasize that whichever latest boogie man, whether it is Movies, TV, internet, cell phones, etc. may only add a little to the problem, but it is not a cause.
