Where does reading collide?

In reading and literacy research, reading is the mental process of turning written marks into language and grasping what they say: a reader decodes print into words and then comprehends those words. Gough and Tunmer's 1986 Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability set out the simple view of reading, in which reading skill is the product of decoding and language comprehension, so that a weakness in either one lowers the result. On this account a reader who cannot decode, one who cannot comprehend, and one who can do neither each struggle for a different reason. This is the meaning at issue in the science of reading and the long debate over phonics, where how to teach decoding is the point of contention. The referent is a skill in a person's mind, measured by tests of word reading and comprehension, and not an interpretation of a passage, a gauge value, or a stage in a legislature.[1]

Unit

A person's skill at decoding and comprehending written text

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed by tests of word decoding, oral language comprehension, and reading comprehension

In literary theory, a reading is an account of what a text means: to give a reading of Hamlet is to offer one interpretation of it, argued through close attention to the words on the page. Reader-response theory holds that this meaning is not simply sitting fixed in the text but is produced as a reader works through it. Iser's 1972 The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach described how a text leaves gaps that the reader fills in, so that the work is completed only in the act of reading. On this view different readers, or the same reader on different occasions, can arrive at different but defensible readings. The referent is an interpretation a person builds and defends, and not a decoding skill, a meter value, or a step a bill takes through a legislature.[2]

Unit

One interpretation of a text, argued and open to challenge

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Not scored; a reading is judged by how well it is argued from the text and how much of it it accounts for