Reading: History and Modernity

Viktoriia Dudar
Professor Barbara Gleason
Theories and Models of Literacy
9 December 2009

Reading: History and Modernity

Reading process that seems so natural and simple to the modern person in the highly industrialized societies is just the tip of the iceberg that hides far more complex issues under the obvious appearance. The evolution of the silent reading, the approaches to teaching reading, and the interpretation of the text by readers will be discussed to better understand reading and the different dimensions of this phenomenon.

The Evolution of Silent Reading

Writing and reading are indissolubly connected, interacting and influencing each other. As a result, the modifications in writing transformed the way of the process of reading that evolved from aloud to silent.
After the Greeks introduced vowels, word separation was not longer necessary to make the meaning out of the text; therefore, Greece became the first ancient civilization to apply scriptura continua. In contrast, the Semitic languages, such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic continued to be written with word separation to avoid ambiguity (Blake 94). Although Greek and Roman civilizations were most likely aware about the Semitic tradition of writing, they did not find any reasons to employ it because deeply oral and rhetorical societies were not interested in fast, comprehensive reading, and a narrow circle of readers, usually specially trained scribes or clergy, did not consider reading either necessary or accessible to the greater part of the population (Saenger 11). Furthermore, texts, especially religious, were meant to be read aloud in order to live and to bring meaning to people in contrast to the dead word on the page (Manguel 45). The absence of word separation,punctuation marks, paragraphing, tables of contents, and page numbering made the process of script deciphering toilsome and long. However, some instances of silent reading, such as Alexander’s the Great reading of a letter from his mother in the fourth century BC and St. Ambrose’s reading in silence at the end of the fourth century are recorded in the history as extraordinary events (Manguel 42). In the monastic communities that emerged in the fourth century, reading the sacred texts privately in the cell and publicly in Church were alternating with long periods of silence. However, not all of them could read, but all were advised to learn the texts by heart. To help those that were poor readers, the continuous text was divided into lines according to the meaning, so that the reader would know when to raise his voice and when to lower it, at the end of the sentence or thought. Manguel considers this method – by the name of per cola et commata – a primitive form of punctuation, since it also facilitated locating a particular passage in a text (49).
A dramatic change in writing happened in the seventh century when the Irish scribes copied spaces between words from the Syriac Gospels, which they were translating, in order to better comprehend writing. Blake states that this invention was “a major factor in the dissemination of new ideas about political and religious freedom, individual study, religious contemplation, and personal expression” (115) that occurred eight hundred years later. Furthermore, scribes developed punctuation that is still used nowadays and started writing comments between the lines to explain the ambiguity of Latin grammar, which was heavily inflectional; these changes led to emerging of silent reading. However, these innovations were not known beyond the borders of the British Isles until the tenth century, and became widely used only in the beginning of the thirteenth century (Manguel 50).
Silent reading brought significant changes in all spheres of life. First of all, it facilitated the spread of independent thought because readers could read privately even writings that were against widely accepted religious doctrines. Although silent reading encouraged critical thinking, it paralleled with evoking anger among governing elements that started implementing censorship of books spreading heretical thoughts. Consequently, book burning became a common routine in order to prevent heresy against church in the fourteenth century (Blake 104-105). Nevertheless, the spread of humanism and the interest in philosophy, science, art, and literature led to the revival of learning in Europe, known as the Renaissance. Vernacular languages underwent remarkable changes in grammar and in the way of transcribing. For example, during the late Middle Ages Old English changed from a heavily inflected language to an analytic language with more regular spelling that eased the act of reading. In addition, more works were composed in vernacular languages, so scribes started applying cursiva formata to accelerate the copying process. Moreover, many schools were opened where reading and writing was taught. As the result of these processes the number of people who could read increased enormously demanding cheaper reading materials. Partially this demand was satisfied by libraries that were significantly changed in order to accommodate silent readers. Besides the improving of the features of the text format, such as composing lists of subjects arranged alphabetically, using of titles, chapters, capital letters, colored paragraph marks, and cataloging of manuscripts, the users of libraries were forbidden not only to talk, but even to whisper (Blake 101-103). The spread of literacy led to the invention of the printing press in the middle of fifteen century, an event that opened even greater opportunities to the readers, contributing to the Western civilization.
The tumultuous history speaks directly to our modern world in topics of language and literacy, like teaching children and adults how to read, the relationship between a text and its reader, and oral vs. written culture, to name only a few. When my classmates and I had the chance to visit the Department of Rare Books in Columbia University, I started pondering upon the great length of time for the development of writing and upon how restricted writing and reading were for so many centuries. Silent reading could not have existed as a part of the human intellect should all these preliminary steps have not taken place.
If we think about the continuous and indissoluble connection between reading and speaking, remembering that Aramaic and Hebrew used the same word for the two “different” actions, we can probably better understand how we relate to a text on a page in comparison with how the previous generations did. Humanity advanced from reading a text aloud towards inner utterance, thenceforth towards a text with a fixed system of graphems that can be full of information, but also (and most importantly) a springboard for the reader’s own inner reflection, connecting what he reads with his previous experience. The reader not only gives life to the “dead” text on a page, but he also brings his personal interpretation through his unique experience. Silent reading deprives us from one level of transmitting meaning (voice inflections, tone, volume, rhythm, accent, and color), but gives us a different way of understanding. It can be facilitated by punctuation alongside with previous experience that help a reader nowadays to construct the meaning of the text: as Winterowd states, “[t]he information brought to the text will make even blurred type more readable!” (70). He presents three cues in deriving meaning: grapophonic (connecting the written or printed symbols with the way words are pronounced), syntactic (the grammatical level) and semantic (60). Today, most of the readers derive meaning from a text without using their voice, but when the text is too difficult to apprehend, they start sounding it out. Nevertheless, these cues are mandatory in learning how to read and how to understand a text.
The history of reading is of a vital importance to humankind, if we realize that it repeats itself with every child and adult learning to read. Suffice to say, nobody is born with a reading ability, much less – silent reading. We all must acquire the alphabet first, slowly moving to syllables through vowels; the young reader’s first books are filled with words corresponding to images. The teacher makes the connection between the print and the oral, emphasizing the intonation that corresponds to the punctuation. Plain-voice reading of a student usually reflects little understanding of the text. The student, child or adult, struggles for some time with writing after dictation and several repetitions of each word in voice or sub-voice are needed before he can write it, but in this stage, words are morphing from oral to written and backwards without meaning. Another difficult step in teaching children how to write is the separation of words because they are inclined towards a certain scriptura continua (Saenger 2); the most plausible explanation is their inner connection with the continuous oral speech. The space between words not only facilitates meaning (and really long words slow us down or even “force” us sounding them out), but it also points toward the separation of words as units with a single meaning and pronunciation.
In conclusion, by comparing silent reading to oral utterance, the written text receives a new life and the relationship between the reader and the text becomes more personal. If we consider sound and voice belonging somehow more to an “outside” world, silent reading brings the text in our inner self, “next” to our own thoughts and experience, compelling their inter-action.

The Great Debate

For many years, scholars have argued upon which is the best approach to teach children to read. Two instructional approaches known as phonics and look-and-say have been the subject of the Great Debate for over a century gaining popularity at different times.
At the beginning of the 20th century educators agreed on the beginning reading methods, such as (1) emphasis on comprehension of the reading material from the beginning of reading, (2) stress on the silent reading, (3) reading of the stories about the every-day life that children can connect to their own experience, (4) encouraging to identify new words with the help of picture clues, (5) using phonics only in the remedial classes or implementing it very slowly while avoiding isolation and blending of sounds, (6) instructing children in small groups formed on their achievements in reading (Chall 13-15). Consequently, the look-and-say approach became predominant in teaching reading with the publication of basal-reading series such as Dick and Jane by Scott Foresman that were repetitive and highly predictable, emphasizing simple words that can be easily remembered.
Leonard Bloomfield, a distinguished linguist, criticized this approach in the early 1940s, and emphasized the learning of the letter-sound correspondence as the first step in instructing beginning readers. However, his theory was in the most part ignored until the success of Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read that defended learning of the alphabetic code as the first step in teaching reading (Chall 24). Flesch heavily criticized the prevailing methods of reading instruction and believed that the look-and-say approach is a “guessing game” where children try to guess words or wait for the teacher to identify them, and the real reading never starts because children easily confuse between such words as cow, horse, pig, sheep, and chicken (Flesch 16-20). He argues that for thousands of years, starting from the invention of the alphabet, people learned to read by memorizing the sound of each letter in the alphabet, but not memorizing the whole words as if they were logographs. He says that teaching of reading in the USA is “totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense” (Flesch 2). Furthermore, Flesch states that English is a purely phonetic system, but just with a few more exceptions in pronunciation than other languages that makes it possible to use phonics instruction starting by teaching words that spell regularly (12-13). Therefore, phonics instruction was accepted by parents as well as teachers that started embedding it into their classroom activities. Moreover, in many instances it was combined with writing, spelling, reading conventional basal and library books, and typing that resulted in appearing of other approaches, such as the Initial Teaching Alphabet, Moore’s Responsive Environment, Individualized Reading, the Language Experience approach, Programmed Learning and others (Chall 16).
Although the look-and-say and phonics approaches to reading instruction reflect very different underlying philosophies and stress very different skills, very few educators today would be strict advocates of either approach. Recent studies show that neither of these approaches produces high results when children are deprived of the reading material. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that reading performance for children remained stable despite the different approaches to reading education that have prevailed at different times for the last 30 years. But the strong relationship between NAEP reading scores and the access to print was revealed, and that indicates the importance of exposure to books (McQuillan 74). For example, McQuillan states that phonological awareness is largely the result of reading as well as a traditional basal method that produces better reading achievements in print-rich classrooms (43, 61). He believes that the key to improving reading among children lays in ensuring that they have enough meaningful reading material in their classrooms, libraries, and homes stating that “approaches heavy in print exposure are almost always superior (and no worse) than the alternatives” (McQuillan 61). This argument is continued in Parent’s Guide to Literacy for the 21th Century by Janie Hydrick where she introduces the notion of emergent literacy theory and emphasizes the crucial importance of literature-based reading programs and response to literature at home. Hydrick talks about opportunities for children to read and to listen to literature as well as frequent trips to libraries and book stores where trade books can be borrowed or purchased (Hydrick 48-54). Furthermore, she describes emergent literacy not merely as reading readiness, but as a complex idea of supportive environment that provides opportunities for children to practice different aspects of language and literacy, such as speaking, listening, writing, and reading, as a part of children’s daily lives at home as well as at school (Hydrick 42-43).
The approaches to teaching reading raised my interest because phonics instruction and the look-and-say method that govern reading education in the USA for decades were new ideas to me. I grew up learning the Ukrainian language that has exact correspondence between sounds and letters. Therefore, I was taught how to read through simply learning the alphabet and the correspondent sounds at first, and then recognizing the letters in the word, sounding them out, uniting them into syllables, and then into words. The phonics instructions were given mostly during the first year of school, and starting from the second grade I was practicing my reading through fables, folk tales, and rhymes. Only while reading Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and other good-night stories to the boy whom I used to baby-sit, I came across pattern books and found them interesting and melodic.
Literacy will become accessible to all students only when teachers learn to identify the individual needs of every student and try to use the most suitable way of instruction. While both approaches shown above emphasized the importance of literature (available for children at home and in libraries), the debate itself presented how crucial the methods of teaching are, calling for teachers’ personal gifts and capacities in order to find the proper balance. As questions to myself, would I extensively engage the phonics method in my teaching or would I also use the look-and-say method? In what proportion? Which one should come first? Or maybe we can use them in parallel? The answers are indeed very complex, pointing toward an idealistic personalized method: traditional phonics or look-and-say philosophies do not represent the aim itself, but they are only meth-odos (Greek for “on the road to”) and the “perfect recipe” for teaching one child could bring very little or no results whatsoever in another one. In another words, there cannot be a universally effective method. While the debate itself does not carry an answer, it does raise awareness on how important the preparation of a lesson is: only through his or her personal experience, knowing the weaknesses of a class in general and of a student in particular, can a teacher start pondering upon the appropriate balance between phonics and look-and-say in a lesson. For a teacher, the “right” response can only come after the “right” question and “correct” diagnosis of the class. Another important factor in teaching reading is including it in the greater picture of emergent literacy, a broader way of acknowledging children’s interaction with many other aspects of literacy, taking into consideration their predispositions and motivators.
Teaching reading should not be left exclusively for a “specialized” environment and tutor; on the contrary, overcoming the breach between school and home, learning and playing, we can benefit in our methods of teaching. Alphabet games, letters and food (like cereal or cake), rhymes, songs and images are only few examples of potential support in one’s endeavor to instructing reading.

Reader Response

Shakespeare’s great plays and Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy are two archetypal examples of understanding the world. They represent two different ways of thinking that are described by many psychologists and educators.
Blake describes two ways of apprehending reality, namely the narrative (fiction, poetry, plays) and paradigmatic (scientific, rational, abstract) modes of thought basing his differentiation on the theory of Elliot Eisner and Jerome Bruner. Eisner includes other arts besides literature in the narrative mode of knowing, calling it an aesthetic mode of knowing. The knowledge is acquired differently through these two modes of thought that “neither contradict nor corroborate the other” Bruner believes (qtd. in Blake 128): knowledge is created through narrative mode, and it is discovered through paradigmatic mode (Blake 125-126). Bruner states that the Western culture is closer acquainted with the paradigmatic thought based upon categorization and conceptualization than with the aesthetic mode that establishes knowledge through pleasure initiated by a form of art and through the structures created by this mode (e.g., a poem, a novel ) (Blake 126). In addition, the reading of informational and literary texts significantly varies: while the primary purpose of informational texts is to convey knowledge, resulted from observation, the approach to reading literary texts differed through years. Therefore, scholars distinguish three stages in a theory of literary criticism, such as: emphasis on the author and his or her aims (Old Criticism), stress on the autonomy of the work itself (New Criticism), and emphasis on the reader and his individual interpretation of a text (Reader Response) (Blake 143).
Reader Response theory lays in the heart of Louise Rosenblatt’s criticism of the old school that excluded human consciousness from the literary transaction. While emphasizing an active role of the reader in the construction of the meaning of the text, she introduces a transactional approach to explain the reading process based on the philosophy of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley. Rosenblatt explains the interaction between reader and text not as simply a linear phenomenon, but as “an ongoing process in which the elements and factors are, one might say, aspects of a total situation, each conditioned by and conditioning the other” (17). Particular stimuli of the text that reader responds to evoke emotions, feelings, associations, ideas, memories of the past experiences, allowing readers to engage into the active and dynamic process of creating personal meaning that becomes part of one’s literary experience. Furthermore, Rosenblatt differentiates between efferent and aesthetic reading: when the former is concerned with the information inferred from the text, the latter refers to the live-through experience of the text (Flynn 59). Likewise, Winterowd introduces the notion of determinate (or stable) and indeterminate (or unstable) meaning believing that deep comprehension of a text goes beyond simply imparting of information and extends to understanding of emotions and values (71). He uses the example of the word “pornography” concluding that even the meaning of one word is “blurred” and can be interpreted dissimilarly by different people, “let alone a complex text” (72).
However, these ideas are doubted by some scholars who believe that text has one, stable meaning, intended by the author. For example, Hirsch states that only a single interpretation is possible based on the logic and evidence found in text (Flynn 62). Rosenblatt as well as Winterowd opposes an autonomous nature of a text stating that reading is a complex social interaction where a poem is “an active process lived through during the relationship between a reader and a text” (21) where every reader brings their own understanding. She vividly describes the importance of students’ personal response to literature that can be expressed at the beginning as an emotional ambiguity, the first step towards rational understanding (Flynn 57). Furthermore, Rosenblatt views literature first of all as the source of enjoyment and satisfaction from reading (74) that can be destroyed by educators who “place the screen between the student and the book” (61) by imposing accepted ideas about literature while depriving them of personal encounter with a text. When a teacher encourages spontaneous responses that do not have to follow a particular form and accepts the importance of the personal relationship to a text, the new enthusiasts of literature are born who are not simply passive “spectator sports” audience.
The topic of Reader Response is particularly compelling to me because of one simple reason: I love literature and very often respond to it with smiles and tears. I believe that while reading and constructing the meaning of a text, a person discovers her or his own inner world, feelings, emotions, and the very essence of her or his being unless the meaning is imposed by teachers, critics’ reviews or even peers. I think that the best way to read is to start from the original work without any background knowledge about an author or a particular epoch, and only after the personal “acquaintance” with text, some additional information, and sharing with others can only deepen one’s understanding. How often do we hear exclamations like “I did not even think about that!” or “Now I understand it!” when the class discussions help to establish the meaning in a particular community of readers. It indicates the fluidity of meaning that, as Winterowd described it, “is once again not in the text, but part of group consensus” (73).
In addition, for centuries the question of the “true” meaning of a text has been the matter of concern for humankind. The best example would be the Biblical text that is believed by many to have the only stable meaning. People’s lives were at stake when they “fall” into heresy based on their own interpretation of the Bible.
Also, the understanding of modes of knowing and the transactional theory of reading is crucial in teaching practice. Educators can greatly facilitate children in learning how to read and to write when they point out the different forms of text as well as the variety of their purposes. For example, if children are asked to write a poem about their Christmas holidays, it can be very helpful to emphasize that usually poems are the reflections of one’s emotions and feelings, but not a report about how many presents they received. Besides, teachers can significantly influence students’ attitudes towards literature making it a precious part of their lives or, on the contrary, just the work that has to be done in order to receive a grade and then never return to it again. The careful selection of reading material that connects to students’ lives, a class where every opinion is appreciated, and the interesting activities with a text like a “Jeopardy” game or prediction of the end of a story can awake curiosity and love to literature.
In conclusion, reading is one of the fundamental elements of literacy, and the mastering of this ability, in conjunction with writing, is the essential quality that is necessary for productive functioning and integration in the 21st century society. The better this process is studied, the greater the chances educators understand it and effectively apply their findings in spreading the universal literacy.
 
Works Cited
Blake, Brett Elizabeth, and Robert W. Blake. Literacy Primer. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Print.

Chall, Jeanne S. “What the Debate is All About.” Learning to Read: the Great Debate. 3rd ed., Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996. 13-52. Print.

Flesch, Rudolf. “A Letter to Johnny’s Mother.” Why Johnny Can’t Read. 3rd ed., New York: Harper and Row, 1986. 1-21. Print.

Flynn, Elizabeth A. “Reconsiderations: Louise Rosenblatt and the Ethical Turn in Literary Theory.” College English 70.1 (2007): 52-68. Print.

Hydrick, Janie. A Parent’s Guide to Literacy for the 21st Century. Urbana: NCTE, 1996. Print.

Manguel, Alberto. “The Silent Readers.” A History of Reading. Viking, 1996. 41-53. Print.

McQuillan, Jeff. The Literary Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions. Fullerton: Heinemann, 1998. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “The Poem as Event.” The Reader, the Text, the Poem: the Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. 6-21. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “The Setting for Spontaneity.” Literature as Exploration. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983. 57-77. Print.

Saenger, Paul. “Introduction.” Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. 1-17. Print.

Winterwood, W. Ross. “To Read.” The Culture and Politics of Literacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 57-83. Print.