Reading

1. Read the passage below. Find words and expressions in the passage which mean the same as the explanations at the bottom.

How One Should Read a Book

Author William Grass contrasts the way he read in his youth, for speed, with the way he reads now, recursively, going over words and sentences, to linger over sound and meaning.

“In those word-drunk years, I would down a book or two a day as though they were gins; I read for adventure, excitement, to sample the exotic and the strange, for climax and resolution, to participate in otherwise forbidden pleasures. I was, like so many adolescents, as eager to leap from my ordinary life as the salmon is to get upstream. I sought replacement for the world.

With a surreptitious lamp lit, I stayed awake to dream. I grew reckless. I read for speed.

When you read for speed you don’t read recursively, looping along the line like a sewing machine, stitching together, say the panel of a bodice to a sleeve – linking a pair of terms, the contents of a clause; reading recursively in this backward-forward movement of the mind whereby we revise earlier impressions of a text to accommodate new information and, at the same time, speculate about what is to come.”

1. to swallow quickly

2. to test; to try out

3. to stay at or near

4. going back in thought or speech

5. (of actions) done secretly

6. event, point of greatest interest and intensity (e.g. in a story or drama)

7. to consider, form opinions (without having complete knowledge)

8. not thinking or caring about the effects, consequences

9. that which is contained

2. Can you explain the meaning of the phrase “to read recursively”? Read the following passage to learn why reading should be a recursive process.

Reading, like a good conversation, is an ongoing and recursive process: as you accumulate opinions, you constantly revise and modify them when you hear something new, or learn that you did not understand what someone was saying earlier. When you reread, you can find that the text will talk back in some new and interesting ways. It suggests new meanings. So getting involved with a text means rereading it: checking what you have decided on against the words themselves, trying to modify and enrich the meaning you have helped to make. There is no possibility of making meaning until the text takes shape in the imagination as a voice which you have engaged, listened to very carefully, and reengaged. Good reading is an experience of getting involved with a text and wanting to read on, of returning to a text and reconsidering all your conclusions, of letting books talk to you even when you have finished reading them.

Writing

Write the dictation “Storytelling”.

Have your say

Read the following questionnaire and then tell the class about your reading habits.

Reading Is Interaction

Reading allows us to discover new ideas, to see things afresh, to develop new opinions, and to resist manipulation by others. There is no understanding, no meaning, no fun in reading texts until there is a close interaction between a reader and the words on a page.

Pause for a moment now to consider the habits and predispositions you bring to the reading process:

1. How often and how much do you read? Daily? Weekly? As little or as much as possible?

2. What do you read most often? Magazines? Newspapers? Brochures? Textbooks? Literature?

3. What do you expect from this reading? What’s your favourite reading?

4. Where do you read? Do you have a special place – a comfortable chair, a special room or corner of a room where you read? Where else have you read? With what results? Can you read anywhere?

5. Has reading been largely a pleasure or a duty? Or both? What circumstances have affected whether reading is pleasant or not?

6. If you have ever read a book that you haven’t been able to put down, what was it that held your interest? If you have never been spellbound by a book, why do you think this experience has eluded you?

7. How do you react when you read something you don’t understand? Have you found any strategies for making sense of difficult writing?

In thinking about these questions, perhaps in talking and writing about them as well, you have been exploring how you read as well as what you read. It is important to become conscious of your reading habits, because without being aware of how you read, your interpretations are likely to be formed too quickly and to be oversimplified. We can never leave ourselves out when we read. When we read, we select what we think is important. We develop ideas of our own and we come to our conclusions. In fact, reading allows us to discover not only what a writer has to say but how we feel about it. Reading can be a process of self-discovery, of expanding knowledge and experience as we interact with a text.