Passage two

Reading is thought to be a kind of conversation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions, as it were, to the text and gels answers. In the light of these he puts further questions, and so on.For most of the time this “conversation” goes on below the level of consciousness. At times,however, we become aware of it. This is usually when we arc running into difficulties, whenmismatch is occurring between expectations and meaning. When successful matching is being experienced, our questioning of the text continues at the unconscious level.

Different people converse with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the page, others take off imaginatively from the words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension which is written in the text. The latter represents higher levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for advanced readers.

There is another conversation which from our point of view is equally important, and that is to do not with what is read but with how it is read. We call this a “process”conversation as opposed to a “content” conversation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the strategies we employ in reading. If we are an advanced reader our ability to hold a process conversation with a text is usually pretty well developed. Not so our ability to hold a content conversation. It is precisely this kind of conversation that is of importance when we are seeking to develop our reading to meet the new demands being placed upon us by studying at a higher level.