Theories of L1 reading have traditionally fallen into one of two categories. Reading has been seen as either:

a) a 'bottom-up', 'data-driven' or 'text-driven' process that emphasizes the text's role in providing input through decoding, or letter and word recognition;
or:
b) a 'top-down', 'concept-driven' or 'hypothesis-driven' process, in which learners make samples and predictions on the basis of their prior syntactic and semantic knowledge.

The inadequacies of this simple dualism have become clear and a more balanced consensus has emerged which suggests readers make use, often simultaneously, of all sources of linguistic knowledge (orthographic, syntactic, lexical and semantic), drawing more on one particular source when another proves problematical - for example, using context to compensate for difficult lexis. We shall return to this so-called 'interactive' position in section 7.1.5.

Following Smith (1982) it is possible to identify four distinct characteristics of reading:

1. Reading is purposeful: we always have a reason for reading, and it is in fact this intention of the reader's that determines meaning; if we have no purpose in reading (as often happens in the foreign language classroom), we bring little understanding to the text and it will therefore be meaningless.
   
   Reflective task 1
   
   

   Consider how reading purpose might affect one's understanding in the following circumstances: A student has no interest in politics and his teacher gives the group an article on forthcoming local elections. You want to go to the theatre and are reading a collection of reviews in the newspaper. You have bought a self-assembly desk and are reading the instructions. A primary school pupil is reading a text out loud in front of the whole class.

   
   
2. Reading is selective because we only note what is relevant to our purpose at the given moment.
   
   Reflective task 2
   
   

   Try to think of three types of everyday text this might apply to. Click on 'Commentary' for some suggestions.

   
   
3. In reading, we anticipate: on a macro level by building assumptions about overall content, and on a micro level by predicting what is likely to come next in the passage. It is in this sense that Goodman (1967) calls reading 'a psycholinguistic guessing game', a non-conscious activity in which we repeatedly formulate hypotheses about what is likely to come next and modify these in the light of what actually turns up, simultaneously forming new hypotheses.
   
   Reflective task 3
   
   

   Consider the following extract from Text 5 ('It's unthinkable'): Imagine a small island with an established but pressured agricultural base and a faltering industrial heartland. There's widespread affluence and, on the surface, people appear content. Deeper examination, however, produces some disturbing facts about the situation of the youngest in the population: over a third of the children are living in relative poverty, over a quarter of murder victims are children and the only people who can legally be hit are minors. It has the highest teenage pregnancy rate and highest infant mortality rate in the European Union. Added to this, it has one of the highest child conviction rates and 75% of the children who leave non-parental care do so with no formal qualifications at all. What macro and micro reading processes are at work here? Click on 'Commentary' for feedback.

   
   
4. Reading is based on comprehension: understanding meaning is integral to, rather than consequent upon reading.
   
   Reflective task 4
   
   

   Read the following short text: Consequently there can be no correlation whatsoever since it defamiliarizes the essentially familiar. In accordance with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language is seen as a superficial embellishment of deeper processes of consciousness. How much of the text did you understand? What difficulties did you have and why? Click on 'Commentary'.

   
   A number of important points follow from these general characteristics:
   
   
   • Meaning does not depend on particular words; what we remember of what we have read is the meaning attributed to the words, not the actual words themselves.
     
     
   • During the reading process the reader is also constantly seeking to reduce uncertainty about meaning by rejecting erroneous interpretations. (See the notes in 'Commentary' on item 3 above.)
     
     
   • Comprehension does not entail identifying or examining all the information contained in a text, but involves sampling it, using the minimum of information required in order to verify or modify one's predictions about the text's content. (This is an approach we are especially likely to adopt when reading an article on a topic we are very familiar with.)
     
     
   • Reading also involves the reader interacting with the text, employing not only the visual data on the page but also a range of other information which she/he brings to the text: knowledge of a language's structures, spelling rules and other conventions, as well as knowledge of subject area - an important topic to which we shall return below. In short, understanding a text means making sense of it in the light of what we know. (This clearly applies to the 'Sapir-Whorf' text above.)
     
     e) Reading is thus very much an active process: meaning does not lie in a text waiting to be absorbed passively, rather we have to try to 'open up' a text by bringing meaning to it.