We have seen that words are the tools of thinking and expression. The pattern of words and the ability to see and understand them has been emphasized in the preceding chapter. To separate the study of words and the study of reading is a purely arbitrary division for convenience only, because words are the tools of thinking, and reading is thinking. Having become aware of the tools we are now concerned with the proper use of them. It is also important to understand that, although words themselves would naturally be emphasized in the child's study before reading, a great: deal of reading will have been done in studying words. Furthermore, if word study is not practiced as a fundamental part of reading, there will be little if any development in reading skills and reading habits.

This is, of course, part of a chronological problem which will always face us in our approach to how best give attention and assistance to our child's education at home. It would be convenient and indeed much simpler for child and parent if we could lay out chronological blocks for the study of each chapter—grades one through three, word study; grades three through five, reading; grades three through seven, writing; etc. It is not that easy, but rather like the weaving of a many-colored blanket or tapestry—all the threads have to be woven in, and until the product is finished, there seems to be an unworkable number of loose ends. So it is with learning. There are always loose ends to be gathered up, and the threads will vary in color and strength. Much that is here offered can be started early in the child's school life, something from each chapter perhaps. One thing is certain. If the good habits are introduced and watched carefully during these important elementary school years, the bad habits will find it most difficult to take over later.

The skills to be practiced in reading will, of necessity, make reference to some things which have been mentioned before, such as a fundamental vocabulary, use of dictionary, etc. Here again "the weaving into" makes it impossible to avoid some repetition.

The good reader has three primary aims: (1) to be able to concentrate on what he is reading; (2) to remember as much of it as possible, and (3) to apply it to his own experiences and thinking. The good reader will also know why he is reading and will adapt his method to the purpose. If the purpose is a survey to find certain items of information wanted, the reading will take on the nature of skimming—finding the desired information without stopping for the details. The second approach, or method, is usually referred to as careful reading. This method is used for reading material from which the main thoughts and principal details are to be learned. The third method is called intensive reading, and is used in reading instructions, test and examination questions, word problems in mathematics, and material that is unfamiliar and hard to grasp. Not all the aims and methods are clear at the beginning of the child's reading experience, but the early approach will influence the attitude toward skills and habits later. Doubtless, the pattern of reading can begin where the pattern of words begins—with the twenty minute story time which becomes reading time or homework time, depending upon the age of the child.

Such a period teaches the child the very important lesson that there is reading for study and learning as well as reading for pleasant leisure and excitement. At first the reading period will be mainly the parent reading to the child, emphasizing the nature of words, the fascination of sounds, the relationship of words, the vividness of word pictures, and also important facts to remember. Even an unexciting story or assignment can provide valuable training in leading to remember, and this should be the first aim after word study. Questions should follow each story, and the number of questions, value of each, and grade for each test should be explained to the child as an introduction to reward for accomplishment. Some children arrive at high school without any sound reason for the existence of tests and examinations. The reading period very quickly changes from the parent reading to the child to the child being anxious for an audience and burning to find important questions. One cannot even guess the value of twenty minutes a day used for such a purpose.

Perhaps one of the greatest home-aids to a child's reading is helping the child develop the art of marking and underlining in order to identify easily the significant material to be remembered. This practice is called "reading with a pencil in hand." It is a practice so valuable as to be worth buying books to be marked. It can begin as soon as fact material is introduced into the child's school work, and becomes vital when the child begins to read with a purpose. Much time is spent in secondary school, and even college, teaching students to underline important material. The ability to find and mark important information (the answer to the question—How many people did Dick and Jane meet on the way to the grocer's?) should be started in the early years of school. That Dick and Jane met three people is of no consequence now or ever, but if the training in observing those details which make a complete picture is developed, it leads to the ability to read and understand the significant facts of a subject later. The child should be taught a specific method of marking and underlining textbooks. Somehow it seems tragically ridiculous that people have to be taught to underline and mark their books when they are college freshmen, yet a manual of Helps in Study issued to freshmen at the University of Michigan does just that, and for a good reason. A recent survey of three hundred freshmen revealed that more than half of them had never been taught "to read with a pencil in hand"—an admonition uttered by every good teacher, and one that should be repeated often by parents. The child who is taught to underline and mark his book during the early years of school is afforded the added experience for development of this great aid to learning, and at the same time his reading takes on a sense of direction and purpose. The child who is deprived of underlining and marking not only misses much, but is almost always counted with those who find reading "boring" and "nothing interesting in books."

In order to be effective and practiced, naturally the method of "reading with a pencil in one's hand" should be simple. The result: of marking and underlining should be very much like a walking outline which moves through the book, carrying the burden of the content (and children respond to this animated helper). It may also be described as the bridge or frame which holds up the weight of the important things to be remembered. The method here suggested can be learned by any child and is one that can be used effectively for the rest of his formal schooling and indeed throughout life.

There are three important underlinings which should be used. The child should be taught to underline fundamental vocabulary words, and this can be started with the very first book that deals with subject matter. The method suggested for fundamental vocabulary words is a line above a shorter line (number, add, count, subtract, multiply, fraction, arithmetic, problem, divide). The longer line stands for definition, and the shorter line stands for spelling. The second grader who underlines number in his book Fun With Numbers will not be spelling it (nomber) when he is a junior in secondary school, and the fourth grader who learns the definition of the word fraction will not be having trouble with fractions as an eighth grader, because he only learned about fractions, but really never knew what the word meant in terms of whole experience. The second kind of under lining can be a broken line to designate details, facts, and significant word pictures which are interesting, but perhaps not of primary importance to understanding the content of the subject. This is a splendid way to introduce the child to the excitement of independent study: "Here is a fact, here is a description, which interests me. It is not important for a question, but I like it and I want to remember it." The third kind of underlining is the long solid line that points out the solid information: such essentials as topic sentences, specific details, definitions, and summary sentences.

Marginal notes and symbols which can be used consistently throughout all formal schooling can also be used profitably by the child in the early years of school. Two vertical lines | | by a paragraph can be used to designate something that must be understood and remembered. A (?) mark can be used to indicate lack of understanding, that help from the teacher is to be sought. As the child reaches the point of tests and exams on textbook material (which should be early in school, but unfortunately is never done in some elementary schools) the abbreviations Imp. for important, and Ex. for examination, can be used to signify that material marked as such is likely to be asked for on tests and examinations. The fourth grader is also not too young to be taught to write interesting related material in the margins of his books.

In a very real sense the elementary school child who has been directed to "read with a pencil in hand" has begun the mastery of that most essential of all elements of study—concentration. Because concentration is "going to the center of a subject," it is the ability to choose wisely—to find the heart of the matter. The child who reads with a pencil in his hand is converting a seemingly routine exercise into thinking, and reading is just that—thinking. The child who marks his book wisely has silently but magically converted something which was apart and impersonal into something which has become consciously his own experience and very personal.

A lasting attitude of appreciation toward books is developed that can be stimulated in no other way. This feeling becomes "liking books" later. A few minutes a day in helping choose the significant words, the important facts, and after several months the whole process has become a glance over the child's shoulder and a pat of approval on the back. The average third or fourth grader can learn to use the symbols of underlining and marking his book in three twenty-minute periods. He will not let it go, for it is direction and purpose, and children yearn for and respond to direction and purpose. "Reading with a pencil in one's hand" can of course be learned at any age.

Reading is perhaps the greatest of the foundation stones upon which an education is built. Reading seems to be almost as essential to some people as is breathing, and with the proper guidance in the early years, it can be made an important part in the life of a child, and will forever give perspective for the past and vision for the future. In another part of this book we have spoken about books as the memory of mankind, and our appreciation of this memory. It is now our purpose to see precisely what we can do to help the child form permanent reading habits that will make reading profitable and enjoyable, and this should be accomplished long before the child has finished the eighth grade. After that it is doubly hard to teach reading habits and appreciation, because after twelve the desire to be an individual becomes quite strong in the average child, and they look upon their own habits, good or bad, as their precious possession, and consider any attempt at change as something of a personal injury. However, many habits are changed after twelve, and not least among them are reading habits.

Just as reading can be almost as essential as breathing, and provides much enrichment and enjoyment, it can also be an almost unbelievably difficult chore, done only as an absolute requirement and always very painfully. This last attitude toward reading is tragic to learning, and is usually the result of the general misconception that prevails about reading. Most people assume that reading is something we do after the first two or three years of school, but they are very wrong. Reading is something we begin to learn to do in the first years of school, and fortunate is that person who has someone to tell him that reading is a difficult art and takes a long time to learn, that the really good reader is learning to read all his life—it is a learning process forever capable of improvement.

Reading is thinking, and the good reader is gathering the intelligence and understanding of the writer into thoughts as he reads. Reading is indeed a complex process; it consists of balancing, weighing, and comparing ideas that are extracted from the printed page with experiences already in the mind of the reader. The good reader balances what he is reading with experience or other reading, he weighs for veracity and implication, and he evaluates by comparing what he is reading with what he already knows. Thus the more we know about a subject, the more interesting it is to read on that subject.

Reading does not,, and it is important for the young reader to know this,, consist of hitting each individual word; it does not consist of plowing laboriously through each line as though one were following a furrow, and it does not consist of memorization—though a good reader retains in his mind the exact wording of a lot that he has read. Of a large number of seventh graders asked the question "What is reading?" more than fifty per cent answered with long descriptions of seeing words and following lines as referred to above. More than twenty per cent thought that reading was memorizing if done correctly. Others knew only that "reading is just reading" and "reading is looking at books" or "reading is school work." Therefore, it seems sensible to teach the child, very early in his school life, what reading really is.

The development of the ability to study effectively is to a great degree the development of the ability to read thoroughly and with understanding. The philosophy of "being" rather than "becoming" again shows its poisonous fangs. Most children will say without hesitation after the first or second or third grade: "Oh sure, I'm a good reader." They speak with all sincerity simply because no one has ever bothered to tell them that with years of watchful attentiveness and continuous practice of intelligent reading habits one "becomes" a good reader. The inability of American boys and girls to read, even when they have finished high school, had been made shockingly plain; first, by the great percentage of reading illiteracy uncovered by the examination of American youth during World War II; and secondly, by the fact that many colleges have had to introduce reading courses to save their freshmen classes. Tests have shown that although a person has been reading two or three hours a day for twelve years before he enters college, he simply does not know how to read well. The great majority of students entering college read too slowly, and still do not learn or understand as much as they should of what they read.

Reading faults, as do all other faults, I suppose, stem largely from mental laziness. Reading is a complex process, and without practice one does not become a good reader, just as one does not become a good tennis or basketball player without practice. One of the greatest reading faults is trying to make reading a part-time job. Many readers let their minds get so involved in day dreams or aside thoughts that they completely lose their way on the printed page. Some readers do not hold themselves up to a consciousness that reading is thinking; consequently, these readers try to read only the printed material on the page, which is in reality only symbols for ideas, and has no value except as thoughts to be weighed, balanced, and interpreted in the light of experience. One of the great reading faults, and the one most easily corrected in a child's early years, is trying to read without sufficient background. As already stated in another part of this book, "the more we know about a subject, the more we enjoy reading about it." This lack of background in a child's reading can be made up by a few simple words of wonder or excitement about how something was or is. It can also be filled in by a picture. (I recently showed a ten-year-old boy a picture of Audubon when we were about halfway through a biography of him. A few questions about how he painted birds, where he stopped at night in his travels, and the second half of the biography became a pleasure rather than an assignment.)

One of the greatest handicaps in reading is trying to read without sufficient vocabulary. Words are the tools of reading as they are indeed the tools of thinking and expression, for reading and thinking are one. Words are the tools with which thoughts are built, and if one does not recognize or know how to use the tools, very little building can be done. One of the outstanding traits of a good reader is his absorbing interest in words. Perhaps it would be hard to find a more exciting half hour than that spent explaining the origin of speech to a child in the fifth grade. Tell him the cave man grunted his word pictures, his joys and his sorrow, and the child will take over from there. But the parent had better have some answers ready or the page describing the origin of speech marked in the encyclopedia.

Some study of reading the sentence follows naturally after word consciousness has been accomplished. Very few ideas are expressed by single words; therefore, some knowledge of the grouping of words is imperative if one is to develop into a good reader. A sentence is a group of related words expressing a unit of thought. The chief idea is usually found in subject, verb, and object, but qualifying words cannot be ignored. For example, in the sentence just read, the word "usually" is a qualifying word, but if it were ignored, the sentence would become a statement without exception, and would be untrue. Note the sentence below: The art of study is composed of a small amount of information and a tremendous amount of practice. There are eighteen words in the sentence, but only the very poorest reader would read the eighteen words separately. The words fall into associated groups—The art of study . . . is composed . . . of a small amount ... of information . . . and a tremendous amount ... of practice. It falls into six groupings, thus cutting the things to be read and remembered from eighteen to six. But there are really only three segments of this whole thought, one main and two subordinate—The art of study is composed ... of a small amount of information . . . and a tremendous amount of study. When the sentence becomes three well-connected parts rather than eighteen separate pieces, it is easier to read and will be remembered. Therefore, it is important that the elementary school child know that the word-byword method of reading is for beginners only, and that word-grouping should be practiced with great care and patience as soon as word mastery allows for sufficient smoothness and recognition.

The child who is taught to read for ideas rather than words, because words have no value except as ideas, will quickly develop word-grouping. As a matter of fact, the very function of the eye in reading seems to be adapted to word-grouping. When we read the eye moves along the line, but it does not see as it moves. It sees only when it stops and fixes its focus upon a word or words; these stops are called fixations. The number of words seen at one fixation is called the recognition span. The beginning reader has a one-word recognition span, and some people remain beginning readers throughout their entire lives. They are the poor readers in school and the non-readers after schools If the child is checked often and carefully in reading for thoughts, the recognition span will develop to two or three or more words. Some knowledge of grammar and the parts of speech can be very helpful in training to increase the recognition span. The thought segments that appear in sentences usually have a grammatical association—a noun and its adjective, a prepositional phrase, a verb and its auxiliary verb or its adverb, phrases in apposition, etc. It is to be regretted that scarcely enough grammar is now taught in schools to make the grammatical-thought segment feasible for practice. However, if the child is made aware of word-groupings, is patiently observed while reading, and is taught that improvement in reading is a slow process and does not come overnight, he will develop both in ability to understand more of what he reads and in speed with which he reads it.

If the sentence can be read properly, there need be little fear of the paragraph and the chapter. But a sense of what-to-expect can be very helpful in reading topical material. A paragraph is a structural unit of a topic made up of a group of related sentences, all of which bear upon the essential idea of the paragraph. A topic sentence, expressing the idea of the paragraph, and a summary sentence, repeating the essential idea, were once considered necessary for a paragraph. But paragraph writing has lost much of its form and unity. Nowhere is there plainer evidence of the twentieth century jitters than in the fragmentary paragraph which prevails in general written communication today. Nevertheless, the good reader knows what a topic sentence is, what a summary sentence is, and how a transitional sentence is used.

Paragraphs fall into various patterns of structure which the good reader comes to recognize. There are many variations and combinations of patterns, but the basic ones might be listed as the following: (1) the paragraph built upon details; (2) a paragraph of explanation, answering a question asked in the paragraph; (3) a paragraph of description; (4) a paragraph of example, giving specific instances or reasons to explain an idea.

Since a paragraph contains an essential idea, or unit of thought, it should be the aim of the reader to find that thought. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in reading lies in the fact that boys and girls are not trained to look for something. They are not trained to have, first, a purpose for reading; then, an expectancy for remembering what they read. They merely "just read" or they read because it is "an assignment." The poor reader drags along line after line, until he has read the three hundred words which make up the paragraph, and when he has finished the most he can say is, "I read every word but no ideas." He simply does not find the main thought and its adorning ideas because he does not look. The good reader looks for and finds the thought and its contributing ideas. Why? Because the good reader reminded himself that he was looking for something; he started with an aim.

As looking for the essential idea is the secret of good paragraph reading, looking for the topical or theme development of a chapter or section of a book is the key to a successful understanding of these larger units. For the chapter or reading assignment in textbooks or other work-type reading, as opposed to novels or other pleasure-type works, a preliminary survey is usually possible. This consists of studying the chapter title, the section headings, and the paragraph headings or marginal titles  to get a general idea of the main topic covered in the material. Once the preliminary survey has been made, the reading is done with an understanding of what is to be expected; sometimes this survey makes the difference between walking a lighted path or stumbling in the dark. The second practice that the good reader follows in handling the chapter is to make an agreement with himself that he will quickly summarize the chapter in a brief oral paragraph when he has finished reading.

Reading is practice, and the practice of good reading habits requires constant vigilance. It is practice that begins with the word and ends with the book. It is the means whereby we will gather most information except by listening. Reading is thinking, and in school and out of school thousands of hours will be spent in reading. How profitless and painful, how fruitful and enjoyable these hours are—depends perhaps to a large degree upon the half-an-hour a day that somebody spends teaching a fourth or fifth or eighth grader how to read properly.

If reading and an appreciation of books are to become habit with the child, then the very physical nature of a book should not: be overlooked. The actual make-up of a book proves not only interesting, but becomes increasingly helpful as the child progresses through school. It is a fact that boys and girls have gotten to college level in their schooling without the faintest idea of what an index is for, and little more than recognition knowledge of the presence of a table of contents. In order to use books to the best advantage, and to choose wisely what book to read from several on the same subject, it is indeed necessary to know something of the parts of a book and the functions that they serve. All books do not contain all book parts, and all book parts are not of great value to the reader, but are important to librarians and book dealers.

The parts of a book are: title, author, imprint, copyright, printings and impressions; foreword, preface, table of contents, list of illustrations, introductions, heads, notes, appendixes, glossaries, bibliography, and indexes. The average book has only one title, found on the cover and three or four other places at the beginning of the book. Some books have in addition to the binding title, a full title. The full title gives more information about the subjects. For example, Wild Wings might be about any number of things, but the full title, The Wanderings of John James Audubon, tells the reader exactly what the subject of the book is. After the title comes the name of the author, and in many books some notice of the author's qualifications are included. Young readers like to know about people and can be quickly trained to look up authors in appropriate reference books at the library. This practice has a tremendous effect in making the book a personal experience between two people.

The imprint is merely the name of the publisher and the year of publication; the latter is important in choosing a book. The copyright is a simple statement which shows that the book is registered with the Registrar of Copyrights, Library of Congress, and is protected against use without permission for twenty-eight years. Printings and impressions shows the number of times a book has been printed; some publishers do not include printings and impressions in some types of books. These, then, are the simpler parts of a book, but they each have some significance.

The first major part of a book is the preface, and all parts following the preface are of real importance. The preface is a brief statement of the author's purpose and the way in which the book may be best used. It also may contain acknowledgments for help received by the author in his work. The table of contents gives the parts and chapter titles of the book, and except for novels, the table of contents should be the reader's first outline of what he is going to read. A thorough study of the table of contents of a good textbook, and a continued review, keeps the reader acquainted with the relationship of subject matter in the book. After the table of contents a list of illustrations is usually included. The chief value of the list of illustrations to the average adult reader is perhaps that of helping choose the proper book, but to the young reader the list of illustrations can serve a purpose comparable to that of the table of contents. An introduction or foreword to a book does what the name implies and is usually written by someone other than the author. The introduction may include some explanation of the wider aspects of the subject, then point out the extent to which this particular book covers the subject. Heads are the divisions and subdivisions, other than chapter titles, which help the reader "find his way." They should be used consistently and thoughtfully for they constitute a means of accomplishing a quick and fruitful survey of chapter contents. Within the body of the reading material there are sometimes footnotes. These notes give added explanation, or guide the reader toward fuller information; they are ignored or simply glanced over with great loss to the reader. Notes may be at the bottom of the page, at the end of the chapter, or at the end of the book. Some books have need for expansion of material or further treatment of a topic, and this is found in appendixes at the end of the book. The glossary contains the fundamental vocabulary and the essential terms needed for understanding a particular subject. The bibliography lists the sources of material to which the author has gone for help; it also gives a list of books on the subject which may well be termed "suggested readings," and in which the reader may further pursue the subject. The index is the last thing in the back of the book, and has been well named, "the back door of a book." Through the use of the index one can get quickly into that part of the book which he needs. The index is an alphabetical list of topics, names, and terms found in the book, and it can be a great time saver. To the adult reader, with good or bad reading habits, or none, a discussion of the parts of a book is dull indeed, but not so to the beginning reader. The fifth, sixth, or seventh grader can become excited about authors and indexes.

Practices In Better Reading

1. Emphasize a positive approach to reading—to concentrate, to remember, and to apply. Many children read an assignment with their mind prepared for negative results— "Ah, I can't remember this stuff."


2. Reading for pleasure and reading for work, used in the early years, should be converted, at about fourth or fifth grade level, into the three methods—skimming, careful reading, and intensive reading.


3. Use questions and tests in all reading. Teach the child to look for possible questions and answers.


4. Underline important words and details, make marginal symbols to point out important material. The child who reads "with a pencil in his hand" is the child who thinks about what he is reading.


5. It is well for the child to be reminded frequently that reading is not a simple process, learned in one year, but that the really good reader is constantly disciplining himself to improve.


6. There are no predetermined reading levels for children, such as third grade level or fifth grade level. Help your child choose what is interesting to him. With a little guidance he will always be beyond his grade level.


7. After the pattern of words has been mastered, the sentence must then be divided into fixations and ideas, and read for ideas.


8. Knowledge of paragraph structure is necessary for all methods of reading; and the ability to find the essential ideas of topics is a practice built almost entirely upon this knowledge.


9. Teach your child to make a Preliminary Survey before reading—the title, the section headings, the main topics of paragraphs. This should provide the answer to the question : What am I going to learn?


10. No reading assignment in school work is complete until it has been summarized with the book closed; this is best done by paragraphs or sections rather than by whole assignments.


11. Books are the memory of mankind, and their function is memory; they make available for us what is known. Whatever can be done to teach a deeper appreciation of them will add much to the life of the fortunate one being taught.


12. The very physical structure, parts, etc., of a book should be taught in the early years; much help is provided by knowing and using properly the separate parts.
    

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