Active Reading - Background

How is reading active?
For literate adults, reading usually seems natural and easy—even automatic. Yet research has found that even when we are unaware of it, we are actually engaged in complex cognitive and affective processes when we are reading.

This is why people almost always put some of their own meaning into what they read. If you asked five people to read the same story and then tell you about it, you would get five slightly different versions because each individual would bring unique experiences and expectations to the reading. Similarly, different readers may take away different understandings of something, such as an employee manual, depending on what they are planning to do with the information.

In other words, reading does not mean passively taking in information from the text exactly as the author wrote it. In fact, the best readers are the ones who are the most active in their reading. This means they take control of the reading process and shape it to suit their purposes.

How do active readers read?
Active reading involves integrating new information in a way that is meaningful and useful. Before they begin reading, active readers select and activate a schema that is relevant to what they are about to read. A schema is a set of knowledge and experience that is stored in our brains and brought to the foreground whenever we encounter something new.

Selecting the relevant schema prepares us for reading by helping us to:
• determine the purpose for reading
• decide which questions to ask of the text
• use our prior knowledge to understand the new information and figure out difficult parts of the text
• use our prior knowledge and other parts of the text to read between the lines.

During reading, active readers question the text, select from it, add to it, and think critically about how it will work for them. Even after they finish reading, active readers continue to reflect on and evaluate their understanding of the text and how to apply the new information.

How does active reading involve strategies?
Reading requires not only skills, but also strategies—ways of using skills in a thoughtful, deliberate and targeted manner. Strategic readers use metacognition , or “thinking automatically about thinking,” to make conscious decisions about the skills they use in relation to what, why and how they are reading.
In contrast to more passive readers, active readers take command of the process before, during and after reading, using strategies such as the following.

Before reading:
• think about the purpose for reading
• activate prior knowledge
• preview the text to gain an overview
• think about relevant reading strategies to use

During reading:
• read silently or out loud (whichever works best for you)
• take notes or use graphic organizers when appropriate
• monitor for understanding (“Does this make sense? How does it fit with what I already know?”)
• stop and think at moments of difficulty; ask yourself, “What would make sense here?”
• go back and reread parts that were challenging or interesting.

After reading:
• evaluate your understanding (“Does that make sense? Will this work?”)
• try out what you learned
• talk about what you read with someone else
• check the information by going to another text.

Why aren't my students more active in their reading?
Research shows that young children are almost always very active in their reading. This means they:
• initiate reading (ask, or even demand, to be read to)
• ask questions
• take risks, experiment and guess at words
• insist that others help
• show off their reading
• enjoy exploring and playing with language through rhymes, songs and silly sayings.

Unfortunately, research also shows that many students appear to become more passive about reading as they grow older. Their motivation for reading declines and their willingness to be actively involved in it diminishes, especially in the case of school-based reading. These changes may happen because students:
• fear that others will laugh at them if they make a mistake
• lose confidence and feel anxious, overwhelmed or incapable when they look at print
• have not been encouraged to make their own choices
• are distracted by issues with their peers or family
• have been more successful at developing strategies for avoiding reading than trying to learn how to do it
• have been asked to read material that is too difficult for them.

Often, our students have been caught up in a vicious cycle. One researcher describes what happens to children who struggle with reading as the “Matthew Effect.” Just as “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” the less able that students are to read, the more they avoid it; the more they avoid it, the more difficult it becomes. Over time, these students also become less and less motivated.