Reading involves looking at graphic symbols and formulating mentally the sounds and ideas they represent.Concepts of reading have changed -1- over the centuries.During the 1950 s and 1960 s especially, increased attention has been devoted to -2- the reading process. -3- specialists agree that reading -4- a complex organization of higher mental -5-, they disagree -6- the exact nature of the process.Some experts, who regard language primarily as a code using symbols to represent sounds, -7- reading as simply the decoding of symbolssintosthe sounds they stand -8-.
These authorities -9- that meaning, being concerned with thinking, must be taught independently of the decoding process.Others maintain that reading is -10- related to thinking, and that a child who pronounces sounds without -11- their meaning is not truly reading.The reader, -12- some, is not just a person with a theoretical ability to read but one who -13- reads.
Many adults, although they have the ability to read, have never read a book in its -14-. By some expert they would not be -15- as readers.Clearly, the philosophy, objectives, methods and materials of reading will depend on the definition one use.By the most -16- and satisfactory definition, reading is the ability to -17- the sound-symbols code of the language, to interpret meaning for various -18-, at various rates, and at various levels of difficulty, and to do -19- widely and enthusiastically. -20- reading is the interpretation of ideas through the use of symbols representing sounds and ideas.