Silent reading is reading done silently, or without speaking the words being read.[1]

Before the reintroduction of separated text (spaces between words) in the Late Middle Ages, the ability to read silently was considered rather remarkable.[2][3]

In contrast, reading aloud activates many more parts of the brain due to the dual-route of feedback when pronouncing and reading.[4][5][6]

History

A Catholic monk reading in a monastery library

Scholars assume that reading aloud (Latin clare legere) was the more common practice in antiquity, and that reading silently (legere tacite or legere sibi) was unusual.[7] In his Confessions, Saint Augustine remarks on Saint Ambrose's unusual habit of reading silently in the 4th century AD.[7][8]

In 18th-century Europe, the then new practice of reading alone in bed was, for a time, considered dangerous and immoral. As reading became less a communal, oral practice, and more a private, silent one – and as sleeping increasingly moved from communal sleeping areas to individual bedrooms, some raised concern that reading in bed presented various dangers, such as fires caused by bedside candles. Some modern critics, however, speculate that these concerns were based on the fear that readers – especially women – could escape familial and communal obligations and transgress moral boundaries through the private fantasy worlds in books.[9]

Eye movement and silent reading rate

Reading is an intensive process in which the eye quickly moves to assimilate the text – seeing just accurately enough to interpret groups of symbols.[10] It is necessary to understand visual perception and eye movement in reading to understand the reading process.

When reading, the eye moves continuously along a line of text, but makes short rapid movements (saccades) intermingled with short stops (fixations). There is considerable variability in fixations (the point at which a saccade jumps to) and saccades between readers, and even for the same person reading a single passage of text. When reading, the eye has a perceptual span of about 20 slots. In the best-case scenario and reading English, when the eye is fixated on a letter, four to five letters to the right and three to four letters to the left can be clearly identified. Beyond that, only the general shape of some letters can be identified.[11]

Research published in 2019 concluded that the silent reading rate of adults in English for non-fiction is in the range of 175 to 300 words per minute (wpm); and for fiction the range is 200 to 320 words per minute.[12][13]

Eye fixation point[14]

Dual-route hypothesis to reading aloud

In the early 1970s the dual-route hypothesis to reading aloud was proposed, according to which there are two separate mental mechanisms involved in reading aloud, with output from both contributing to the pronunciation of written words.[4][5][6] One mechanism is the lexical route whereby skilled readers can recognize a word as part of their sight vocabulary. The other is the nonlexical or sublexical route, in which the reader "sounds out" (decodes) written words.[6][15]

Subvocalization

Subvocalization is the sense that a reader is combining silent reading with internal sounding of the words. Advocates of speed reading claim it can be a bad habit that slows reading and comprehension, but some researchers say this is a fallacy since there is no actual speaking involved. Instead, it may help skilled readers to read since they are using the phonological code to understand words (e.g., the difference between PERmit and perMIT).[16][17][18]

Use in education

In education, it has been criticized for not helping children who are not fluent in the language they are reading.[19]

Psychological effects

Reading aloud may have benefits compared to silent reading, such as improved memory or comprehension of material.[20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lynch, Matthew (2022-06-06). "Silent Reading: Everything You Need to Know". The Edvocate. Retrieved 2023-03-09.
  2. ↑ "The Silent Readers". Alberto Manguel, Chapter 2 of A History of Reading (New York; Viking, 1996). Retrieved 2013-06-20.
  3. ↑ "How to Read Medieval Handwriting (Paleography)". chaucer.fas.harvard.edu.
  4. 1 2 Coltheart, Max; Curtis, Brent; Atkins, Paul; Haller, Micheal (1 January 1993). "Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches". Psychological Review. 100 (4): 589–608. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.100.4.589.
  5. 1 2 Yamada J, Imai H, Ikebe Y (July 1990). "The use of the orthographic lexicon in reading kana words". The Journal of General Psychology. 117 (3): 311–323. PMID 2213002.
  6. 1 2 3 Pritchard SC, Coltheart M, Palethorpe S, Castles A (October 2012). "Nonword reading: comparing dual-route cascaded and connectionist dual-process models with human data". J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 38 (5): 1268–1288. doi:10.1037/a0026703. PMID 22309087.
  7. 1 2 Carruthers, Mary. 2008. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. 2nd. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 212 ff.
  8. ↑ Jajdelska, Elspeth. 2007. Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 5.
  9. ↑ Mavrody, Nika (19 May 2017). "The Dangers of Reading in Bed". The Atlantic. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  10. ↑ "Eye Movements and Reading, Louisa Moats, Carol Tolman, Reading rockets". 2009.
  11. ↑ Mark Seidenberg (2017). Language at the speed of light. pp. 61–66. ISBN 978-0465080656.
  12. ↑ "Average reading speed, Research Digest, The British Psychological Society". 13 June 2019.
  13. ↑ "How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate, Science Direct, 2019-12-10". Journal of Memory and Language. 109: 104047. December 2019. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047. S2CID 202267075.
  14. ↑ Hunziker, Hans-Werner (2006). Im Auge des Lesers foveale und periphere Wahrnehmung: vom Buchstabieren zur Lesefreude (In the eye of the reader: foveal and peripheral perception – from letter recognition to the joy of reading) (in German). Transmedia Zurich. ISBN 978-3726600686.
  15. ↑ Zorzi, Marco; Houghton, George; Butterworth, Brian (1998). "Two routes or one in reading aloud? A connectionist dual-process model". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 24 (4): 1131–1161. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.24.4.1131. ISSN 1939-1277.
  16. ↑ Seidenberg, Mark (2017). Language at the speed of sight. New York: Basic Books. p. 75. ISBN 978-1541617155.
  17. ↑ Moidel, Steve (1998). Speed Reading for Business. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-0764104015.
  18. ↑ Rayner, Keith (1995). The Psychology of Reading. Pollatsek, Alexander. London: Routledge. pp. 192–194. ISBN 978-0805818727.
  19. ↑ "For Students Who Are Not Yet Fluent, Silent Reading Is Not the Best Use of Classroom Time". Reading Rockets. 2013-04-24. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  20. ↑ Hardach, Sophie. "Why you should read this out loud". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2022-09-29.
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