figure 4.3
Have you read the two items in figure 4.3? Did you notice that in the first the word ‘the’ is repeated and that in the second the word ‘springtime’ has lost its P? Most people do not notice either error and are, in the event, astounded to have it pointed out that they were there in the text at all. In precisely the same way a literacy student, reading back his own sentence one marvellous evening for the ‘feel’ of it, produced, with absolutely perfect assurance, not once but twice: ‘It took me years to pluck up the courage to come to the group’. He was astonished to be warmly congratulated (much later) on having read, without a moment’s hesitation or concern and without becoming aware of his ‘error’, the word ‘courage’, twice, although the word he had actually written onto the page was ‘nerve’ - an utterly different word, though with the same meaning in that context so fitting the reader’s current hypothesis very well. (And see ‘exploded text’ in the notes to chapter seven.)
Such ‘errors’ are the result of intelligent, top-down processing; the result of prediction, of the formation of good hypotheses. The mind has made its decision based, in large part, on what ought to have been, or might well have been, or probably was on the page rather than on what was actually there in fact. These decisions are not, of course, ‘errors’ at all. They are an indication that the purpose of reading has been achieved - the meaning of text is being accessed without paying too slavish heed to the detail of the text itself. This is exactly what we are seeking; it is skilled reading. It is looking for meaning rather than at trivial detail. A student reading ‘courage’ instead of ‘nerve’ in the right context without even noticing deserves a gold clock. They are demonstrating truly fluent reading. (Although the casual disregard for detail fluent readers demonstrate makes proof reading very difficult, of course, especially if the text is interesting! The fluent reader enjoying text will overlook, will simply not ‘see’, errors of detail which allow meaning still to be discerned.)
Life comes to us as an avalanche of details, mostly pretty well meaningless in themselves. Our minds, though, are meaning-making machines. We seek meaning everywhere. We screen everything which presents itself to us for its meaning and relevance. Much detail we ignore, or blank out as irrelevant. Literacy is no different. Text is just another, if rather particular, environmental stimulus, pointless unless meaning is found for it. Reading is just another example of finding meaning in the world. As part of our searching for meaning we are also organising and categorising creatures, continually seeking to meld detail into chunks of greater significance. We seek to manage meaningless detail by amalgamating it into meaning, easier and mentally cheaper to manage. Students should be encouraged to read the largest possible unit (morpheme or word) rather than the smallest (the letter). They should seek to have as little to do with detail, such as individual letters, as is reasonably possible, just as you are doing right now. We are able to manage fuzzy data and to cope with fuzzy thinking. We must avoid making students over-anxious about precision and attention to detail. We must allow them to accept the making of ‘errors’ (where the meaning is not lost) as good practice rather than failure. We have to help them out of their visual and mental tunnel, into a fuzzier but broader environment where the sunshine of meaning illuminates and where the odd stumble is seen as an acceptable price for increased freedom, greater confidence, evolving autonomy, understanding and joy.