Rate of comprehension of reading; its measurement and its relation to comprehension.

Abstract

Correlation coefficients ranging from -.47 to .92 have been reported. 449 450The Journal of Educational Psychology acuity of vision, etc. It depends, finally, upon the purpose for which the reading is done. For example, the reader may wish only to determine in general terms what the material is about. He may seek only to answer certain specific questions, or to locate certain specific facts. On the other hand, he may stop to ponder over the importance or the implication of the ideas presented. He may pause to memorize some of them. He may consider ways in which he can make possible use of these ideas. He may reorganize them to fit them better to his needs. He may think of new questions as he reads and re-read or continue reading with these questions in mind. What he does while he reads depends, then, on the purpose for which he undertook the reading in the first place or upon purposes which develop during the course of the reading. The nature of these purposes is conditioned by his educational background.Whether or not one considers all of these acts as a part of the reading process in the technical sense, or whether or not one considers all of the skills and the abilities exercised as reading skills, it must be acknowledged that these acts take place during reading and that a part of the time each individual spends in reading is given over to just such acts. It is apparent, then, that there is no meaningful 'single' reading rate (in words per minute) for any given individual, but that, instead, he reads at many different rates, each specific to a different purpose. It follows also, that for any given group of individuals, the degree of relationship between reading rate and any other variable may depend upon the purpose or purposes for which they read, that this relation will be most meaningful only if they all read for the same purpose, and that, accordingly, there may be many different degrees of relationship, each specific to a different purpose.It is, therefore, essential in a relationship study that the purpose of the reading be very carefully defined and controlled. This means, of course, that the purpose must be set in advance for all readers and must be clearly understood by them. Obviously, many of the purposes suggested above, especially those initiated during the course of the reading, can not be so defined and controlled. Hence, any rate-comprehension relationship study which is to yield meaningful results is limited not only by the fact that it must be based on reading done by a specific * The standard procedure for testing the significance of differences between pairs of related measures was employed (", p. 68f). ( -4.379 (<«t -2.576).

How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate

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“…People involved in reading improvement have stressed the importance of flexibility in reading (e.g., Blommers, 1944;McDonald, 1958;Harris, 1961;Witty, 1969;Thompson & Whitehill, 1970). Typically they indicate that a person should vary his reading processes, including his rate of reading, according to the materials being read and his purpose for reading them.…”

Explaining School Performance in Literature: some Strategies of Causal Analysis

“…The p 43 relationship, however, is more problematic. In the 1930's and '40's the myth that fast readers were the most inaccurate, or its obverse, that slow readers got more out of what they read, was undermined by Tinker (1939), and Blommers & Lindquist (1944); but unfortunately replaced by the equally simplistic myth of a strong positive association between rate and comprehension. It was the issue regarding the validity of this alternative and widely believed relationship that prompted the inclusion of the reading rate variable in the test model.…”