Models and the process of reading

Abstract

Linguists have continued to examine different aspects of reading over the years and suggest ideas on how it is or should be done and the factors involved if it is to be done effectively. Reading is a complex activity relating to thought and cognition in a complex way, involving “the use of complex skills if what is read is to be meaningful to the reader” (Jackson and Stockwell, 2011: 146). Part of what linguists have tried to suggest is the role that language plays in reading. This paper takes a look at what some experts have said about the relationship between language and reading, reading as a psycholinguistic process, sociolinguistic factors in the reading process and the top-down, bottom-up and interactive models of the reading process. Models provide the patterns that reading should take and process describes what happens when a reader is interacting with a text in order to derive meaning. The paper concludes that the interactive model is preferred to the other two because it reveals more appropriately what happens or should happen when a reader reads effectively.