Acquisition of a Reading Repertoire.
William R. Powell · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 1976
WHY give special attention to a topic concerned with the process of reading?Is it because of the exponential power of reading behavior?Is it because of the insatiable desire of man to have control over the power potential of his dynamic behaviors?Or is it because it offers a simple mystery to which the detective nature of man must curiously seek to solve?Certainly, if one wishes to have complete control over any system, he has to have an understanding of the process inputs within that system, otherwise the alchemy of change in the product will be due to chance regulation or control of the surface components.Unquestionably, reading behavior has exponential power.It is a generative process in that it gives the learner an increment of power to learn something else.And the greater the mastery over the process, the greater the degree of generative ability the individual has at his disposal.Unfortunately, the process of reading cannot be reproduced through imitative behavior.According to Ray "the act of reading is one of the few human behaviors that cannot be learned through imitation of others performing the act."'An individual cannot reproduce the process in himself by simple observation and imitation of others performing that process.Undoubtedly, the receptive nature of the reading act contributes to the exclusion of mere imitation alone.This receptive process is uniquely personal, extremely complex, and involves all the experiential, perceptive, cognitive, psychomotor, and affective attributes of the human sys- tem, It is more than a skill; it is a repertoire of abilities, aptitudes, and special accomplishments assimilated into one active reticular performance.However, to stipulate that reading cannot be learned imitatively does not imply that it cannot become habitual in nature at some