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Let us study the use of the expression, “to be
guided”, by studying the use of the word
“reading”.
By “reading” I here mean the activity of translating
script into sounds, also of writing according to dictation or of copying
in writing a page of print, and such like; reading in this sense
does not involve any such thing as understanding what you read.
The use of the word “reading” is, of course,
extremely familiar to us in the circumstances of our ordinary life (it
would be extremely difficult to describe these circumstances even
roughly).
A person, say an Englishman, has as a child gone through one of the
normal ways of training in school or at home, he has learned to read his
language, later on he reads books, newspapers, letters,
etc.
What happens when he reads the newspaper? ‒ ‒
His eyes glide along the printed words, he pronounces them aloud or
to himself, but he pronounces certain words just taking their pattern in
as a whole, other words which he pronounces after having seen their first
few letters only, others again he reads out letter by letter.
We should also say that he had read a sentence if while letting his
eyes glide along it he had said nothing aloud or to himself, but on being
asked afterwards what he had read he was able to reproduce the sentence
verbatim or in slightly different words.
He may also act as what we might call a mere reading machine, I mean,
paying no attention to
68.
what he spoke, perhaps
concentrating his attention on something totally different.
We should in this case sa[t|y] that he read if he acted
faultlessly like a reliable machine. ‒ ‒
Compare with this case the case of a beginner.
He reads the words by spelling them out painfully.
Some of the words however, he just guesses from their contexts, or
possibly he knows the piece by heart.
The teacher then says that he is pretending to read the words, or just
that he is not really reading them.
If, looking at this example, we asked ourselves what reading
was, we should be inclined to say that it was a particular conscious
mental act.
This is the case in which we say, “Only he knows whether
he is reading; nobody else can really know it”.
Yet we must admit that as far as the reading of a particular word
goes, exactly the same thing might have happened in the
beginner's mind when he “pretended” to read as
what happened in the mind of the fluent reader when he read the
word.
We are using the word “reading” in a different way
when we talk about the accomplished reader on the one hand and the
beginner on the other hand.
What in the one case we call an instance of reading we don't
call an instance of reading in the other. ‒ ‒
Of course we are inclined to say that what happened in the
accomplished reader and in the beginner when they pronounced the word
could not have been the same.
The difference lying, if not in their
conscious states, then in the unconscious regions of their
minds, or in their
brains.
We here imagine two mechanisms, the internal working of which we can
see, and this internal working is the real criterion for a
person's reading or not
69.
reading.
But in fact no such mechanisms are known to us in these cases.
Look at it in this way: |
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