Reading; for what purpose?

Importance of reading with the right purpose

Sigve Guttormsen; Reading for different purposes

When reading the title, you're maybe getting the feeling of boredom. Why do we relate reading with boredom? Probably because of the obliged school years where we as kids are forced to read, therefore forming bad relations to the term. Depending on what content you are reading and for what purpose the reading is serving, there are different ways of acquiring the information. We have intensive and extensive reading, skimming and scanning.

Extensive reading: This is the form of reading serving the purpose of pleasure. The typical content is naturally found in novels. During this reading process you're enabling yourself to be engrossed in the story without paying your full attention to every word. Reading a good book can enable your ability to read sentences instead of words. This way your brain can subconsciously provide the right context, even without including the most difficult words and phrases.

Intensive reading: Intensive reading includes really paying attention to what you're reading. It's the type of reading you use when you're reading a textbook in school, or making food based on a recipe. The overuse of forced, intensive reading can often affect pupils in a negative way. It's like any bad experience; you automatically relate the main component of the experience to something of a negative nature. However the skill is severely needed for learning purposes, therefore it's important to retain a balanced education between the use of intensive and extensive reading. 

Skimming and scanning: Both types include reading fast, and they are methods regularly used on a daily basis. Skimming through a text is when you're reading a newspaper or an article, just to get a basic idea of what the text is about. Therefore without paying too much attention to every word, or even every sentence, you can still acquire the main context. When you're scanning through a text, you have certain information required to be obtained. If you're solving a task and don't bother reading the whole paragraph, you can scan for the term in question and find the answer quickly. Not necessarily a good method when reading textbooks, because you'll maybe miss the context and meaning of the text. Thus a great way of obtaining important information from bus schedules, exam lists or when reading through a TOC (table of contents).

Research about Norwegian pupils' reading skills in English has shown that they're not able to adapt their reading to the purpose, because they are paying too much attention to every word. Research has also shown that textbooks are the pupils' main source of reading material. So like mentioned, reading gets a bad reputation because of the uneven distribution between extensive and intensive reading. Secondary source: (https://fronter.com/uit/links/files.phtml/55e6e15277a7b.1768679684$965779575$/Arkiv/Didactics/Basic+skill_prcent_3A+Reading/Reading+and+Understanding+Texts+LRU-1300.pdf) first source :( Helleskjær: 2005, 2008)

I like comparing reading to the physical exercise we all wish we were investing more time into. It's all about getting routine and seeing results as a motivation for further effort. Likewise with reading, you experience difficulties through the pages, however it all comes down the material you're reading, does it interest you or can you create and retain interest?