Common faults and eye movement

There are a number of bad habits which poor readers adopt. Most of these involve using extra body movement in the reading process. In efficient reading, the muscles of the eye should make the only external movement. Of course there must be vigorous mental activity, but extra movements, such as pointing with the finger or moving the lips, do not help reading and often slow it down.
A fault that is often seen when readers are trying to concentrate is pointing to the words with a finger or pen. While marking the line might be helpful for beginning readers, it is certainly unnecessary for normal readers. Besides, slowing down the reader, pointing at lines or words tends to cause the reader to focus his attention on the wrong thing. The important thing to concentrate on while reading is not the location of the words on the page but the idea that the author is trying to communicate.

Another common fault easily observed is head movement. The belief that this head movement aids reading is pure nonsense. Eye muscles are quite capable of shifting the eyes from word to word, and they need no help from neck muscles. Often readers are quite unaware that they are moving their heads while reading, and they need to be reminded not to do it.
Vocalization is another fault. Some poor readers think it necessary to pronounce aloud each word as it is read. The chief disadvantage of pronouncing words while you read them is that it tends to tie reading speed to speaking speed, and the silent reading of most normal readers is nearly twice as fast as their speaking. Usually, this fault can be eliminated in readers by their own conscious effort, possibly with the aid of a few reminders.

Subvocalisation is the most difficult of all types of vocalization, where there is no body movement. But an inner type of speech persists: within the reader’s mind, he is saying each word to himself, clearly pronouncing each words and then listening to himself, as it were. This fault is difficult, but not impossible, to cure. Probably, the main reason for this problem is the nature of written language. English is written in an alphabet: a set of symbols which stand for speech sounds. The speech sounds in turn stand for an idea or thought. But it is not necessary to say or hear the word in order to get its meaning. It is quite possible to look at the printed word and get the idea directly. Readers should practice grasping quickly the ideas presented on a printed page and not reading aloud without error.
When the eyes are reading a line of print, they make a series of short jerky movements along the line, stopping after every one or two words for a very brief pause. The eyes do not, as some people erroneously believe, make a smooth even movement along the line. Each time the eyes stops, it sees a certain span of material, and this span is call the ‘span of recognition’. The span of recognition for most readers is a little over one word. When eye movements are photographed and recorded on a moving strip of film, it can be shown that good readers do actually see two or three words in a fixation while poor readers see one word or less per fixation.
One more reading fault the readers might see while observing another reading or become conscious of in their own reading is the making of ‘regressions’. A regression is a backward movement along a line of print. All readers make regressions, but good readers make very few and bad readers make a large number. Possibly this bad habit was started by the reader’s reading material not being properly graded for him. Forcing him to read too difficult has engendered the habit of making regressions. To cure this habit, the reader should be given ample amounts of easy reading.

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