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Reading World
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Reading in meaningful
phrases
a
Walter Pauk
a
Professor Emeritus and Director of the Reading
Research Center, Cornell University

Available online: 28 Jan 2010

To cite this article: Walter Pauk (1981): Reading in meaningful phrases, Reading
World, 20:4, 286-286

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 286
Reading In Meaningful
Phrases
Walter Pauk
Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 20:47 14 July 2011
Do you believe that a person can
read two or three words at a glance?
Those who believe are not paying at-
tention to George McConkie, whose
years of meticulous research on per-
ceptual span reveal that "four letter
positions to the left of the center of
vision," and "about 5 or 6 letter posi-
tions to the right of the fixation" are
seen with meaning. That's a grand
total of 9 or 10 letter positions! So,
what's the basis for the "two or three
words at a glance" routine? Where's
the research?
One more salvo. Some, perhaps,
don't consider this a big bang any
more, but some still do: Stanford
Taylor's study of 1700 college readers
shows that the average number of
words seen in a single eye fixation
was 1.11.
Are some present day writers using
poetic license too liberally? Why such
a difference between research and
practice? I wonder whether the fol-
lowing comments make any sense to
you?
The problem or confusion stems, I
believe, from the words, "reading in
meaningful phrases." Many prac-
titioners, perhaps, take these words to
mean, "seeing in meaningful
phrases"; that is, physically taking in
a phrase at a glance. These are sepa-
rate ideas, but we can unknowingly
bend them to our liking as easily as
our shadows.
There's a big difference between
seeing an entire meaningful phrase,
READING WORLD
and mentally gathering and clustering
single words (seen one at a time) into a
meaningful phrase. In my article on
"Intonation," I said, "Gather up the
separate words into phrases made
meaningful by the swinging rhythm
(intonation) of your voice (silent
speech)."
This business of seeing gobs of
words in a single fixation (the neces-
sary presupposition of speed reading)
has been the reading profession's
Vietnam.
Unfortunately, recognition of this
problem does not automatically pro-
duce a cure, for what we have thought
and uttered as a truth for so long still
clings to many of us as tenaciously as a
barnacle to an ancient seacoast wall.
What to do? Let's put away our ex-
ercises on eye fixations and teach
comprehension. After all, isn't that
the purpose for reading?
REFERENCES
McConkie, George W., and others.
Toward the Use of Eye Movements
in the Study of Language
Processing. Technical Report No.
134. Cambridge, Mass.: Bolt,
Beranek and Newman, Inc. and
Urbana, Ill.: Center for the
Study of Reading, 1979. 38 pp. (ED
174968)
Taylor, Stanford E. "Eye Movements
in Reading: Facts and Fallacies,"
American Educational Research
Journal, Volume 2, November
1965, Number 4.