If you visit my blog often you will know that I like to read. You may even have picked up that I read quickly. Lately though, I’ve been realizing this is a mixed blessing. When I learnt to read I was a bit lazy and didn’t bother to stop and look up the words I did not know in a dictionary. I also didn’t bother to sound out these words. I didn’t need to know what the words sounded like in order to understand the story. I tend to get very engrossed when I read and I didn’t want to disengage from the book to look up a word. So as long as I could make some sense of the word from the context I just kept going. By not pronouncing all the words in my head I can read much quicker. However as an adult, I am now in the rather embarrassing situation of finding there are many words that I simply don’t know how to pronounce, even though I may know what they mean.
So how do you read? Do you read every word, sounding them out in your head? Or do you read quickly, skipping over everything that doesn’t move the story forward?
