How Do You Read?
People worry about reading. Adults about how much and how fast they read, and children about how to do it. Schools worry about how to teach it; parents about how it is taught. Being unable to count is fashionable (remember all those public figures despairing over decimalisation?); being unable to read is a personal disaster.
Horizon tonight considers the reading process - how it works for the fluent, how it should be taught to beginners. One of the contributors says learning to read should be a natural process, almost as natural as learning to speak. And mistakes can be useful, because mistakes are an intrinsic part of the reading process, even among skilled and fluent adults.
Consider also the little girl in the programme who learned to read without being taught - when She was three. It may not happen for all children but it could change your way of thinking about reading. Narrator
FRANK GILLARD
Film editor CHRISTOPHER WOOLLEY Editor PETER GOODCHILD
Producers STEPHEN ROSE and HARRIS WATTS
A national campaign 'The Right to Read' is being launched this autumn to help Britain's two million adult illiterates. This will include a peak-time BBCtv series to encourage people with reading problems to get help and a radio series for those teaching adults to read.