The part of this reading that interested me the most was that of the Silent Reader. When we think about reading from a text it is always assumed that it will be read silently to one's self, but apparently that was not always the way of it.
I was always very annoyed during the years of K-12 when we would have to read aloud, because I would never be able to get all of what the text was saying. It is very difficult to study the meaning of a text when one is forced to listen to the fumbled attempts at pronounciation for classmates that result in having to reread the text later to fully grasp what it is saying.
This section did help me understand something about myself, and that is why I was put into support classes for reading when I transitioned from Elementary School to Middle School. When I was about 11 my fifth grade class was informed that we would be evaluated on how well we could read for placement in our middle school reading classes. At first I was very excited about this as I was already reading on an advanced level, but what the teachers failed to mention to us was that the evaluation was to be on reading aloud to a person you had never before met in your life. I was a very introverted child and did not like speaking in normal situations let alone ones were I would be graded. Needless to say, I did not do very well. I have held a sort of grudge toward the school system up until I read the Silent Reader. Now I know that they evaluated my reading aloud, because that was how reading was intended to be. Those who were able to read aloud were the ones who it seemed had a better grasp upon what was going on within a text, or so they thought. Perhaps my grudge was unfounded...
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