* Reading is one of the four language skills.
* It's a receptive skill.
To do this we need to understand the language of the text at word level, sentence level and whole text level. We also need to connect the message of the text to our knowledge of the word.
We need to use our knowledge of the world to see the connection between two sentences (coherence). The grammatical links between the sentneces (cohesion) also help us to see the connection between them.
Reading subskills.
We usually use a subskill called reading for specific information or scanning when we scan, we don't read the whole text, e.g. when we look for a number in a telephone directory.
Another subskill is reading for gist or skimming, i.e. reading quickly through a text to get a general idea of what it is about.
A third reading subskill is reading for detail. If you read a letter from someone you haven't heard from a long time, you probably read like this.
Another way of reading is extensive reading. It involves reading long pieces of text.
Reading is a complicated process. It involves understanding letters, words and sentences, understanding the connections between sentences (coherence and cohesion), understanding different text types, making sence of the text through our knowledge of the world and using the appropiate reading subskill.
