What is Reading:- The following are a few definitions / descriptions regarding the process of reading.

1.Reading is thinking under the stimulus of the printed page (webster, 1982:30)

2. Reading is a Psycho- Linguistic guessing game (webster, 1982:19)

3. Reading Comprehension means understanding a written text. understanding a written text is extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible. Francoise Grellet 1991:3.

The above definitions / description suggest that when we read any piece of text, we understand the given text at three levels-

1. Pure, literal response to the familiar words on the page- there is no in- depth understanding.

2. Recognition of the writer's meaning . In other words, we read and recognise the intention of the author in writing the given text.

3. Personal experience, which aids you to understand the given matter.

All these three levels could be describd thus: When you read, you read the lines, read between the lines and also read beyound the lines. So reading is nothing but a decoding process.

Purposes Of Reading :- We read many things in our day-to-day lives . Let us name a few of them:

1.Newspapers and magazines

2.Advertisements, leaflets, Pamphlets

3.Textbook, novels, short-stories

4.Letters, telegrams

5.Recipes, puzzles,menus

6.Articles, reports,legal documents

7.Dictionaries, telephone directories

8. Cartoons, comic strips

9.Time - tables, maps, statistical graphs and diagrams etc.