Deep Reading on Digital Devices

Those of us who enjoy reading and who grew up with books printed on paper, may not see reading online as real reading.  But, that doesn't have to be true.  We know that reading levels have dropped, even for those in college, but once you understand why that does not have to the case.

Kids and adults learning to read and comprehend today don't know how to read deeply, but studies show they can learn.

Quotes from Being A Better Online Reader, July 16, 2014 The New Yorker 

The shift from print to digital reading may lead to more than changes in speed and physical processing. It may come at a cost to understanding, analyzing, and evaluating a text. Much of Mangen’s research focusses on how the format of reading material may affect not just eye movement or reading strategy but broader processing abilities. One of her main hypotheses is that the physical presence of a book—its heft, its feel, the weight and order of its pages—may have more than a purely emotional or nostalgic significance.

Deep reading defined: It’s the “sophisticated comprehension processes,” as Wolf calls it,......
“Reading is a bridge to thought,” she says. “And it’s that process that I think is the real endangered aspect of reading.

In a new study, the introduction of an interactive annotation component helped improve comprehension and reading strategy use in a group of fifth graders. It turns out that they could read deeply. They just had to be taught how.