Reading

The Simple English Wiktionary has a definition for: reading.

Reading is understanding writing in a language. Fundamentally, reading is the way people look at certain marks and know what they mean.

Once it was possible to go through life without reading. Writing goes back in human history only a few thousand years, and 200 years ago most men could not read or write. We know this is true because they could not write their own names on marriage records in churches. Most men worked in farming, and you can do most of that job without being able to read. The wives could read: they lived at home before marriage and their mothers taught them. The boys went to work at, say, nine or ten, and never learnt to read.

Reading is understanding what is printed or written.^[1][2] It is how you get information about something that is written. It can only be done if one knows the language. Otherwise, you can only learn from other people telling you verbally, or from practical demonstration.

1. ↑ Russell Stauffer 1970. Language experience approach to the teaching of reading. New York, Harper & Row.
2. ↑ Anthony V. Manzo; Ula Casale Manzo (1995). Teaching children to be literate: a reflective approach. LiteracyLeaders. pp. 283–285. ISBN 978-0-15-300560-2.