This is interesting to me because I hadn't really considered your view of reading before, i.e, looking at words without understanding or interpretation. I would have considered those to be fundamental to what reading entails, otherwise, I could, for instance, say that my three year old could read, because he knows all the letters of the alphabet, and can see the words, and know which letters are in each word. But he doesn't know what the words are, or what they mean, and so I would personally say that my child cannot yet read. I've been learning Dutch (admittedly with no great deal of effort, I've just been doing it on Duolingo) and can recognise many words, but if you asked me if I could read a Dutch novel I would say no, because while, yes, I could literally pick it up and my eyes could follow each distinct word from one word to the next, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph - I wouldn't be able to tell you what any paragraph let alone the novel was actually ABOUT. (I might be able to tell you that there was a cow mentioned, for instance, or a train, but not what was actually being said about the cow or the train.)
I think about the idea of what reading "is" a lot, usually when I hear people say that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. Well, literally, no, it's not - it's listening, and reading requires eyes on a page. But it's still consuming and interpreting the written language. And the same people aren't up in arms about people "reading" Braille, even though that's tactile, not visual. Where am I going with this, anyway? I forget.
I didn't say 'looking at words without understanding or interpretation'. It's a spectrum rather than binary, so I can't give you an exact comprehension percentage where it stops being that and starts being reading – but I think the percentage is lower than most people assume because they forget how often they encountered new words as children in books they were inarguably reading.
Totally, so I guess it just depends how far people are into learning a language as to whether they can read a book in that language or not! You're totally right that if someone is pretty far along into learning a language they could probably be able to muddle through and understand most of it even if there were many words they didn't know. So I suppose it just depends whether the people you're describing who say they can't read a book in that language without a dictionary have gotten to that more advanced stage in learning, yet. I just thought I'd provide some clarity for the ambiguity you were describing; it's definitely a "literally cannot; I would not understand the text which is what constitutes reading" for people early in their learning journey and possibly more of what you're supposing for others further along. (Uncomfortable and hard, but possible.)
This is interesting to me because I hadn't really considered your view of reading before, i.e, looking at words without understanding or interpretation. I would have considered those to be fundamental to what reading entails, otherwise, I could, for instance, say that my three year old could read, because he knows all the letters of the alphabet, and can see the words, and know which letters are in each word. But he doesn't know what the words are, or what they mean, and so I would personally say that my child cannot yet read. I've been learning Dutch (admittedly with no great deal of effort, I've just been doing it on Duolingo) and can recognise many words, but if you asked me if I could read a Dutch novel I would say no, because while, yes, I could literally pick it up and my eyes could follow each distinct word from one word to the next, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph - I wouldn't be able to tell you what any paragraph let alone the novel was actually ABOUT. (I might be able to tell you that there was a cow mentioned, for instance, or a train, but not what was actually being said about the cow or the train.)
I think about the idea of what reading "is" a lot, usually when I hear people say that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. Well, literally, no, it's not - it's listening, and reading requires eyes on a page. But it's still consuming and interpreting the written language. And the same people aren't up in arms about people "reading" Braille, even though that's tactile, not visual. Where am I going with this, anyway? I forget.
I didn't say 'looking at words without understanding or interpretation'. It's a spectrum rather than binary, so I can't give you an exact comprehension percentage where it stops being that and starts being reading – but I think the percentage is lower than most people assume because they forget how often they encountered new words as children in books they were inarguably reading.
Totally, so I guess it just depends how far people are into learning a language as to whether they can read a book in that language or not! You're totally right that if someone is pretty far along into learning a language they could probably be able to muddle through and understand most of it even if there were many words they didn't know. So I suppose it just depends whether the people you're describing who say they can't read a book in that language without a dictionary have gotten to that more advanced stage in learning, yet. I just thought I'd provide some clarity for the ambiguity you were describing; it's definitely a "literally cannot; I would not understand the text which is what constitutes reading" for people early in their learning journey and possibly more of what you're supposing for others further along. (Uncomfortable and hard, but possible.)