Tests such as these reach out for distinct factual knowledge. This stuff can't be taught. You have to pick it up and reinforce it through regular and wide reading. As a recent study released by the National Endowment for the Arts establishes ("To Read or Not To Read"), fewer and fewer people, and especially young people, are reading. Reading online doesn't count as reading. Text messaging, MySpace narcissism, and retrieving info on Wikipedia or Googling and then skimming an article does not add up to real reading. Most people who support this retrieval and grab bag reading as being real reading are people who have built up a store of knowledge through real reading in the past. 17 year olds of today haven't, or even started, doing this. They're on their cell phones, playing video games or watching TV or YouTube.

I know too many who never read, entire families with never a book in the house except required textbooks.

Reading online doesn't count? Wha??? My son downloads novels and reads them on his computer because it is cheaper than buying the books (or they are only available in downloadable form). He will stay up too late reading them because he is engrossed in the story. But, hey there was no ink involved, so that's not reading!

Generally, no, this isn't reading. Though your son may be an exception, screen skimming does not count as reading. Our brains work differently when decoding the printed page as compared to visualizing screens. Full, and definitive research is yet to be done on this, but try reading (and like most books this is not online, not in the public domain, which is really a very limited source of books) Maryanne Wolf, _Proust and the Squid: The Story of the Science of Reading_.

hidaily:

Generally, no, this isn't reading. Though your son may be an exception, screen skimming does not count as reading.

How is reading an e-book not really reading? That sounds patently ridiculous. An ebook usually shows up in pdf or lit format, and completely resembles the pages of a book, except it's on a computer screen. You can learn things from an e-book, enjoy a story, etc. I read both print and electronic books, and I consider both to be true reading. I mean, both of them entail reading black printed letters against white backgrounds...so the difference is?

I'm always surprised when I hear about people who have read entire books online. I've been asking computer oriented people for years if they have ever read a whole book online and not one person ever answered affirmatively. So I assume the breed may be rare but becoming more commonplace.

In Wolf's book, she raises the point that contexts are crucial in terms of reading. Screens fill with information instantaneously while books add to comprehension because they require/promote "motivation to process the information [on the page] more inferentially, analytically and critically"[?]. She says this while agreeing with you, that the basic linguistic and visual processes "might be identical."

Wolf's big concern, and mine, is that most 17 year olds do not "read" full blown, book texts online. They open up Slate-like interfaces and start clicking away. That, of course, is getting a long way from deep reading. They prepare for recall and forgetting. It's grazing, not digesting. It's not reading.