Because students at the secondary level are required to use textbooks, it is important for them to see what reading informational books has to offer. By browsing a variety of books and scanning them for something they want to know about, readers see the usefulness of reading. It is the job of teachers to construct situations where students can find personal reasons to make the effort to comprehend books. When a text refers to things or concepts with which the reader has no familiarity, he or she will not comprehend the material. If these options can be used to strengthen the basic competencies which students are expected to develop through reading, they will play a valuable instructional role.
Students also struggle with texts because of subjectivity.
Certain words or phrases may trigger irrelevant associations for readers which interfere with an accurate reading. Irrelevant associations cause readers to ignore portions of a text or pay an inordinate amount of attention to others, so that relationships among statements are distorted and meaning is misconstrued. The learner needs to hear other viewpoints about a text and compare these to his or her own thinking. Small group discussions are important in this regard. When a reader finds out that others read a text differently, the reader may be helped to realize that his or her interpretation was limited by a subjective view.