A、The balance between lower and higher levels of comprehension. B、The balance between the readers’ expectations and the meaning

Reading is thought to be a kind of conversation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions, as it were, to the text and gets answers, in the light of these he puts further questions, and so on.
    For most of the time this conversation goes on below the level of consciousness. At times, however, we become aware of it. This is usually when we are running into difficulties, when mismatch is occurring between expectations and meaning. When successful matching is being experienced, our questioning of the text continues at the unconscious level.
    Different people converse with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the page; others take off imaginatively from the words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension which is written in the text. The latter represents higher levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for advanced readers.
    There is another conversation which from our point of view is equally important, and that is to do not with what is read but with how it is read. We call this a process conversation as opposed to a content conversation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the strategies we employ in reading. If we are an advanced reader our ability to hold a content conversation with a text is usually pretty well developed. It is precisely the process conversation that is of importance when we are seeking to develop our reading to meet the new demands being placed upon us by studying at a higher level.