Reading to oneself is a modern activity which was almost unknown to the scholars of the classical. In (1)_____ world during the fifteenth century the term 'reading' (2)_____ meant reading aloud. Only during the nineteenth century did silent reading become commonplace. One should be wary, however, of (3)_____ that silent reading came about simply because reading aloud is a(n) (4)_____ to others. Examination of factors related to the (5)_____ development of silent reading reveals that it became the usual mode of reading for most adult reading tasks mainly because the tasks themselves changed in (6)_____. The last century saw a steady gradual increase in (7)_____ and thus in the number of readers. As readers increased, the number of potential listeners (8)_____, and thus there was some (9)_____ in the need to read aloud. As reading for the benefit of listeners grew less common, so came the flourishing of reading as a (10)_____ activity in such public places as libraries, railway carriages and offices, where reading aloud would (11)_____ distraction to other readers. Towards the end of the century there was still (12)_____ argument over whether books should be used for information or treated (13)_____, and over whether the reading of material such as newspapers was in some way (14)_____ weakening. Indeed this argument still remains with us in education. (15)_____ its virtues, the old shared literacy culture had gone and was (16)_____ by the printed mass media on the one hand and by books and periodicals for a (17)_____ readership on the other. By the end of the century students were being recommended to adopt attitudes to books and to use skills in reading them which were inappropriate, (18)_____ not impossible, for the oral reader. The social, cultural, and technological changes in the century had greatly (19)_____ what the term 'reading' (20)_____.