Just wondering how the supervisors should monitor the students' progress. My supervisor sometimes asks me how many articles I read a day or how many chapters of a certain book I read. I want to hear from you guys...

My supervisor checks my progress by how often I give her a piece of work to comment on. I only meet with her every month or so, and I'll have done a chapter/journal article/conference paper to give her beforehand. She looks for output, not how much I've read etc. Sounds like your sup is micro-managing you a bit...

I think it depends very much on what stage you're at. Like Sue my sup tends just to review practical work and written output. We agree targets and tasks that need completing and keep in touch if there are problems. At the start of my phd though we had meetings every fortnight and my sup would check up on my reading or general knowledge - just to get a feel for where I was at. If you're in the early stages and haven't had a chance to produce any work yet, it may be that this is all your sup can use to guage how you're settling in. If you feel micro-managed though as Sue suggests, you could always tell your sup that you'll produce a summary of what you've read in "x" weeks, and just check in then.