“Masterpieces are masterpieces not because they are flawless but because they’ve tapped into something essential to us, at the heart of who we are and how we live” and in high school, English classrooms across the country students are being taught various literary masterpieces from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (Hey, Boo). These works are typical examples of writing and the aesthetical imagery and stories it can exhibit. It is only natural that we would want to share that beauty with the next generation and fortunately, teachers have just that opportunity with their students. Literature can both inspire and motivate students when it is well taught. However, an increasing problem is prevalent within high schools everywhere; students do not like to read. The love of learning through literature is something that starts long before high school begins, but even those who already love literature seem to lose interest in reading around the time of their high school education. This brings forth the question of why students are losing interest in reading. What is going so wrong in our schools that are causing avid readers to become suddenly so disinterested in reading?
There is not just one answer to this massive question. The reasons students lose interest in literature vary from poor teaching methods like memorization that incite students to turn to spark notes, to an extreme emphasis on efferent teaching, a method that focuses on a predetermined answer. Problems even arise from teachers who over teach and end up hindering student understanding. The choice of reading material is another leading cause of disinterest. Students find the classics outdated, hard to understand, and difficult to r...
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With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
The book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher is the ugly truth of the policies adopted in the school system to prioritized test taking strategies for the most part of the day and killing the enjoyment of students reading. The author points out that students’ reading has shifted negatively and the reading percentage has decreased. Students hate to read and classic novels are slowly vanishing from classrooms. The findings to Gallagher’s discoveries are research based and heartbreaking as the movement of standardized testing has been reinforced in most states. There are too many standards to teach and teachers are held accountable for students testing performance. Therefore, educators are forced to do test preps where students are provided with facts to be memorized and lack of comprehension. The author emphasized that students are no longer able to choose a book for the enjoyment of reading. Students’ interests are no longer taken into consideration. Students are reading less and less at school to make time for test prep. Gallagher says that as an educator and parent young
Roberts, Edgar V., Jacobs, Henry E. “Literature.” The Lesson. 470-475. Toni Cade Bambara. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 2001
Updike, John. "A&P." Thinking and Writing About Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 981-86. Print.
By using words such as “mediocre,” and other words, Prose shows that in her own reasoning, the literature is not so much literature, but a waste of time that is taking attention away from actual good books that have content will instill a love for reading. Prose destroys the idea that the books provided to the students in the educational system should be deemed best sellers because she explains that the only reason this books are so well know, is because of the fact that they are forced down the throats of innocent teenagers. She also explains that teenagers are incapable of reading such stories because of the “overuse” of metaphors, and that we cannot read line for line books. If we cannot read a book line for line, than what should we
...Literature. Vol.1. Ed. Rossi, Patricia. Addison Wesley Educational Publishers Inc. New York: Copyright 1999. 2655-57.
Nilson, Allen Pace & Kenneth L. Donelson. “Stages of Literary Appreciation” in Literature for Today’s Young Adults. Longman, 2001: pp. 35-42. [PDF in Blackboard]
In a world dominated by technology, reading novels has become dull. Instead of immersing into books, we choose to listen to Justin Bieber’s new songs and to scroll through Instagram posts. We have come to completely neglect the simple pleasures of flipping through pages and getting to finally finish a story. Sherman Alexie and Stephan King’s essays attempt to revive this interest in books that has long been lost. They remind us of the important role that reading plays in our daily lives. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” for instance, demonstrates how being literate saved the narrator from the oppressive nature of society. The author explains that even though he was capable of reading complex books at an astonishingly young
Andrew Solomon has some valid arguments in his article, and he tries to persuade the readers through logos, pathos, and ethos. Solomon wants the readers to understand the importance of reading, and how its decline can be harmful to the nation. To reinforce his arguments, Solomon shares a variety of examples, for instance, he mentions that reading helps improve memory and concentration, and the decline of reading is causing mental “atrophy.” He also calls upon the readers to take some sort of action to raise reading rates and help the society. This can grant the readers a form of power and control over the crisis that will lead to an em...
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Tenth edition. Edited by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman Publishers, pp. 371-377, 2008.
He too quickly dismisses the idea of reading on your own to find meaning and think critically about a book. For him, Graff states that “It was through exposure to such critical reading and discussion over a period of time that I came to catch the literary bug.” (26) While this may have worked for Graff, not all students will “experience a personal reaction” (27) through the use of critical discussion.
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
Disliking Books By Gerald Graff is about the authors own aversions, starting as a young boy, who grew up simply disliking reading books, for both academic and leisure purposes. Growing up in his neighborhood, it was highly disregarded for a boy to enjoy reading; they were looked at as “sissies” and had the potential to have been beaten up. He maintained this ideology all the way into his college career, where ironically, he majored in English. Although by this point he replaced his fear of being beaten up with the fear of failing his college courses, he was able to squeak by with doing his homework at the mare minimum. He felt as though he wasn’t able to quite relate, much less, enjoy the text. It wasn’t until his junior year he was finally able to find the spark he had been lacking all these years. It was over the controversial ending of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Some of the critics believe the story really ended when the boys basically stole Jim away and other believed it was actually when they learned that Jim had already been freed. Finally realizing that “reading and intellectual discussion might actually have something to do with my real life, I became less embarrassed about using the intellectual formulas” (Graff, Para 12). He then turned to more and more literary works to understand further of what reading critically can help you appreciate, even turning his lesson into his future profession as an English Professor.
Roberts, Edgar V., and Robert Zweig, Editors. Literature: An Introduction to Read and Writing. 5th Compact ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 226. Print.