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Why recreational reading counts, too—not just the kind for school or work
January 10, 2009 | 9:17 am
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By David Rothman
Just how to get people to develop their reading skills? Work or school reading isn’t enough. How about the recreational variety? It can sharpen reading skills used on the job or in the classroom.
Now comes a USA Today headline, Literacy study: 1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story.
Might pleasure reading—of both fiction and nonfiction, everything from romance books to sports biographies—help the illiterate develop their skills? E-books and a TeleRead-style national digital library system could drive down the costs of books matching people’s individual interests.
Among the reasons for the one-in-seven stat, an expert cited in USA Today mentions immigration, learning disabilities and dropping out of school. The right e-books and other items can’t solve these problems single-handedly. But they can at least increase interest in reading. So could suitably trained teachers and librarians, who, among other things, could use resources on the Net to whet interest in books.
Related: Dudes don’t read: The book biz’s self-fulfilling prophesy, in the Huffington Post. E-books can draw both sexes, but at least they can take advantage of many males’ gadget fixations.
Image credit: CC-licensed photo from Lori Greig.
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Comments:
Yes! Reading for pleasure can increase not only reading skills, but grammer, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary.
It must be very hard going through life unable to read. It would severely impair a person’s ability to learn and can result in a poorer quality of life, just because they can’t read.
While we’re at it, let’s mention schools passing students from grade to grade to graduation who can’t read. What’s with that? We should all be ashamed.
But yes, I have seen it myself – reading ANYTHING that’s been proofread and corrected will improve a person’s skills. The more, the better.
By the same token, reading this new (r u ok?) shorthand crap is going to degrade a lot of people’s skills, and I’m sad to know it.
Let’s be honest. How much reading do we do for school or work?
Most of it is just reading short instructions, or enough of a manual to figure out a problem. Sure, you read full books in school, but not enough to develop good reading skills.
Ask any elementary teacher that teaches reading. Pleasure reading is essential to developing good reading habits. Especially oral reading.
Shorthand is correct grammer in 10 year like it or not, the language is moving again, what you consider correct grammer would probably rank as lowly slang 100years ago.
Theres a point reading is much like walking or riding a bike you “can” learn it in classes but to achive the point where it’s as natual as hearing spoken word it’s going to have to be something you do for fun and something you do alot.
Access to volumes of stuff thats exiting to read is core here, and lets face it doing recession that source is the internet and mostly ad financed or public domain sources, taking over not really from books but the cheap low culture magazines that clasics like the three musketeers was originally published in.
First of all, argh! It’s “grammar” not “grammer”. Anyway…
Language is moving. It is always moving. Daniel, you seem to take this as some sort of insult that “your” language may not be the ultimate in communication. And that’s really the key, here: communication.
A standard for language exists to facilitate communication. (This is especially important when the participant is not a native speaker.) As long as the standard moves slowly (you yourself use the number of 100 years), then communication among people will not be an issue.
And this is ignoring that there are multiple standards for the language today and that English, in general, is a pretty awful language. The language serves its purpose well, but it is clear that it is a natural development borrowing from multiple sources.
And as for pleasure reading, I’m strongly in favor. Creative writing allows for the language to expand in a manner that adds color to the language and better enables us to express life and the world around us.
Im not the one getting worked up over punctuation here i dont take insult in my bad english(after all it’s not my native tongue) i just point out that perfect language is and always were a pipe dream.
Theres not really that great a need for rigid standards the human mind can work around a lot of inperfections. The important thing is exposure get that and yourll learn.
Today the published book might actually be dying the same way the gutenberg style printing died when Aldus Manutius started publishing his pocet editions.
Friendly reminder to all: TeleRead is a global site. Even some very smart and highly educated people may make mistakes in English if it isn’t their native language. Let’s focus on the substance of comments rather than on whether they’re perfectly grammatical. As it is, even native English speakers can commit atrocities when they’re rushed. I do!
Completely agree, Logan! What’s more, sometimes the more “colorful” word can turn out to be the more precise one as well.
Thanks,
David