EPTI remember having those Jeopardy games too!
I'm pretty sure my elementary school did as good as job as it really could have on a (then) introverted son of an immigrant family.
Also, lol @ your sig
Reading Revolution - Page 2
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
I remember having those Jeopardy games too! I'm pretty sure my elementary school did as good as job as it really could have on a (then) introverted son of an immigrant family. Also, lol @ your sig | ||
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KazeHydra
Japan2788 Posts
On April 03 2012 13:28 thedeadhaji wrote: >KazeHydra I remember having those Jeopardy games too! I'm pretty sure my elementary school did as good as job as it really could have on a (then) introverted son of an immigrant family. Also, lol @ your sig yes they were quite fun and since history was my weakest subject, I must admit it was very effective. haha glad you like my sig  | ||
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Mothra
United States1448 Posts
By the way, sad blog post about that girl in Chemical Engineering who killed herself. You write very well and your compassion comes through. | ||
babylon
8765 Posts
On April 03 2012 12:21 thedeadhaji wrote: I don't have much to comment, but I enjoyed reading your post Btw something just came to mind, do you think it'd be interesting to go deep into the crevasses of the school library, and find fiction writing theses of former students? The quality might be C material, but I feel like for someone who has the mileage on reading, it could be a curious exercise. Thanks! That post got out of hand the more I typed; I'm glad it is comprehensible, lol. That would be interesting, actually. I've already thought about diving into the basement before to find some of the creative writing stories some English majors choose to write for their BA just for kicks, but I haven't had time, and whenever I do have time, I'm at home for the break and far away from an accessible school library. Maybe during the summer. It just occurs to me that maybe one of the better ways to encourage analysis (though maybe not a love for reading ...) would be to maybe assign related articles from academic journals along with the book itself and then to ask students to debate the merits of the article and how it applies during class-time. And also have them to do some reading on historical context, which is something else that a ton of HS English teachers don't ask their students to do, which leads to all sorts of funny papers ... It seems so obvious to me now that I think about it; it's how pretty much most reading/writing classes in university are structured, and I don't think seniors in HS are that far removed from first-years in college. Still unsure how to make reading enjoyable for those who don't initially like it, though, but that may stem from the fact that I don't understand how someone can actually dislike the act of reading. Disliking books is understandable and fixable, but people who just don't like reading (and I am not talking about kids with ADD/ADHD who literally cannot focus for that long) ... just how do you "fix" that? How do you make kids who don't like to read or are too lazy -- how do you make them put in the time ...? It's the old "I can't help you unless you help yourself first" -- of course, they won't be able to analyze for shit once they graduate, because they didn't even read what they were supposed to analyze! -- which is one of the biggest issue in Western education. Also, a lot of kids (those good at math/science in particular) seem to have this ... mindset where they think, off the bat, "I suck at English" and then subsequently don't read and do badly in the class (because they are unmotivated), which just feeds back into their mindset, which demotivates them, etc. I'm not sure where this attitude originates; my best subject in HS was very clearly math, and while I was never an English whiz or a wordsmith -- in fact, I am pretty inarticulate in person and the slowest reader/writer amongst my friends -- I never thought I was particularly bad at English and always gave my A-effort in HS and was rewarded for it ... and still had enough time to read lots of books and play hours upon hours of games. Doing "well" in English, just like doing well in math, at a HS level has nothing to do with being "good" or "bad" at a subject; it just has to do with putting in the time, which most kids don't do. Randomly, I do know that one of the things that fascinated me the most about English from a very young age was actually grammar and structure; I wonder how much of that is tied into the fact that, as a mathy sort of kid, I liked systems, and grammar seemed very structural, and I would always pay attention to how authors wrote or structured sentences/paragraphs to deliver the biggest effect when I read. | ||
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nohbrows
United States653 Posts
On April 03 2012 13:48 babylon wrote: It seems so obvious to me now that I think about it; it's how pretty much most reading/writing classes in university are structured, and I don't think seniors in HS are that far removed from first-years in college. Still unsure how to make reading enjoyable for those who don't initially like it, though, but that may stem from the fact that I don't understand how someone can actually dislike the act of reading. Disliking books is understandable and fixable, but people who just don't like reading (and I am not talking about kids with ADD/ADHD who literally cannot focus for that long) ... just how do you "fix" that? How do you make kids who don't like to read or are too lazy -- how do you make them put in the time ...? It's the old "I can't help you unless you help yourself first" -- of course, they won't be able to analyze for shit once they graduate, because they didn't even read what they were supposed to analyze! -- which is one of the biggest issue in Western education. On your first point, English tends to deviate from literature during Junior year and goes into analysis, argumentation and synthesis. And Senior level classes are pretty much exactly how you described it. But if you dislike reading, especially at this stage of education, it will be difficult to "fix" not liking to read. It's like making someone who doesn't like strawberries like strawberries. How do you do that? From my experience personally, I think one remaining option to make students interested in something they are not originally interested in is to just blow their minds in class. Present something so radical and new to them that they have to pay attention. It's how my English teacher made her entire class interested in rhetorical analysis, and it's how I got interested in math (telling me that I could add an infinite series and then find a rational answer was just mind boggling cool, even for me, who dislikes mathematics with a passion). Just my two cents on the topic. | ||
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Lexpar
1813 Posts
The more I think about a highschool teacher getting a class to love reading, the more impossible it sounds. Sure when teens grow up a bit and start to value their education they'll realise how important reading is, but that's pretty late in the equation. Some people never grow up to value their education. I think parents should take more responsibility to get their kids to love reading. Its not a huge job to read to them at night when they're 6-10 years old, and they'll probably develop more of a love for reading than any highschool teacher could teach them. | ||
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kainzero
United States5211 Posts
I've never approached reading as a goal, but as a process to achieve something, something I've realized while studying Japanese these last few years, as studying Japanese isn't really fun on its own as opposed to using it. That's why I don't feel like anyone can love reading as itself but as a means of communicating something. I remember all the mechanics they taught us in school, like tone, foreshadowing, etc. But I don't know anyone that reads because they love the mechanics. They read because they love what they're reading, not because they love reading. You can know all the mechanics, but ultimately you read for two reasons: -to learn about something -to search for something within yourself Last year I read 1Q84 because I heard it was popular. That was my motivation. I had motivation coming in before I even picked it up. One of the problems with school is that no one gets you excited about learning. Unfortunately, that's a hard task, and it varies depending on the student. But being motivated before the task is what keeps you going. I read Ender's Game because I was told to, because my grade and my future depended on it. Incidentally, I ended up enjoying it. But for some literature, especially the classics, I just didn't understand it and wasn't really motivated. Hell, I don't even think it's necessary because in the end it's just a form of entertainment and soul searching, and I don't know why it's part of compulsory education. So with 1Q84, I finished it and I had a lot of questions. There's a lot of stuff where I felt "What's going on? What was the meaning of this?" and at first, I went to Google expecting some sort of answer. But there was no answer. In fact, I had to play with the meanings in my mind, imagine all sorts of things going on, think about hypotheticals, and wonder if there was even a point to having an explanation. I think this plays into the soul-searching part of literature. I'm not sure if the author wants to tell you an idea, or to create an idea within you that really originates with you. (Inception!) Most of my reading nowadays is non-fiction; either accounts of real-life happenings, or psychology stuff (think Malcolm Gladwell, but more detailed and in different fields). This is fairly obvious, that I read to find out more about something; in this case, myself, or about the world and its history and how things came to be. I still can't say that I particularly carry a love of "reading" but I find it a way to gain information that I want to know or use in the future. With that said, reading for personal interest is all fine and dandy. However, in English class and in other university classes, we're not really tested on our reading. We're tested on our writing, and writing on a specific topic, and it's graded somewhat ambiguously. I got a C+ in poetry in university, wtf. How can you tell me my poetry is crap even though I implemented the stuff from class and tried to apply my own twists to the elements we learned? So yeah. I can like Ender's Game. But can I write an essay about whether Ender's treatment is similar to bullying in today's society? More importantly, do I want to? I'm not sure. I don't think a love of reading will contribute to a love of writing, and there's the fear that your love of writing will be snuffed out by the teacher. And as far as reading as a skill goes, I can enjoy reading, but when I don't want to read it just doesn't come through even if I can write about it well. There were plenty of humanities classes that I took that I just didn't want to do the reading because I didn't care for it, so even though I could see things based on how an article was written, and I could write about it, I didn't want to and it may have reflected in my grade. It's not really an advantage. | ||
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