Assigned Reading is Disliked Reading
In high school and college English classes there are many assigned reading articles. I feel these reading assignments hinder a student’s potential to enjoy English class and they don’t inspire creativity when writing papers. When you tell a student that they must read a certain article and then write a paper on a certain point in that article, you will turn many students away from English. Students will want to drop the class or they will dread every single assignment given to them. The articles assigned in English books are generic so they can be read by everyone. If you are really into romance novels, or really love action stories, you will become bored quickly when reading other types of articles and will not be able to stay focused on the stories. This is why I have such a hard time in English. When I read the articles assigned, they don’t appeal to me, so it is hard for me to stay focused while reading.
If students were given a topic such as: read something that relates to the Civil War, and then they were able to choose any article they wanted as long as it related in some way, more students would be enjoy English. Mike Rose, instructor for the UCLA writing program, talks about his struggles through his college class of Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, in his article, “Entering the Conversation.” He says, “it combined the history of mathematics and science with philosophical investigation, and when I tried to read it, I’d end up rescanning the same sentence over and over, not understanding them, and, finally, slamming the book down on the desk- swearing at this golden boy Johnson and angry at myself” (101). This is similar to many students’ experiences with assigned reading. When I don’t understand a text after rereading it multiple times, I also get very upset. It can be very aggravating not being able to comprehend something that I know is going to be an important part of class discussion. It’s stressful knowing I’m going to be judged on my ability to comprehend an article which has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever learned before. It can be a person’s opinion article that has been assigned to read and if I fail to grasp it, then I won’t do well in your class.
By not having assigned reading articles, we might develop better informal writing essays. Rolf Norgaard, graduate of University of Colorado at Boulder, explains a strategy for engaging the conversation in his book, “Composing Knowledge.” He explains, “Your formal written essays in college often find their most productive early moments in informal writing” (26). I believe when he says this, he means that by just choosing to write about a subject without any plan at all, we develop more ideas to tie together when we finally reach the formal writing stage. Not having a plan, could be our plan to brainstorm ideas. Once a thesis is developed, ideas can be generated to form around the thesis. This doesn’t work with assigned writings though. If a writer is told what to write about, it hinders the creativity of the writer and becomes harder to come up with facts to form around the already assigned points of the article.
Even when an assigned reading and writing assignment is complete, oftentimes students find it hard to understand what was going on in the article. Gerald Graff, a professor of English and Dean of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois in Chicago, explains that he has an advantage being a teacher because he was intimidated by books at a young age, just like a lot of his students, and can relate to their struggles. “Even when I had done the assigned reading, I was often tongue-tied and embarrassed when called on” (113), Graff states about his experience with assigned reading in college. This is a fear of many, without the ability to understand difficult college reading texts; it can be difficult to explain what you read. Many students dread being called on because they are afraid they didn’t understand it correctly, or they will “get it wrong,” even if there isn’t a right or wrong answer. College English is a very scary class for students to take if they struggled through English classes all through grade school. By having assigned reading and writing, it can just make it even more intimidating.
A lot of teachers feel that a student will only push themself in writing, if forced to do so with challenging articles. They believe that by pressuring a student to read at the hardest level, they will make the student gain confidence in his or her work. However, this usually creates the opposite effect. Students are challenged enough by writing papers and getting them proofread and recorrected so they are perfect. Why give the student a difficult topic that he or she doesn’t understand? This could create a paper which is hard to understand. How can a student create a paper on something he or she doesn’t understand? By letting students choose articles they understand, and actually like, students will be more open to revising papers and trying to explain the story to others.
Not all of the effects of college reading are harmful. Graff also states that, “The moral I draw from this experience is that our ability to read well depends more than we think on our ability to talk well about what we read” (116). So maybe we need to take a step back and listen to what Graff is saying. Instead of just being expected to understand what we read and write about it, maybe we should have class discussions to make sure what is being read is understood first. I believe that my English 111 class this semester does an excellent job at this. We have class discussions about every article we read and I usually don’t understand what is read until the discussion. But in previous classes, I was expected to write about the article after reading it even when I didn’t understand it. I would guess what to write about and usually do badly on papers because I never fully grasped what was going on. Unfortunately, I believe many students also have the same problem.
As college students, we are expected to be challenged and develop skills for reading more effectively. There are tools which we can use to help us with this such as underlining words we don’t know, writing short summaries for parts of the text, visualizing ideas with simple flow diagrams, or just trying to find some way to connect to the ideas. These are all effective, but when we are reading and writing about something that is naturally interesting to us or that we can connect with without forcing, our writing becomes so much more creative and the whole process is so much more enjoyable and fulfilling. We become more interested in research and finding other theory’s to support our views on the topic we are writing about when it is something that we enjoy. From my personal experience, my best articles have been written from readings that I understand and enjoy. This is because if the subject is interesting to me, I go read other articles on the subject which help to broaden my knowledge and perspective and lead me to more creative writing.
So what is the correct method towards this madness called English class? I believe it would be assigning topics to read about instead of articles. Then, teachers are still fulfilling their requirements by discussing what is needed to be discussed. An example of this would be if a teacher was told they must discuss Mike Rose, they could tell each student to pick whatever article they would like by Mike Rose and write a paper on it. Then if a student didn’t understand one article by Rose, the student could then move on to a different article that may be more interesting to them. I believe by doing this, students may become a little more creative when writing because they aren’t held down by only being able to talk about one article they might not even fully understand. Students might also actually enjoy reading assignments too. When given freedom, it is easier to enjoy something than when given requirements.
The same goes for teachers; I believe if professors weren’t given set requirements and their job was just to help students on their weaknesses in reading and writing, they would enjoy it much more. Then they could potentially use the same hard articles, but take their time reading through the whole article in class and make sure the students understand it before being asked to write about the topic. This discussion may also spark further interest in the topic and result in the student wanting to do further research on the topic prior to writing about it, therefore leading to a more creative paper. Without the given requirements, teachers might cover less information than they are told they have to cover now, but they could actually improve the student’s reading and writing strategies much more effectively. In my opinion, getting rid of requirements when reading and writing altogether, would improve the abilities that students have with reading and writing drastically.
If students were given a topic such as: read something that relates to the Civil War, and then they were able to choose any article they wanted as long as it related in some way, more students would be enjoy English. Mike Rose, instructor for the UCLA writing program, talks about his struggles through his college class of Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, in his article, “Entering the Conversation.” He says, “it combined the history of mathematics and science with philosophical investigation, and when I tried to read it, I’d end up rescanning the same sentence over and over, not understanding them, and, finally, slamming the book down on the desk- swearing at this golden boy Johnson and angry at myself” (101). This is similar to many students’ experiences with assigned reading. When I don’t understand a text after rereading it multiple times, I also get very upset. It can be very aggravating not being able to comprehend something that I know is going to be an important part of class discussion. It’s stressful knowing I’m going to be judged on my ability to comprehend an article which has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever learned before. It can be a person’s opinion article that has been assigned to read and if I fail to grasp it, then I won’t do well in your class.
By not having assigned reading articles, we might develop better informal writing essays. Rolf Norgaard, graduate of University of Colorado at Boulder, explains a strategy for engaging the conversation in his book, “Composing Knowledge.” He explains, “Your formal written essays in college often find their most productive early moments in informal writing” (26). I believe when he says this, he means that by just choosing to write about a subject without any plan at all, we develop more ideas to tie together when we finally reach the formal writing stage. Not having a plan, could be our plan to brainstorm ideas. Once a thesis is developed, ideas can be generated to form around the thesis. This doesn’t work with assigned writings though. If a writer is told what to write about, it hinders the creativity of the writer and becomes harder to come up with facts to form around the already assigned points of the article.
Even when an assigned reading and writing assignment is complete, oftentimes students find it hard to understand what was going on in the article. Gerald Graff, a professor of English and Dean of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois in Chicago, explains that he has an advantage being a teacher because he was intimidated by books at a young age, just like a lot of his students, and can relate to their struggles. “Even when I had done the assigned reading, I was often tongue-tied and embarrassed when called on” (113), Graff states about his experience with assigned reading in college. This is a fear of many, without the ability to understand difficult college reading texts; it can be difficult to explain what you read. Many students dread being called on because they are afraid they didn’t understand it correctly, or they will “get it wrong,” even if there isn’t a right or wrong answer. College English is a very scary class for students to take if they struggled through English classes all through grade school. By having assigned reading and writing, it can just make it even more intimidating.
A lot of teachers feel that a student will only push themself in writing, if forced to do so with challenging articles. They believe that by pressuring a student to read at the hardest level, they will make the student gain confidence in his or her work. However, this usually creates the opposite effect. Students are challenged enough by writing papers and getting them proofread and recorrected so they are perfect. Why give the student a difficult topic that he or she doesn’t understand? This could create a paper which is hard to understand. How can a student create a paper on something he or she doesn’t understand? By letting students choose articles they understand, and actually like, students will be more open to revising papers and trying to explain the story to others.
Not all of the effects of college reading are harmful. Graff also states that, “The moral I draw from this experience is that our ability to read well depends more than we think on our ability to talk well about what we read” (116). So maybe we need to take a step back and listen to what Graff is saying. Instead of just being expected to understand what we read and write about it, maybe we should have class discussions to make sure what is being read is understood first. I believe that my English 111 class this semester does an excellent job at this. We have class discussions about every article we read and I usually don’t understand what is read until the discussion. But in previous classes, I was expected to write about the article after reading it even when I didn’t understand it. I would guess what to write about and usually do badly on papers because I never fully grasped what was going on. Unfortunately, I believe many students also have the same problem.
As college students, we are expected to be challenged and develop skills for reading more effectively. There are tools which we can use to help us with this such as underlining words we don’t know, writing short summaries for parts of the text, visualizing ideas with simple flow diagrams, or just trying to find some way to connect to the ideas. These are all effective, but when we are reading and writing about something that is naturally interesting to us or that we can connect with without forcing, our writing becomes so much more creative and the whole process is so much more enjoyable and fulfilling. We become more interested in research and finding other theory’s to support our views on the topic we are writing about when it is something that we enjoy. From my personal experience, my best articles have been written from readings that I understand and enjoy. This is because if the subject is interesting to me, I go read other articles on the subject which help to broaden my knowledge and perspective and lead me to more creative writing.
So what is the correct method towards this madness called English class? I believe it would be assigning topics to read about instead of articles. Then, teachers are still fulfilling their requirements by discussing what is needed to be discussed. An example of this would be if a teacher was told they must discuss Mike Rose, they could tell each student to pick whatever article they would like by Mike Rose and write a paper on it. Then if a student didn’t understand one article by Rose, the student could then move on to a different article that may be more interesting to them. I believe by doing this, students may become a little more creative when writing because they aren’t held down by only being able to talk about one article they might not even fully understand. Students might also actually enjoy reading assignments too. When given freedom, it is easier to enjoy something than when given requirements.
The same goes for teachers; I believe if professors weren’t given set requirements and their job was just to help students on their weaknesses in reading and writing, they would enjoy it much more. Then they could potentially use the same hard articles, but take their time reading through the whole article in class and make sure the students understand it before being asked to write about the topic. This discussion may also spark further interest in the topic and result in the student wanting to do further research on the topic prior to writing about it, therefore leading to a more creative paper. Without the given requirements, teachers might cover less information than they are told they have to cover now, but they could actually improve the student’s reading and writing strategies much more effectively. In my opinion, getting rid of requirements when reading and writing altogether, would improve the abilities that students have with reading and writing drastically.