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• 1 media/I love books.gif 2019-11-30T16:31:25-08:00 Introduction 30 Introducing the reader to reading reluctance. plain 2019-12-19T09:28:27-08:00

  As a campus writing tutor, I encounter every kind of college student, especially recent immigrants, international students, and Generation 1.5 students, all of them struggling with writing in one way or another. They often ask me how they can improve their writing on their own. Among the suggestions I offer, one of the most important is to read extensively, paying attention to how other writers achieve their goals in their writing, because reading and writing are “a single act of literacy, with shared cognitive processes.” (22) In other words, reading and writing use the same mental faculties to make meaning from text, whether interpreting that meaning from a text in front of us or creating a text of our own. Unfortunately, the reaction from these students is almost always the same. They are usually horrified by the idea of reading, many claiming, “I hate to read” or “I’m not a reader.” As educators, we know that reading provides numerous benefits for students, not the least of which are learning content knowledge and developing critical thinking skills. This being common knowledge in the education field, where and how do we go wrong with our students? How have we failed to convince them of the value of reading in their own lives?

  It would seem that we go wrong in our teaching of reading very early. According to the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators (NCITE) (as cited in Cavanaugh, 2006, p. 87), it is estimated that more than 17% of young children will encounter a problem learning to read. These problems only continue as students move up in grades. As reading instruction generally stops at third grade, their belief in their poor reading ability becomes a firmly rooted self-concept by fourth grade and truly problematic by junior high school. (28) By the time they reach middle school, most students are either firm believers in the enjoyment of reading or have become entrenched non-readers. (27) Disturbingly, students’ self-concept, attitudes, and values about reading tend to plateau and can even decline through middle school. (505) As they continue through the education system, things do not necessarily improve. Between 5% and 25% of adolescents admit that they only read for school, that they do no reading for pleasure outside of school. (505) These numbers change little as students enter post-secondary education where reading becomes, if anything, even more important to academic success.

  The reasons for students not reading, even when they are capable, are numerous. They include a lack of texts available that they want to read, a lack of value to them in reading, and the greater importance to them of other activities. (517) Also, as Kirkland clearly demonstrated in “Books Like Clothes: Engaging Young Black Men With Reading” (2011), students may avoid reading because of a poor ideological fit: “Black men wear books like clothes,” Derrick explained to me. Beowulf must not have fit him, because he wasn’t wearing it...“This ain’t me.” (199) They cannot relate to assigned readings because many do not see themselves in the readings most often assigned for educational purposes which predominantly represent white, elite dominant discourses.

  It might be easy to simply label the issue of the reluctant reader as being primarily one of motivation. “If we could only address student motivation, everything would be better!” However, that label fails to take into consideration the more complicated issues at work. As such, my purpose with this project is not to address motivation at length, as it is too vast and complicated a topic for the present work, but to introduce my readers to some of the other reasons behind reading resistance and a number of guidelines and practices that can address these issues and help reluctant readers.