SWA #1

Michael Skube explains in Writing Off Reading how more often than in the past more and more college students are arriving unprepared for the writing aspect of college. While GPAs keep rising the knowledge of the English language is decreasing. Many college students cannot name more than a few authors and often times have trouble understanding the vocabulary used in the novel. His claims in my mind seem accurate although in many cases while students might not be reading novels and short stories they are reading web pages and magazines which contribute to our knowledge and comprehension of the English language. The truth is that less and less college age students read books but you cannot contribute the decrease in understanding to this, being that there is almost limitless amounts of information available to every college and high school aged student via the internet. While novels and wonderful poetry are available online students avoid them because there are less entertaining than most other works of writing online, they usually stick to blogs, news, and sports. The idea of aggressive reading can greatly help the college aged student. The idea that you must get uncomfortable to read could help in that they would be more focused on the reading and less focused on the reality show in the background. This is a major problem for lots of students in that most students where they read with music or a TV going. This is alright for some types of reading but not for readings that are for school and require a certain level of attentiveness. Most students read too passively, they do not take the time to comprehend difficult material. If students would take the time to analyze and comprehend material they might understand more and gain more from it. Another way that students can gain more from reading is by questioning everything in a book. By doing this students will internalize the idea and thus gain a greater understanding. If a student doesn’t understand something they should do it again. While this is a very basic concept it is also very hard for students to do it. If students could just follow the guide of aggressive reading than the rate at which student gain knowledge would improve dramatically. If the “A” students could add aggressive reading to there skill set the quality of writing would increase greatly.