There is, however, a problem. Nearly everyone in the United States can read and write. They just don｀t read and write well enough. Although basic literacy has been on the increase for the last century, the demands for literacy have been rising faster. Many people clearly don｀t read and write well enough to handle the complex literacy demands of modern society. The problem is thus not how to bring students to the second- or third-grade reading level; the problem is how to bring them beyond this. (10)
Studies showing that reading enhances literacy development lead to what should be an uncontroversial conclusion: Reding is good for you. The research, however, supports a stronger conclusion: Reading is the only way, the only way we become good readers, develop a good writing style, and adequate vocabulary, advanced grammatical competence, and the only way we become good spellers. (37)
In my work in langauge acquisition, I have concluded that we acquire language in only on way: by understanding messages, or obtaining "comprehensible input" in a low-anxiety situation...... This is precisely what free voluntary reading is: messages we understand presented in a low-anxiety environment. (37-38)
At times the temptation to get rid of them [the children of the poor] is strong. But if we lose them, school is no longer school. It is a hospital that tends to the healthy and rejects the sick. It becomes just a place to strenthen the existing differences to a point of no return. (40)
"I knew we had a winner," she confessed, "when on Friday, just when we were nearing the end of the book, one of the slowest boys in the class went home after school, got a library card, took out Where the Red Fern Grows, finished it himself, and came to school on Monday and told everyone how it ended. (81)
"When I read Garfield books in first grade, I thought I found something better than TV." (82)
......
The finding that readers mentioned a wild variety of books underscores the importance of providing many different titles in school and classroom libraries and introducing children to a wide rage of literature in language arts. One cannot predict what book will serve as a home run experience for a particular child. (84)
The studies presented in this chapter suggest that the intrinsic reward of reading is so great that it will stimulate additional reading. They suggest that we do not need extrinsic rewards for reading, that is, gold stars, cash awards, reading club membership, or other incentives. (116)
Children appear to be perfectly willing to read without rewards ... and do not even think of rewards when asked about how to encourage reading, in contrast to teachers. (117)
Even those aspects of print that are attended to and understood may not be acquired. Several researchers have hypothesized that affective factors may be responsible for failure to acquire some aspects of language. Dulay and Burt ... have suggested that for language acquisition to occur, language acquirers need to be "open" to the input, or have a low "Affective Filter." When language acquirers are anxious, or put on the defensive, the input may be understood, but it will not reach those parts of the brain that are responsible for language acquisitions .... A block, the Affective Filter, will keep the input out. (130)
Smith (1988) has pointed out that a great deal of learning occurs effortlessly, when learners consider themselves to be potential members of certain groups, or "clubs," and expect to learn. Teenagers, for example, learn the elaborate dress code, slang, and behaviour patterns of their peers not by deliberate study but by observing others and deciding they want to be like them. Similarly, Smith argues, when readers conclude that they are potential members of the "literacy club," people who read and write, they "read like writers" and absorb the enormous amount of knowledge that writers possess. Smith｀s idea is quite consistent with the Affective Filter hypothesis: Considering oneself a member or potential member of the literacy club results in a lower Affective Filter, with more of the input reaching the language acquisition device. (131)
1. Writing syle does not come from actual writing experience, but from reading.
2. Actual writing can help us solve problems and make us smarter. (132)
There are also compelling reasons for encouraging recreational reading in the first language for sec哦nd language acquirers. In early stages, it can profoundly accelerate the development of reading ability in the second language. (147)
Third, there is reason to suspect that the pleasure reading habit itself ransfers. A pleasure reader in the first language will become a pleasure reader in the second language .... (147)
Our problem in language education, as Frank Smith has pointed out, is that we have confused cause and effect. We have assumed that we first master language "skills" and then apply these skills to reading and writing. But that is not the way the human brain operates. Rather, reading for meaning, reading about things that matter to us, is the cause of literate language development. (150)
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