Unit 2: Books, Books, Books1 Unit 2:
Books, Books, Books I.
Looks through the list of sayings
about books. Choose 5 that you strongly agree or disagree with, or want to comment on, and share what you think with the class: 1. I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. (Groucho Marx) 2. A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you. (Daniel J. Boorstein) 3. Never read a book through merely because you have begun it. (John Witherspoon) 4. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested. (Francis Bacon) 5. If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. (Toni Morrison) 6. Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. (Charles W. Eliot) 7. A dirty book is rarely dusty. (Author Unknown) 8. It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. (Oscar Wilde) 9. Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all. (Abraham Lincoln) 10. Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. (Jessamyn West) 11. TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they'll have with twenty-six. Open your child's imagination. Open a book. (Author Unknown) 12. Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (Mark Twain) 13. Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled "This could change your life." (Helen Exley) 14. Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. (Henry Ward Beecher) 15. "Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread. (Franรงois Mauriac) 16. To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. (Edmund Burke)
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books2 17. Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. (John LeCarre) 18. Never judge a book by its movie. (J.W. Eagan) 19. He who lends a book is an idiot. He who returns the book is more of an idiot. ( Arabic Proverb) 20. No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. (Mary Wortley Montagu) II. These questions are taken from a survey “What are your reading habits?” From a – u, find the suitable answers for each of the questions. Then give your own answers to the questions: 1. What is your favorite childhood book? 2. What are you reading right now? 3. Do you have an e-reader? 4. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once? 5. What is your reading comfort zone? 6. Can you read on the bus? 7. What is your favorite place to read? 8. Do you ever dog-ear books? 9. Do you ever write in the margins of your books? 10. What makes you love a book? 11. What genre do you rarely read but wish you did? 12. What is your favorite reading snack? 13. How often do you agree with critics about a book? 14. Who is your favorite poet? 15. What books are you most likely to bring on vacation? 16. Name a book that you could/would not finish. 17. What distracts you easily when you’re reading? 18. What is your favorite film adaptation of a novel? 19. What is the most disappointing film adaptation? 20. How often do you skim a book before reading it? 21. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books3
a) A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. This is one of those terrific books that is just as good to read for adults as for children. Maybe better even. b) Anything and everything. Usually fiction, though. I’m a sucker for big 800 page novels, which is really a pain for packing. c) Big comfortable chair in my kitchen, big comfortable chair in my living room, bed, the deck, you name it. d) For some reason that escapes me, I tried to read the first book in the dismally written Left Behind series. I might have gotten 20-30 pages into it before I wanted to burn it in the backyard. e) Great characters, first of all. A story that keeps you wondering what’s going to happen next helps, too. I also love writers who have a command of the English language and use just that perfect word that keeps you going back and re-reading the sentence just for the sheer pleasure of it. Wallace Stegner is an example. His Angle of Repose is one of my all-time favorite books. f) Hmmm. Perhaps the Mists of Avalon. I loved that book so much. The movie wasn’t bad, but it just didn’t live up to the book. g) I don’t actually read a lot of poetry. One that’s currently on my nightstand is Wendell Berry, I dip into it from time to time. h) I don’t ride the bus, but I’d guess that my motion sickness issue would prevent that. I can’t read in the car, either. i) I tend to not eat and read, but a glass of wine and some cheese wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. j) I tend to read a lot of historical fiction recently. I got sucked into a bunch of Philippa Gregory novels earlier this year. Somewhat fluffy, but fun. I like reading the “classics” as well. There are a surprising-to-me number of them that I’ve never read, so I’m trying to correct that. I also tend to buy and read a bunch of books by the same author. I’ll read one, get sucked in, and go out and buy everything they ever wrote. k) I usually have at least one fiction and one non-fiction book going. Sometimes I get carried away and start a bunch of things, but I usually only am actively reading one or two. l) I’m partway through Drums of Autumn, by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series), and just started a biography of Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books4 m) If I don’t like it, I don’t get to half way. Silly writing, boring characters, plot that doesn’t seem to go anywhere, all of those things will make me banish a book. I don’t give a book more than 40-50 pages if I don’t like it. n) Lord of the Rings, easily. I loved the books, so was skeptical about the movies, but I’ve watched them all several times. o) Noise. I like to have quiet when I read. It didn’t bother me much when I was younger, but it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I think my ability to multi-task isn’t as good. p) Nope. I’m a Luddite, I like the feel of a “real” book in my hands. q) Not usually, but not because I’m opposed to it, I just don’t take the time to write notes, since I tend to get rid of books once I read them. r) Not usually. I’ll glance at the first few paragraphs when I’m buying a book or checking it out at the library, but I generally read from beginning to end. s) On occasion, when I don't have Levenger Page Points that I generally use. t) Science fiction. I try to like it, but just don’t get into it much. I like sci-fi TV and movies, so I can’t explain that. I also wish I liked fantasy fiction more than I do. I love multi-book series, which is common in that genre, but I just can’t get into it much. u) Usually, though on occasion I think “they” might have a screw loose. John Grisham comes to mind. Why those books hit the best seller list is beyond me. III.Reading 1:
Boy's own story (by Susan Ormiston) a) Pre-reading questions. Think of how boys' performance at school might be different from that of girls. Who do you think are better students – boys or girls? What subjects are boys usually better/worse at than girls? Can you explain these differences? b) Read the text and say whether your predictions were correct. What issue does this text address? What are the solutions suggested in the article? A boy's day is like a comic strip, full of conquest and bravado. Every boy is a superhero. But ask most boys and they'll say they'd rather live the adventure than read about it. This is the story of too many boys who don't read enough, and why passing it off as "boys will be boys" doesn't cut it. Marc Dowd is 10. His biggest passion is Game Boy. He's spent hours at it and can tell you everything about the characters. "First was Pokemon," he says. "Then came Digimon. Took out Pokemon. Pokemon was finished. Then Yu-Gi-Oh – Yu-Gi-Oh destroyed Digimon. And Pokemon was finished. Yu-GiOh would slaughter them."
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books5 But put a book in front of Marc and forget it. He had everyone fooled for years. "First I tried to fake read just with my eyes, moving line to line," he says. "And that seemed to work, so I kept on doing that and then finally my teacher asked me to read and‌ yow!" Nothing worked. His parents tried reading to him, they bought books, which gathered dust. Sue and Albert Dowd felt defeated. "He was seven and I said he's still not reading and then eight and nine and then it was 'he's 10 and something's not right,'" Sue Dowd says. Albert adds: "[The] worst part, I think I failed. I mean I had done everything I could think of. I liked to read." But Marc, like most of his chums, would rather kick a ball, watch TV, even sleep. "I just thought books were useless," he says. At 10, Marc was at risk of becoming part of a worrisome statistic: there are more boys than girls in trouble with literacy. "It's mainly girls in the class that enjoy the reading. It's just not a boy habit to read," Marc says. Marc knew what parents have talked about for years. Many boys lag behind girls in reading and writing for a while. But somehow we assumed developmentally they'd all catch up. Now it appears that's not so. Educators now say some boys are falling further behind in reading and writing. The gender gap in literacy is significant; it's growing, and some boys may never catch up. The Canadian Council of Education Ministers tracks these statistics. Paul Cappon, the director general, says, "We've certainly seen over the last eight or nine years that, whereas girls have closed the gap with boys, because they were behind in math and science, boys have not closed the gap with girls. If anything, they've fallen slightly further behind [in reading] than they were nine to 10 years ago." It's true of boys here in Canada and in other developed countries: gender influences reading, a revelation for Marc's parents. "Apparently it's something to do with gender. And I never thought of it in those terms," Albert says. "I'm hearing it, too," Sue says. "I'm talking to friends and associates and 'Yeah, you know my son's in high school and he's never reading, he's never picked up a book and he's not going to do it.' The girls are reading. The girls are up at night with the flashlight reading under the covers." Ironically it was the girls we were most worried about 10 years ago. They were falling behind boys in science or math. Teachers and the women's movement came up with a cottage industry of strategies. Girls-only
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books6 physics classes, math and science camps, and female role models aimed at closing that gap. That science-math gap was only half as big as the reading gap today with boys. The efforts with girls worked. Today 30 per cent of engineering students at Canadian universities are young women. More women than men are applying to medical schools. The demographics are rapidly shifting. Only 10 years ago it was 50-50. "Now we see that only 44 per cent of university students are men and only 40 per cent of graduates are men, which means 60 per cent of graduates are women. That change in half a generation is an enormous change," Cappon says. "I can tell you that across the developed world, countries are looking very closely at this issue, trying to figure out strategies and innovative policies and approaches that will work for boys." You don't have to convince Doug Trimble. He's been a respected principal for 25 years in Hamilton, Ont. This September, at Cecil B. Stirling elementary school, he launched his own "boys" strategy. "It's great what we've done for girls, but boys, we're not doing what we need to for boys in school," Trimble says. "[It's a] common fact. People can't argue. Can't debate that one." In fact, last year at his school boys in Grade 6 scored only half what the girls did in reading. So, this September, Trimble offered kids in Grades 7 and 8, and their parents, a choice. Girls-only, boys-only or co-ed classes. Surprisingly, the single-gender classes were most popular. "We know that boys lag behind girls at age 13, 14. They're about three to four years behind in language development anyways. So to put those kids in the same classroom where they are language deficient to start with compared to the girls‌that's why they clam up," Trimble says. The experiment is only a few months old but what do the kids think? We asked Grade 7s in the boys-only class to interview each other. "I like that there's no girls and you can't be distracted," one boy says. "You get better marks and you can concentrate more." Would you rather have girls in your class? the boy was asked. "No," he replied "Do you still like girls?" "They're OK." "What are your favourite subjects in school?" we asked. "Gym, computers and math," says one. "Art and gym," answers a second. "Gym, art and occasionally science," says a third. Not surprisingly, English never makes the cut. How do you change that? No one has the magic potion – except maybe Harry Potter.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books7 But at least this school is trying a few things. First they gave the boys a male teacher, something rare these days in elementary school. Mr. Thorne's kind of cool. Dave Thorne tries to engage his boys with a book about them. The novel's called Brian's Winter. It's all about a boy in the wild using just his own wits to survive. Participation in English class is up. Getting the boys to interact on the stories is a crucial step. "One thing the book hasn't talked about is his water supply with the lake frozen. How is he going to get his water?" Thorne asks. "What would you do?" "Break the ice, collect it and boil it," one student replies. Even with a story about bears and caves, it's tough to get a 13-year-old boy's attention. That's a fact. They're just active souls, always moving, which makes school and English literature a challenge. "[For] girls, spelling, reading, writing is so easy for them. [They] just snap their fingers and read well. The same guy who was willing to take a risk a minute ago won't because there's a girl present," Trimble says. Trimble's experiment with single-gender classes nudges against two decades of gender equity in education. So has there been any backlash? "I've had maybe four anonymous phone calls, all from women, suggesting we're trying to put the girls back in the kitchen. 'Barefoot, back in the kitchen,' somebody actually said in one situation," Trimble says. "It's based on not having all the knowledge. Again, the key to our program is providing choice. We're not telling anybody they have to be in a certain classroom." "He wasn't interested in any of the Treasure Island-type books, you know, or Wind in the Willows I had grown up with and really enjoyed." Albert says. Albert played his last card: a bribe. What parent hasn't tried that? He made a deal with Marc: every Saturday they'd go first to the bakery for a treat and then to the library. Brownies for books. Marc agreed. That first Saturday at the public library, they met someone Dad now considers a hero: Joanne Schwartz, the children's librarian. "Marc told me he picks up a book and he starts to read and the setup of the book with descriptive passages and so on puts him off," Schwartz says. "He just cannot maintain interest through the beginning of the book. "He was very interested in adventure, that was an important aspect of a book for him. So with that in mind, we sort of wander over to the shelves and there are obvious writers that might fit the bill for him, keeping that in mind. He wants realistic fiction, he wants action-packed drama, so Eric Wilson writes very much with that kind of reader in mind.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books8 "From the first page, something dramatic happens. There's dialogue and off you go. So I chose a couple of books for him to take, just a couple. It worked. It clicked. It's what every librarian wants." Six weeks later, Marc was reading a book a week, not the classics, but something. Treasure Island didn't cut it. "I was so hung up…he had to read Treasure Island, the most famous children's book ever written that I read every three or four years over again. That wasn't going to do it. So, you know, I was a Treasure Island failure," Albert says. "Now every week Marc writes a one-page book review for his dad on the series he loves by author Eric Wilson. " Every Saturday, you'll find father and son at the library, Marc checking out his latest adventure, a warm brownie in his pocket, and Dad poring over, well, you guess. For Marc there's no more faking it, and it's a huge relief. "I used to think it's uncool but now I just read books. And on my list in my brain it's a cool thing to do," Marc says. Did Albert ever worry that the intense focus on reading was going to turn Marc off books forever? There was a real possibility of that," Albert says. "One of us was going to crack. It was either going to be him or me and I was pretty close to cracking. It got right down to the wire. I think we're all glad Marc's reading." Just like the storybook promised, for this boy and his dad, a happy ending. c) Read the text again and define the meaning of the words in bold. d) Decide whether the following statements are true or false. Justify your choice. 1. A decade ago, girls did worse in math and science than boys. 2. The school authorities developed a plan of how to help girls catch up with boys in math and science. 3. Principle Trimble believes that the strategy used to help girls will work for the boys as well. 4. The hardest part of the experiment was to arouse boys' interest in English. 5. When boys started to read adventure books it became easy to get them involved in discussing the stories they read. 6. Trimble's experiment enjoyed unanimous support from both kids and parents. 7. Marc agreed to go to the library only if his father gave him money for that. 8. As it turned out, Marc didn't like reading because he was choosing the wrong books. 9. Though Marc eventually started to read books, he didn't change his attitude to reading.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books9 10. Albert was always sure that sooner or later Marc would grow to like reading; it was just a matter of time. e) Answer the following questions: 1. How did Marc manage to fake his ability to read? Why did he do it? 2. How did the statistics in gender gap change over the last ten years? 3. What techniques for closing the gap were invented for girls? Were they different for boys? In what way? Which ones proved the most successful? Why? Why do you think the strategies that worked out for girls didn't work with boys? 4. Why did single-gender classes were such a success among boys? What subject was traditionally the least popular among boys? How was this problem solved? 5. Who and why opposed Trimble's experiment? 6. How did Albert finally manage to get his son start reading books? Who helped him? 7. Do we have similar gender gap problems in this country? Do you think the strategies used in Canada could be implemented in our classrooms? Why/Why not? What policies and innovations might help our kids become more interested in reading? IV. Reading 2:
Will This Be on the Test (by Laura Miller) a) Pre-reading questions. When you were in high school, did you read all the books from the reading list? What books impressed you the most? Have you reread any of the books from your high-school reading list? What books would you like to reread later? Why? Many of us search for a kinder, nobler social world than the one we encountered in high school, only to find the same petty intrigues over and over again. But one aspect of secondary education hardly anyone is in danger of revisiting is the reading list. This month, teenagers across the nation, under the orders of their teachers, crack open books that will offer them their first taste of serious critical reading, of puzzling out an author's theme and hunting the wily symbol. They might read ''Frankenstein'' or ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'' and they will almost certainly be assigned ''The Great Gatsby'' -- those works they're likely to return to as adults. But they will also ponder novels they'll never forget but also never re-read, a category you could call the classroom classic; it's the kind of book that never seems to shake off that fine layer of chalk dust.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books10 ''Lord of the Flies,'' William Golding's 1954 story of British schoolboys going bad on a desert island, is the quintessential classroom classic. My (admittedly informal) survey of people ranging in age from their 20's to their 40's and from various states of the union revealed that all but one had read it for school. They suspect that they got from the book pretty much all it had to give, and in that they're probably right, I found upon returning to it. (Perigee will publish a 50thanniversary edition late next month.) That doesn't make ''Lord of the Flies'' a bad or weak novel -- it isn't. But it also isn't a particularly complex one. The murky, confusing stretches I recalled turned out to be long passages of landscape description that are indeed occasionally hard to follow, and the frightening parts -- that severed pig head chuckling at poor, feverish Simon and the refrain of ''Sharpen a stick at both ends'' -- are still scary, but less enigmatically so. To young readers, Golding's message about the fundamental atavism of mankind seems ever so worldly; to an adult, the transparency of the message on the page pegs it as not quite for grown-ups. The classroom classic is a literary hazelnut: you crack it open and it easily yields a round, whole meat; that's all there is, no shards or membranes to pick through. You can discuss its theme, but not debate it -- not, that is, beyond saying you agree or disagree, and what 13-year-old would presume to quarrel with the author of a published book? The meaning of Jay Gatsby's fate, and even of his beloved green light, is elusive, mercurial, subject to interpretation. The lots of Ralph, Piggy and Jack are not. Like Aesop's zoological fables, the classroom classic has a clear-cut moral, which is why ''Animal Farm'' rivals ''Lord of the Flies'' as the foremost exemplar of the genre. George Orwell's ''fairy story,'' published in 1945, is unabashed propaganda, though surely he would have flinched to see it used as such in American classrooms during the cold war. As a child, I regarded both books with a respectful dread that only now I recognize as claustrophobic. Like Piggy, Boxer the workhorse and his barnyard comrades are doomed, and the stories they inhabit close in on them with the inexorable indifference of a shrinking room in a horror movie. When we first read them, we understood that being given books with such bleak endings was a compliment to our maturing sensibilities; finally we were ready for the hard stuff. Yet the determinism of the classroom classic is less tragic than pedagogical, another reason adults rarely go back to them. Golding salted ''Lord of the Flies'' with a few references to adults being no better than the savages his schoolboys become, but they're mere whispers compared to the blaring message we took from the novel: if adults weren't around to make us play by the rules, we'd surely kill each other. Both ''Lord of the Flies'' and ''Animal Farm'' can be read as briefs against youthful utopianism, the idea that kids, unspoiled by the compromises and corruptions of adulthood, could do a better job of running things if they just got the chance. Golding argues that the flimsy edicts of civilization are all that protect us from our own hearts of darkness, and Orwell (if you read
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books11 ''Animal Farm'' broadly) observes that any new boss will be the same as the old. ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' Harper Lee's 1960 novel centered around a rape trial in rural Alabama, may be a paean to the lazy cadences of a Southern childhood, but it also explains that the evils of the world will eventually be contained by a growing contingent of virtuous adults. The saintly Atticus Finch loses his case, but as Miss Maudie explains afterward to Jem and Scout: ''He's the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. . . . We're making a step -- it's just a baby-step, but it's a step.'' Revolution will not be necessary. No wonder these three titles became classroom classics in the 1960's and 70's. (When ''Mockingbird'' was picked for the ''One Book, One Chicago'' program in 2001, the choice confirmed the teacherliness of such citywide reading campaigns.) The essential benevolence of adult authority even turns up in ''A Separate Peace'' (to be reissued in paperback this month by Scribner). My surviving memories of John Knowles's 1959 novel consisted of only two things: it was set in an all-boy boarding school, and something bad happened in a tree. And no wonder it sailed over my head; the book is imbued with a nearJamesian complexity and ambiguity of emotion and morality, and its narrator, Gene, is so articulate about this that he makes the teens on ''Dawson's Creek'' sound like Beavis and Butthead. Nevertheless, he believes that the fateful incident in the tree ''vindicated'' the rules of his prep school. It could only have taken place among the ''idiosyncratic, leaderless band'' of summer session students. Which brings us to the black sheep among classroom classics, ''The Catcher in the Rye.'' Salinger's masterpiece of adolescent grumpiness once belonged (with such later titles as ''The Outsiders,'' ''My Darling, My Hamburger'' and ''Go Ask Alice'') to the great tradition of passaround teen books, unsanctioned and unassigned. When ''Catcher'' began to appear on syllabi, a turning point had occurred. By putting the ultimate literary expression of teenage rebellion in their students' hands, teachers were admitting that they no longer worried that kids might read the wrong books. Now we're afraid they'll read no books at all. b) Explain what is meant by the following phrases. Pay special attention to words in italics: 1. To crack open books 2. To puzzle out an author’s theme and hunt the wily symbol 3. To ponder novels 4. Murky, confusing stretches 5. Fundamental atavism of mankind seems ever so worldly 6. Subject to interpretation 7. Both “Lord of the Flies” and “Animal Farm” can be read as …
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books12 8. Evils of the world will eventually be contained by … 9. Teacherliness 10. It sailed over my head 11. Black sheep c) Translate the following sentences from English into Russian: 1. But one aspect of secondary education hardly anyone is in danger of revisiting is the reading list. 2. They might read “Frankenstein” or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and they will almost certainly be assigned “The Great Gatsby” – those works they’re likely to return to as adults. 3. The murky, confusing stretches I recalled turned out to be long passages of landscape description that are indeed occasionally hard to follow, and the frightening parts – that severed pig head chuckling at poor, feverish Simon and the refrain of “Sharpen a stick at both ends” – are still scary, but less enigmatically so. 4. To an adult, the transparency of the message on the page pegs it (the book) as not quite for grown-ups. 5. You can discuss its theme, but not debate it – not, that is, beyond saying you agree or disagree, and what 13-year-old would presume to quarrel with the author of a published book? 6. When we first read them, we understood that being given books with such bleak endings was a compliment to our maturing sensibilities; finally we were ready for the hard stuff. 7. Golding argues that the flimsy edicts of civilization are all that protect us from our own hearts of darkness, and Orwell (if you read “Animal Farm” broadly) observes that any new boss will be the same as the old. d) Answer the following questions: 1. What does the author mean when she says: ”it’s the kind of book that never seems to shake off that fine layer of chalk dust”? 2. What features of “Lord of the Flies” make it possible to call it “the quintessential classroom classic”? 3. How can you comment on the metaphor “The classroom classic is a literary hazelnut”? If you were to develop this metaphor, what kind of nut would you compare “The Great Gatsby” with? 4. Why classroom classic is compared with Aesop’s zoological fables? 5. If ““Animal Farm” rivals “Lord of the Flies” as the foremost exemplar of the genre”, are the two books similar or different? In what ways?
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books13 6. Would Orwell be satisfied to learn that his book was used the way it was? 7. Why does the author describe the emotion with which he read “Animal Farm” and “Lord of the Flies” as “claustrophobic”? 8. What, to your mind, does the ''One Book, One Chicago'' program suggest? 9. Why, according to the article, did ““Animal Farm”, “Lord of the Flies” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” become classroom classics in the 1960s and 1970s? 10. According to current standards, are the characters of “Dawson’s Creek” quite articulate? Why are Beavis and Butthead mentioned? 11. What makes “The Catcher in the Rye” different from classroom classics? 12. Has the great tradition of pass-around teen books gone dead? 13. Why has the attitude to choosing books for secondary school reading list changed recently? e) Discussion: 1. What, to your mind, are the objectives of the class of Literature at school? 2. What books from your school reading list would you call classroom classics and why? 3. When at school, were you encouraged to argue with authors of published books? 4. Do you think that the tradition of pass-around teen books exists in Russia? 5. Do you think kids might cease reading books? 6. Do you think today’s high-school students read as much as/ less than/ more than you did? 7. Work in a team and discuss the following questions: What books would you exclude from secondary school reading list? Why? What books would you add to secondary school reading list? Why? Then report your answers to the group. V. Reading 3: Read the text “Does the Brain Like E-Books?” and make a list of all the arguments FOR and AGAINST E-Books that were mentioned in the article. Add several arguments of your own. Writing and reading — from newspapers to novels, academic reports to gossip magazines — are migrating ever faster to digital screens, like laptops, Kindles and cellphones. Traditional book publishers are putting out "vooks,” which place videos in electronic text that can be read online or on an iPhone. Others are republishing old books in electronic form. And libraries, responding to demand, are offering more e-books for download. Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs
information
when
it
is
presented
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books14 electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium? A New Metaphor for Reading Alan Liu is chairman and professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he researches the relation between literature and information culture. He is head of the Transliteracies U.C. Multi-Campus Research Group on online reading practices and technologies. Initially, any new information medium seems to degrade reading because it disturbs the balance between focal and peripheral attention. This was true as early as the invention of writing, which Plato complained hollowed out focal memory. Similarly, William Wordsworth’s sister complained that he wasted his mind in the newspapers of the day. It takes time and adaptation before a balance can be restored, not just in the “mentality” of the reader, as historians of the book like to say, but in the social systems that complete the reading environment. Right now, networked digital media do a poor job of balancing focal and peripheral attention. We swing between two kinds of bad reading. We suffer tunnel vision, as when reading a single page, paragraph, or even “keyword in context” without an organized sense of the whole. Or we suffer marginal distraction, as when feeds or blogrolls in the margin (“sidebar”) of a blog let the whole blogosphere in. My research group on online reading (the University of CaliforniaTransliteracies Project) has come to realize that we need a whole new guiding metaphor. So many of today’s commercial, academic and open-source reading environments are governed by metaphors of what I call “containing structures.” For example, they want to be online “books,” “editions,” “encyclopedias,” “bookshelves,” “libraries,” “archives,” “repositories” or (a newer metaphor) “portals.” Such structures are supposed to make intuitive the relation between individual documents and other documents. But, frankly, many of those structures didn’t work too well even in the golden age of print. (Show me one person who has made a serendipitous discovery while wandering the library stacks, and I will show you a thousand whose eyes glazed over at the sheer anomie, inefficiency, and meaninglessness of it all.) They especially don’t work well now when stretched to describe online technologies that actually behave nothing like a book, edition, library and so on. My group thinks that Web 2.0 offers a different kind of metaphor: not a containing structure but a social experience. Reading environments should not be books or libraries. They should be like the historical coffeehouses, taverns and pubs where one shifts flexibly between focused and collective reading — much like opening a newspaper and debating it in a more socially networked version of the current New York Times Room for Debate.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books15 The future of peripheral attention is social networking, and the trick is to harness such attention — some call it distraction — well. A Test of Character Sandra Aamodt is a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience. She is co-author of “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.” Electronic reading has become progressively easier as computer screens have improved and readers have grown accustomed to using them. Still, people read more slowly on screen, by as much as 20-30 percent. Fifteen or 20 years ago, electronic reading also impaired comprehension compared
to
paper,
but
those
differences
have
faded
in
recent
studies.
Reading on screen requires slightly more effort and thus is more tiring, but the differences are small and probably matter only for difficult tasks. Paper retains substantial advantages, though, for types of reading that require flipping back and forth between pages, such as articles with end notes or figures. To a great extent, the computer’s usefulness for serious reading depends on the user’s strength of character. Distractions abound on most people’s computer screens. The reading speed reported in academic studies does not include delays induced by clicking away from the text to see the new email that just arrived or check out what’s new on your favorite blog. In one study, workers switched tasks about every three minutes and took over 23 minutes on average to return to a task. Frequent task switching costs time and interferes with the concentration needed to think deeply about what you read. Electronic book readers like the Amazon Kindle share characteristics with both paper and computers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people may read as quickly on electronic readers as they do on paper. The screen technology, electronic ink, avoids some disadvantages of monitors, such as backlighting and flicker, but it remains awkward to scan through multiple pages. Electronic readers can be held in a comfortable position, but their contrast is closer to that of a newspaper than to black-on-white print, and illustrations tend to have poor resolution. As technology continues to improve, we can probably expect to see electronic reading become as useful as paper for most purposes. Beyond Decoding Words Maryanne Wolf is the John DiBiaggio Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts, and the author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.” After many years of research on how the human brain learns to read, I came to an unsettlingly simple conclusion: We humans were never born to read. We learn to do so by an extraordinarily
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books16 ingenuous ability to rearrange our “original parts” — like language and vision, both of which have genetic programs that unfold in fairly orderly fashion within any nurturant environment. Reading
isn’t
like
that.
Each young reader has to fashion an entirely new “reading circuit” afresh every time. There is no one neat circuit just waiting to unfold. This means that the circuit can become more or less developed depending on the particulars of the learner: e.g., instruction, culture, motivation, educational opportunity. Equally interesting, this tabula rasa circuit is shaped by the particular requirements of the writing system: for example, Chinese reading circuits require more visual memory than alphabets. This “open architecture” of the reading circuit makes the young reader’s developing circuit malleable to what the medium (e.g., digital online reading, book, etc) emphasizes. And that, of course, is the problem at hand. No one really knows the ultimate effects of an immersion in a digital medium on the young developing brain. We do know a great deal, however, about the formation of what we know as the expert reading brain that most of us possess to this point in history. In brief, this brain learns to access and integrate within 300 milliseconds a vast array of visual, semantic, sound (or phonological), and conceptual processes, which allows us to decode and begin to comprehend a word. At that point, for most of us our circuit is automatic enough to allocate an additional precious 100 to 200 milliseconds to an even more sophisticated set of comprehension processes that allow us to connect the decoded words to inference, analogical reasoning, critical analysis, contextual knowledge, and finally, the apex of reading: our own thoughts that go beyond the text. This is what Proust called the heart of reading — when we go beyond the author’s wisdom and enter the beginning of our own. I have no doubt that the new mediums will accomplish many of the goals we have for the reading brain, particularly the motivation to learn to decode, read and experience the knowledge that is available. As a cognitive neuroscientist, however, I believe we need rigorous research about whether the reading circuit of our youngest members will be short-circuited, figuratively and physiologically. For my greatest concern is that the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding, but rather will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, and now, perhaps, videos (in the new vooks). The child’s imagination and children’s nascent sense of probity and introspection are no match for a medium that creates a sense of urgency to get to the next piece of stimulating information.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books17 The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it. We can learn a great deal from a similar transition that the ancient Greeks made from orality (Socrates) to literacy (Aristotle). Socrates worried that the young would be deluded by the appearance of truth in seemingly impermeable text to think that they knew something before they had ever begun. The habitual reader Aristotle worried about the three lives of the “good society”: the first life is the life of productivity and knowledge gathering; the second, the life of entertainment; and the third, the life of reflection and contemplation. For me the formation of the “good reader” follows a similar course. I have no doubt that the digital immersion of our children will provide a rich life of entertainment and information and knowledge. My concern is that they will not learn, with their passive immersion, the joy and the effort of the third life, of thinking one’s own thoughts and going beyond what is given. Let us bring our best thought and research to preserving what is most precious about the present reading brain as we add the new capacities of its next iteration. The Book Made Better David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, is the author of “Judaism: A Way of Being,” which will be published in November. In a recent conversation at Edge.org he discusses his role in the invention of lifestreaming and “the cloud” in computing. All reading is not migrating to computer screens. So long as books are cheap, tough, easy to “read” from outside (What kind of book is this? How long is it? Is this the one I was reading last week? Let’s flip to the pictures), easy to mark up, rated for safe operation from beaches to polar wastes and — above all — beautiful, they will remain the best of all word-delivery vehicles. I assume that technology will soon start moving in the natural direction: integrating chips into books, not vice versa. I might like to make a book beep when I can’t find it, search its text online, download updates and keep an eye on reviews and discussion. This would all be easily handled by electronics worked into the binding. Such upgraded books acquire some of the bad traits of computer text — but at least, if the circuitry breaks or the battery runs out, I’ve still got a book. Of course, onscreen text will change and improve. But the physical side of reading depends not on the bad aspects of computer screens but on the brilliance of the traditional book — sheets bound on end, the “codex” — which remains the most brilliant design of the last several thousand years. Technologists have (as usual) decreed its disappearance without bothering to understand it. They make the same mistake clever planners have made for half a century in
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books18 forecasting the death of cars and their replacement by spiffier technology. The problem is, people like cars. The most important ongoing change to reading itself in today’s online environment is the cheapening of the word. In teaching college students to write, I tell them (as teachers always have) to make every word count, to linger on each phrase until it is right, to listen to the sound of each sentence. But these ideas seem increasingly bizarre in a world where (in any decent-sized gathering of students) you can practically see the text messages buzz around the room and bounce off the walls, each as memorable as a housefly; where the narrowing time between writing for and publishing on the Web is helping to kill the art of editing by crushing it to death. The Internet makes words as cheap and as significant as Cheese Doodles. Of course there are great stylists writing in English today (take John Banville or Martin Amis). Of course, word processors could be the best thing that ever happened to prose, and “cloud” computing will soon offer readers the chance to consult any text in any library anywhere. The tools (as usual) are neutral. It’s up to us to insist that onscreen reading enhance, not replace, traditional book reading. It’s up to us to remember that the medium is not the message; that the meaning and music of the words is what matters, not the glitzy vehicle they arrive in. The Effects of Perpetual Distraction Gloria Mark is a professor in the Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine. She studies human-computer interaction. When PC’s first entered the home in the 1980s, a number of studies comparing the effects of reading on an electronic display versus paper showed that reading was slower on a screen. However, displays have vastly improved since then, and now with high resolution monitors reading
speed
is
no
different
than
reading
from
paper.
So what is different? It is not just a matter of comparing reaction times or reading comprehension; it’s the entire experience. Reading a Google book enables the reader to search for words or passages throughout the text. It’s effortless to skip to a juicy section or to go back and reread a memorable part. Contrast how long it takes to skim to a particular passage in a paper book, unless of course it is bookmarked or the page corner is bent. Hypertext offers loads of advantages. If while reading online you come across the name “Antaeus” and forget your Greek mythology, a hyperlink will take you directly to an online source where you are reminded that he was the Libyan giant who fought Hercules. And if you’re prone to distraction, you can follow another link to find out his lineage, and on and on. That is the duality of hyperlinks. A hyperlink brings you to information faster but is also more of a distraction.
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books19 Reading online is thus not just about reading text in isolation. When you read news, or blogs or fiction, you are reading one document in a networked maze of an unfathomable amount of information. My own research shows that people are continually distracted when working with digital information. They switch simple activities an average of every three minutes (e.g. reading email or IM) and switch projects about every 10 and a half minutes. It’s just not possible to engage in deep thought about a topic when we’re switching so rapidly. My own preference? I’d much rather curl up in an easy chair with a paper book. It’s not only an escape into a world of literature but it’s an escape from my digital devices. When I’m reading a paper book I’m not tempted to self-interrupt and begin surfing the Internet. But I grew up with paper books. I wonder about young people, who do not know of a life before the Internet, and who, growing up “digitized,” might not prefer reading online where they are the pilots of their own information pathways. More and more, studies are showing how adept young people are at multitasking. But the extent to which they can deeply engage with the online material is a question for further research. VI. Video assignment 1. a) Listen to Erin McKean talking about dictionaries and decide if the following statements are true or false. If the statement is false, say what is true: 1.
According to Erin McKean, the major responsibility of a lexicographer is to control the
language. 2.
Erin McKean wants to be a fisherman.
3.
Dictionaries have not changed much since Queen Victoria’s times.
4.
Online dictionaries are very much different from paper dictionaries.
5.
According to Erin McKean, clickiness is about how many links you have on a particular
web page. 6.
When people don’t find some particular place on the map, they think that the map is bad.
7.
Erin McKean compares maps, guidebooks and dictionaries to stress their similarity.
8.
Soon we will have only on-line dictionaries.
9.
The word is real if people like it and use it.
10. Ornithology and astronomy are the examples of sciences that benefit greatly from the help of non-professionals. b) In her talk she uses several images to explain her ideas. What each of these images refer to? Explain what she means by each image:
Unit 2: Books, Books, Books20 Traffic cop, fisherman, Mr. Muray, velocipede, ham, panda, screwdrivers and hammers, toy bunny, mobile, Library of Congress, map of the US, flowers. VII.
Video Assignment 2. Watch the video “A conversation with John Irving” and
answer the following questions: 1. Why, in your opinion, is John Irving compared with Charles Dickens? 2. John Irving is described as prolific and ambitious writer. What does this mean? Can you give other examples of writers who are prolific and/or ambitious? Give reasons. 3. In January 2005 John Irving had a rather vague idea of his next novel. What did he know about that novel then? What actually prompted a clearer idea of that novel? How did it start? 4. What is unusual about John Irving's writing technique? 5. How long does it usually take him to write a novel? Compared to other novels, is Last Night in Twisted River a 'fast' novel or 'slow' novel? 6. What is the last sentence of Last Night in Twisted River? 7. How are Last Night in Twisted River and The World According to Garp different from his other novels? 8. What is the first sentence of Last Night in Twisted River? 9. How does John Irving prefer to begin his novels? VIII.
Do the following assignments at “English through Practice”:
a) More Interviews with Writers b) The Craft of Writing essay