by Cristian Matas
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Ray Bradbury
The purpose of this essay is to analyze some issues connected with the thought that nowadays teenagers may not read as much as in the past. Many school teachers have the feeling that their students find difficulties when approaching reading. This fact could be connected to the general lack of interest towards the traditional text material. When we refer to traditional text materials, we usually think about classical literature like poetry or novels, forgetting somehow that the reading experience among young people has been substantially changing through the last decades. The format of text reading material is a very wider concept nowadays and it comprehends not only poetry or novels but also comics, magazines, short stories, blogs, etc. Probably it is just a perception that teenagers do not read or read less than adults. In fact, a recent survey by the National Center for Educational Statistics in the United States, Services and Resources for Children and Young Adults (U.S. Department of Education, 2007) concludes that almost 25% of public library users are teenagers; this means that one out of every four persons entering a public library is between the ages of 12 and 18. This data shows that teens are still a very large group of readers and that maybe the problem that teachers have when dealing with this audience, is not really that teens do not like reading but the right choice of the material they would like to read.
Theoretical framework
Today’s teens may be reading just as much as in the past, but their methods and formats of reading and interests are different from the older generations. To go deep in the solution of the problem it should also be considered what the main interests between adolescents when they are asked about reading are. This is one of the main objects that move the commitment of the Argentinean Ministry of Education that is involved in wide campaigns to reinforce reading habits among young students. In fact, as the famous Italian pedagogue Leo Tonucci (2010) states, it is remarkable that Argentina believes that the importance of a society relies on the value of a reading culture. Tonucci also says that monitoring the reading interests of a society, starting from the wide public of adolescents, represents the best way to move on after a historical and economical crisis such as the one suffered in Argentina. In this context this survey represents a small contribution to the outline of the major tendencies in our country that work in the direction of a reinforcement of the reading habits among young adults, especially in public schools which represent the main ground where future generations can develop critical thoughts and personal opinions. As Cook, Parker & Pettijohn (2005) state, reading is important because it is not just about communication or learning. It is an all in one package where you learn interesting and capturing facts and ideas from people all across time and space. Along with that, readers can develop their concentration and attention giving skills as well as their vocabulary. It can be said that adolescents go through important changes during this period in life together with their interests, requests and the way teens get what they want to read. According to a study published in the report Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8 to 18 Year Olds (2004) it has been found that youth have a ceiling of approximately six to six and a half hours per day to devote to media, including internet as a media communication.
Internet is making teenagers read more and more nowadays. Teenagers nowadays spend a lot of time on the computer, chatting with friends online or surfing the internet. Time is also spent on watching television shows, as well as text messaging (Eunice, 2004). The preference of internet instead of the old-fashioned book tends to show that the majority of young people experience a “disconnection” between home and schools (Wilhelm and Smith, 2001).
Methods and materials of the research
This paper focuses on what adolescents are interested in when reading. The results are taken from a survey made on three secondary public schools (E.S.B. nº10, E.S.B. nº50 and E.E.M. nº17) in Merlo (Buenos Aires, Argentina). The data comes out from an investigation of 69 students aged between thirteen years old and sixteen years old who belong to working class. The students were asked: what they would like to read at school, what kind of texts they usually read, where they get the reading material from and the purpose of reading for the students. The students had the possibility to choose more than one option to answer each question. The results were divided into gender: 31 of the students were female and 38 were male. The gender division in this survey reflects a study made by Northwestern University (2008) which states that boys are more visual readers and girls are more abstract readers. The researchers found that girls showed significantly greater activation in language areas of the brain than boys. This was mainly to understand the different teenager’s preferences in reading in order to be able to catch their attention when choosing text materials.
Results of the investigation
The first question they were asked (see table 1.1) was about their favorite kind of reading. As a result of that question, it appears that the interests vary among genders. For instance, girls preferred short stories (26%), magazines or newspapers (42%) but boys preferred comics (36%). As for topics (see table 1.2), it is possible to say that girls were more interested in romantic (20%) and comedies topics (17%) while the majority of boys liked horror (25%) and adventure stories (23%). A major research study of the interests of more than 24,000 students (Stauffer, 2007) demonstrated that gender was a significant factor in reading interests; that girls enjoyed many boys' books, but boys refused to read most girls' books; that romantic love was attractive to girls but not to boys, while violence attracted boys but not girls; and that both boys and girls enjoyed mystery, stories of dogs and horses, and biography told as an adventure story. This data can be connected to the question whether they read for pleasure or obligation (see table 1.4). While girls tend to stay, among the years, onto the same percentage line of reading for pleasure and entertainment (with a slight oscillation of 3% during the years), boys, seemed to lose gradually the joy of reading for fun during this range of years (with a drastic fall from 44% to 6%). It could be easy to state that, in general girls read more than boys, approaching much more variety in reading texts. An important data that seemed to bring together the interests of boys and girls is that both of them get text material from the internet (36% of girls and 46% of boys). Although books and photocopies are largely used by teens (see table 1.3), it is true that the internet has become widely used by boys or girls (even if boys feel much more confident with this mean of communication). This data was relevant in the way that it showed how teens tend to choose new text reading formats in comparison with the traditional text material that are known as books. Books seem to be considered old-fashioned and represent the less chosen type of material when talking about reading (24%) largely surpassed by photocopies (32%).
Discussion and final considerations
Starting from the results of the survey there might be some points of discussion to consider.
Reading for enjoyment seems to be one of the significant results of the study when talking with thirteen years old students. Then, the joy of reading seems to change into a duty, mostly when considering boys’ answers. This can reflect that the motivation loses its intensity along the school years and dangerously ends up in the lack of interest, as it was expressed at the beginning of this essay. Knowles and Smith (2001) propose three key explanations of why modern teens do not read. They explain that in general teens do not have time for reading and that they set aside this interest for the nearest future and put ahead the category of unmotivated readers. Students learn more from things they understand and want to read, instead of reading something boring to them and in the manner that is far from their perception of the reading process. This aspect should be kept in mind when facing the data that teens prefer home reading than school reading.
Reading seems to be a question of gender when considering that girls are much more attracted to text materials than boys. The trend also points out that novels and magazines fit much better girls’ interests about reading (Cherland, 1994), while adventure novels or horror stories capture mainly boys’ attention (Millard, 1997). There is a common contention that boys feel that reading is a feminine activity (Martino, 2004). Still, the fact that boys’ trend does not fall completely, making them lose the curiosity in reading, should stimulate teachers in finding innovative approaches, especially for boys (Gilbert & Gilbert, 1999). Undoubtedly, boys and girls have definitely different interests and needs so it is important for teachers to take this into consideration in order to choose the correct material that can attract both genders.
The use of the internet is important because it joins together both interests of boys and girls of all ages. This might represent the new text reading format that captures teenagers’ attention since adolescents are always looking for new ways of communication outside the alienation of the school literacy (Alloway & Gilbert, 1997). The computer's ability to process and analyze data means that endless variations on reports and other types of documents can be and are generated, thus internet itself is an enormous source of new information and recreation (Wesley, 2009). Other sources such as computers, hand phones and televisions have replaced reading. Internet is much more popular at home than at school. The only problem of using internet lies in the fact that many pages have not a clear source of information or a specified author and this reflects indeed a lack of authenticity and credibility. It is relevant to know who wrote what is found on the internet, otherwise, it would be difficult to trust on the reliability of the information. Now that the Argentinean government has given new netbooks to secondary school students to surf the internet, teenagers should be taught how to use it properly since internet is the biggest and fastest way to find information. If adolescents learn how to reflect upon what they read, they will find easier to choose the most appropriate material according to their interests.
This research shows that it is not true that adolescents read less than what people generally think. It is only that their interests have changed. It is vital to choose the correct material for this stage in life attending students’ preferences in order to motivate them to read more and credible materials. Reading does not have to be a boring activity which many students may dislike. Reading can be fun and creative. Interesting activities can also be organized by teachers in order to promote reading and to find again that spirit of entertainment students ask for. If teachers took the results of this research seriously, they would learn how important is the reading material choice so as to help teens to develop their reading skills. This survey shows clearly that the reading interest loses its intensity along the years. That is why teachers have to monitor constantly the changing interests in their students and according to that, they can have always new data to create their material.
References
- Buildings, books and bytes: Libraries and communities in the digital age. Published by Benton Foundation. Accessed October 2011 from http://www.benton.org/Library/Kellogg/summary.html
- Cook, S. J., Parker, R. S., & Pettijohn, C. E. (2005). The public library: An early teen's perspective. Public Libraries, 157-161.
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- Herz, S. & Gallo, D. “From Hinton to Hamlet: Building Bridges between Young Adult Literature And The Classics”. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
- Denise Witmer (2010), Everyday Tactics That Will Encourage Your Teen to Read, from http://parentingteens.about.com/od/education/a/teen_reading.htm
- Gilbert, P. (1998), Gender and schooling in New Times: The challenge of boys in literacy. Australian Educational Researcher, 15-36.
- Jessica E. Moyer (2008), An Analysis of the Appeal Factors of Teen and Adult Speculative Fiction, from http://jessicaemilymoyer.pbworks.com/f/MoyerTeensReadAdultbooks.doc
- Northwestern University (2008, March 5). Boys' And Girls' Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological. Accessed October 2011 from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303120346.htm
- Stauffer, S. M. (2007). Developing children's interest in reading. Accessed October 2011 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1387/is_2_56/ai_n24215751/pg_5/
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