Wilhelm Chap. 2

During the conversations that Wilhelm had with three "good" students and lovers of reading, the students voice their attitudes toward reading. One common response was that they read in order to learn and experience enjoyment. This struck me as interesting because it is obvious that a majority of students do not spend enough time reading. This overwhelming number of students who don't read have the attitude that reading isn't enjoyable, nor do they see it as personally gratifying. If only every student could sit down with a text and think to himself "All right, what will this book provide me with that I could not experience in any other way?" Reading is no different than any other task or hobby people perform. To become better at it one must practice. Further, the notion of simply having an open mind and a positive perspective when sitting down to read can make reading that much more enjoyable. Perhaps it is the several summary questions students are usually required to answer after or during reading a particular text which doesn't allow students to adopt a postitive attitude toward reading. I guess this is leading to the question of how can we change the negative attitudes of students who begin to read? Is it to provide them with texts that speak directly to adolescent issues such as identity, love and autonomy or is it something more deep such as moving pass the stigma of reading as something "nerds" do? I hope to discover some answers as I read on...

Also worth noting is the perspective one of the three students, Cora, had on character-reader relationships. She refered to literary characters as 'people [she] knew.' Realizing that literary characters, although fictional, have characteristics and tendencies as illuminated by that author that are very real is important in achieving deep engagment with a text. Cora's claim seems directly in contrast with struggling readers' perspectives that characters in stories are strictly what their genre suggests, purely fictional. If English language arts teachers can explicitly explain to students to look at various facets of literary characters and encourage them to juxtapose these characters with people students have encountered in their own lives, they may begin to see texts as more meaningful.