Out-of-School Reading

          The Moje article brought up interesting points and raised many new questions for me as a future educator. Particularly on pages 12-13, in the discussion and review of adolescents’ out-of-school reading practices:

“Specifically, an increase in reading caused an increase in students’ vocabulary knowledge, which in turn increased the students reading ability, which motivated the students to read more, beginning the reading cycle once again. The amount of reading done in school was not the only factor that related to improved reading, students out-of-school reading habits have also been documented as indicators of their reading ability (bottom of pg. 12).”

“The fact that novel reading was associated with overall achievement, but not with achievement in classes other than English language arts, raises questions about whether the effect of out-of-school reading on achievement has more to do with how tightly a text type meshes with the discursive and rhetorical conventions of a discipline than it does with the simple act of reading (top of page 13).”
These two passages were particularly interesting for me because of a little history I’ve had with avid readers. You see, my best friend in high school was the daughter of two English professors and her nose was constantly stuck in a book. While I have always enjoyed out-of-school, lightweight reading, Emma reveled in another level of out-of-school reading and had the vocabulary to prove it. You could always pick her out of the crowd by her educated dialect and abstract forms of explanation. Nothing was ever described in a dull manner, because to Emma discussion was exciting: having the ability to be embellished with fancy words, witty satire and old catchphrases that none of my teenage friends or I could ever decipher. This was fascinating to me as her best friend in high school, and still is now as I read through Mojes article and think of the past stories I’ve heard and current blogs I’ve read of Emmas lately. Here is a link in case any of you want a taste of what I’m talking about: http://www.thedailyaztec.com/author/emma-secker/. She is currently a senior at SDSU studying Psychology and writing for their school newspaper, titled The Daily Aztec.
Anyways, back to Moje. What I’m really trying to get at mostly here is that as a future educator I am interested in the various ways that I can encourage my students to involve themselves in out-of-school reading. My friend Emma is a prime example of the effects that out-of-school reading can have on a student, and to what degree they can succeed because of that habit. I believe that in order to “actively engage” yourself in a reading for whatever discourse or reason, there has to be an underlying passion and love for reading that some people just do not have. So how are we supposed to aid students in learning to love to read, whether it is for English class or for pleasure?