I have had my share of frustrations as far as making my students like “READING”. By “reading” I pertain to the general act of browsing through any reading material for leisurely purposes. I must admit that the school I work for implements very stringent programs that would develop higher reading skills, especially in high school. I myself had to deal with a dilemma related to this, when at the beginning of this school year, our department head handed me my teaching load. I had to cringe at the thought of teaching, let alone, force-teach freshmen and sophomore students (most of whom have never laid a finger on any reading material no thicker than a course outline hand-out) to read novels! And by “novels” I mean classics as ones written by Bronte, Dumas, Austen and Hugo. After all, were we not victims of book
reports ourselves? I know how it must have felt to be given a task we strongly loathe. When I was in high school I was asked to make a literary analysis of Dante Alighieri’s “The Inferno” in not less than 30 pages. And I was a bookworm. Imagine giving that to a non novel reader.
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