Reflection 9: Adolescents' Motivation to Read (Pitcher et al.)

Truthfully, if someone asked me now if I read for pleasure, the phrase "ain't nobody got time for that" and the following catchy remix come to mind.

You see, my definition of pleasure reading usually means reading a long fiction or nonfiction book that's been published. However, when I think about it, I do read blogs/news articles/stories online and engage in email-writing, instant messaging and texting on a daily basis for fun. To me and I suspect a lot of people, Internet reading and communication via writing are integral parts of our lives--like breathing. However, I suspect I'm probably not the only one who doesn't count these activities as "reading."

In a 2007 paper "Assessing Adolescents' Motivation to Read" in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, the authors discuss a motivation-to-read study and its implications for teaching adolescents. After surveying 384 adolescents and interviewing 100 of them in grades 6-12 in the United States and Trinidad, unsurprisingly, the authors found a discrepancy between survey and interview results. The interview results suggest that many teens actually do a lot of reading for fun outside of class even though they identify themselves as ones who do not read for fun. This discrepancy suggests many adolescents have come to define reading as strictly academic reading (reading done in school) even though many of them do enjoy "reading" outside of school in the form of reading magazines, emails, stories online and written by friends, and exchanged on IMs. At the end, the authors give the following five suggestions to teachers of adolescents: 1) incorporate the multiple literacies students read outside of school into instruction; 2) model reading enjoyment; 3) use activities such as literature circles and book clubs to engage adolescents; 4) vary reading difficulty levels in reading assignments;  5) and involve student choice in reading.

Incorporating student interests into teaching is a
sure way make most (if not all) topics more engaging.

The paper, using motivation scores and interview data, quantitatively and qualitatively sums up the fact that students tend to find reading in school different and less fun than reading outside of school. In addition, students tend to reflect on their reading abilities based on how they do in school-related reading tasks that emphasize "decoding skills and comprehension strategies" above "positive attitudes" that "are essential for mastery of a text" (395). The authors suggest that teachers should incorporate student interests into teaching and promoting reading skills. Inside a high school math class, the teachers can involve adolescent interests (cars, fashion, food, people) into tasks/problems. Once you have the students hooked, teaching how to read and identify key facts in math tasks/problems and how to use math concepts could proceed more smoothly and painlessly. Also instead of relying on textbooks, some bold math teachers can even use Internet or outside sources to find other more engaging problems and readings to teach their lesson with. Luckily, for math teachers, teaching math and associated math reading probably don't entail over-analyzing every little detail for meaning that so often takes the fun out of school-related readings (Yes, I'm looking at you, English teachers. Love you all. And you were my favorite teachers in high school, but sometimes I can't stand the over-analyzing).