SWA #1

Professor Michael Skube has many concerns regarding today’s college students. He has noticed over the last few years that most incoming college students do not read for pleasure, or much at all, and therefore do not have a deep knowledge of vocabulary. From my experiences throughout high school and now college, I have to agree with his concerns and beliefs. Throughout high school, I rarely saw my classmates read any required readings, much less something for their own enjoyment. I was also frequently involved in conversations with peers who would ask the meaning of a word I took for granted. These students included some of the top people in my class. I do believe his claims are accurate based on my own experiences.
I have also discussed this article with some other people I have met here on campus. They agree with Mr. Skube’s point of view on the subject. They also pointed out that most students stop reading once they are required to read boring books for school. I have a personal experience with this. In first grade my brother was one of the top readers in his grade; he was always reading books from the school library. Once his teachers started assigning books for class, he stopped reading for fun, and he basically stopped reading at all. The same happened for me and most of my friends. We loved to read through middle school and the earlier years of high school, but as we were required to read random books for summer reading and English class, we stopped reading books for fun. Over the past two years, I have read maybe two books that weren’t for school. I used to read a variety of books over the years.
I believe another reason for the lack of reading by today’s young population is the overwhelming amount of time students spend watching television and playing video games. Many students, including myself, feel there is a certain amount of television one should watch a week, or certain shows that everyone has to see. Most of my guy friends spend most of their waking hours outside of school playing computer or video games. I know this because they would talk about the different games in class. There are many factors that provide other entertainment besides reading, and these are just a few.
Todd Hagstette’s way of “aggressive reading” would help these students that do not spend their time reading and developing their vocabulary. By reading aggressively, as Hagstette states in his article, students are able to absorb the text much more so than by just reading the text once, especially if it is a complicated subject matter. When students can fully absorb and understand the text, they can acquire much more from the text and are more likely to take full advantage of the information in the article. If students spent more time reading aggressively, as Hagstette suggests, and less time watching television or playing computer games, they will have an advantage when they start college since they would be able to write much better.