Blog 1: The Conceptual Basis of Reading
A: My name is Erina Dominick. I am 23 years old and I transferred to Chico from Sacramento two semesters ago. I have two younger siblings. My apartment is only a few blocks away from school, so I leave my house with only the bare minimum amount of time needed to power-walk across the campus. Usually I make it to class on time, but I am always out of breath when I get there. I have a bad habit of waiting until the last minute for everything, but I’m working on not doing that. I deleted every social networking app on my phone this semester in hopes that I will learn how to stop distracting myself from the task at hand, which unfortunately happens to be my hobby.
B: 1. When reading a text, good readers read as fast or as slowly as they need to attempt to make a mental image of what they just read. Sometimes that might mean reading the text over and over. When you’re good at reading, you take some time to reflect on the ideas that the author is trying to convey. Good readers try to make connections from the author’s words to their own lives, or to other things they may have read. Most people know how to skim, but only good readers look for connections and mental imagery when reading.
2. In the fourth grade, I remember trudging in from after lunch time recess. Since I had had a particularly invigorating go on the monkey bars, I was not yet ready to sit down and fill my head with information that I had categorized to be useless and boring at the time. Surprisingly, my teacher plopped down in front of the class on a shiny wooden stool, pulled out the book A Phantom Tollbooth and started reading. I lay my head down on the cool desk and listened to my teacher read. Currently, A Phantom Tollbooth is still a favorite of mine.
3. Well, I only just learned the other day that reading tweets and Facebook news feeds count as reading. Not that I thought I was fake reading or anything, I just didn’t really imagine that such useless information was making any difference towards my ability to read. In that case, I read twitter and billboards and advertisements everyday. As far as books go, I finish one usually every week I like to read, a lot. The novels that I read for pleasure don’t differ much from the books I read for school. I like to read scientific journal articles, news, non-fiction, but I also enjoy reading comics, and other fictitious books. The last book I started was Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, which is vastly different from any textbooks I’ve read so far.
4. Williams states that many students have an idea that reading is for nerds, or that those that read well try to read as fast as possible. I agree that we live in an anti-intellectual society, and those that attempt to better their lives with relevant information are nerds, or mysterious loners. I really liked that Williams mentioned that the idea of reading well is conflicting and confusing for most people, since our society places such a high value on the ability to read as fast as possible, without comprehending as much as possible.