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Why doesn't my generation enjoy reading?

Conscious Bob said:
Literacy does not apply solely to books ergo one does not need to read them to become literate.
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That is so not the point. Books give you a reason to read, something to encourage people to read and just as important, makes reading fun and something that is good and not a chore. If you make being literate and reading something that is purely functional then you won't ever win against illiteracy. So while, yes you don't "need" books or to read books to be literate, they play an important part and you can't just leave them out.
 
Sparhawk said:
That is so not the point. Books give you a reason to read, something to encourage people to read and just as important, makes reading fun and something that is good and not a chore. If you make being literate and reading something that is purely functional then you won't ever win against illiteracy. So while, yes you don't "need" books or to read books to be literate, they play an important part and you can't just leave them out.
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Nah, there are other reasons for becoming literate like getting a job or qualification, participating in social media and reading mags and newspapers.

Books add to the quality of life but they're not vital.
 
I agree there are many reasons for wanting to become literate but I can't agree that books aren't vital.

As a little self experiment in the vitality vs non-vitality of books try going without books for a week. Don't look up anything, don't use anything with references to books, eliminate everything that had its origins in books, including movies and TV shows etc and lets see ... :)
 
Meadow337 said:
As a little self experiment in the vtality vs non-vitality of books try going without books for a week. Don't look up anything, don't use an references to book, eliminate everything that had its origins in books, including movies and TV shows etc
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A week, try years...

Eliminating everything that had it's origin in books is impossible but that has nothing to do with reading.
 
Conscious Bob said:
A week, try years...

Eliminating everything that had it's origin in books is impossible but that has nothing to do with reading.
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I think it has a lot to do with the relative importance and value of books, which was being downplayed as a factor in overcoming illiteracy.

I think we can agree that people have many reasons for being illiterate, from poor schooling, to no schooling, to other social and medical reasons, and just as many different reasons for wanting to overcome the handicap of not being able to read, but I will still maintain that instilling a love for reading through good books is an integral part of the process of overcoming illiteracy. If this was not so - why the heck is so much time and energy given to writing books that are interesting and relevant to adult beginner readers? Giving people something they WANT to read is important in helping them learn to read.
 
We love books but there are adults and more importantly children that don't, they like other forms of written communication and that's just a fact.

Getting a love of books instilled is great but that doesn't happen for everyone occasionally you'll get school leavers hating them.

Literacy is the important thing however it's achieved.
 
Most visual content (movies, computer games, music videos) is edited to move at a very fast pace; the scene changes in the blink of an eye. You have to be very attentive if you want everything to register though I'm sure even then, you may miss a few details. Does this mean we need a longer attention span?
I think it is the opposite. We need a very short attention span, or rather a series of short attention spans.
Most youngsters do a lot of texting these days so naturally they keep checking their phones for messages too. So their attention is frequently broken by the ping of an incoming message, which usually needs a reply message.
This raises the old what came first, chicken or egg question. Is media tailored for short attention span or have youngsters become like this because they spend most of their time zooming and zapping through super fast visuals.
What I'm getting at is most young people these days do not prefer anything that needs their continuous attention for a longer spell. Reading is one such activity.
Decades ago, when I started reading, I only needed a quiet corner. Today, a quiet corner also includes headphones and a blinking cellphone.
 
sonataro said:
Yet, something I do know is that most the time if a word is over 3 syllables my class won't understand the word in use.
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Apart from the sms words, the umbrella words, 'cool, hot, chill', have truncated vocabulary. Things are either hot, cool, and there's another one, they rock!
 
To which my reply is the same - it is fine so long as proper spelling and grammar don't get lost along the way.

Imagine the horror of reading an entire book in IM


Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergy-man, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Marley ws ded, 2 begin wth. There's no dbt whtvr abt tht. D registr f his burial was sgnd by d clrgymn, d clerk, d undrtkr, n d chief mrner. Scrooge sgnd it. N Scrooge's name was gd upon 'Chnge fr anythng he chose 2 put his hnd 2.
 
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I think there is a bit more risk as there weren't entire generations raised to virtually only know shorthand
 
Meadow337 said:
I think there is a bit more risk as there weren't entire generations raised to virtually only know shorthand
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Children need to know what long words are in order to understand abbreviations and incomprehension on our part, being adults, is part of the mix.
 
hmm from what I've seen significant numbers think that the abreviation IS how the word is spelled / written as opposed to how the word is pronounced
 
I think you are attributing too much forethought and intent to kids who have cell phones glued to their hands from a far too young age and who are then permitted to write in IM in class because you must encourage them to write anything at the expense of good language skills by an education system that doesn't work.
 
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Nope lol my experience is that they are remarkably self absorbed little people who really don't think in such big terms most of the time. It certainly isn't some global conspiracy on the part of kids everywhere.
 
Meadow337 said:
Nope lol my experience is that they are remarkably self absorbed little people who really don't think in such big terms most of the time. It certainly isn't some global conspiracy on the part of kids everywhere.
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A global conspiracy... that's quite a conclusion you've drawn from my argument, when I say children I mean up to the age of fifteen. Taking into account the range of development and sophistication up to the age of fifteen and the ways children interact with social media, literacy is far more important to the twenty first century generations than it has been to previous generations.

Here's an illustration, Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice 1813. This book is one of the best examples of classic UK literature yet there wasn't a UK state education system back then. English as a written language was not affected by the greater population.

Why should a greater proportion of functionally literate people affect written language..?
 
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