“Reading the New Hobby” an Easy Way to Improve Your Writing
Optimistic. Nostalgic. 1302 Rhetoric and Composition students, take lead on an extensive research, to find out what they had missed. Now eager to spread out the truth behind reading more than assigned.
By Carolina Pavon, Andrew Martinez & Alexa Sanchez March 24,2016
How does extra-curricular reading for first year composition students affect their overall writing? It may be true that there are many beneficial ways to improve one's writing by simply reading a book. Although, the simplest way to better writing is by reading books. I personally am a first year comp. student, who likes to read for fun, and when it comes to writing, I actually enjoy and put effort into my writing. I know not all of us students like to read just for fun, but why not. Give it a go, and see the benefits as well as development it will bring to you. Have you ever read a mystery novel, and solved the mystery yourself before finishing the novel? I know I have, and by this I was able to put critical and analytical thinking to use by taking notes of all the details provided and sorting them out to determine just what the mystery was, without consciously being aware of it. Reading means determining someone else's writing, from where we acquire ideas and background information to use in our own writing. The more you read, the more knowledge you can develop for your self knowledge background skills.. The more we read, the more words we gain exposure too, and they’ll naturally expand as well as make their way into our everyday vocabulary. A problem students have, especially first year composition college students, is that they do not exercise extracurricular reading. A habit that we all have, LAZINESS, which is implemented by most of us students when assigned by professors. A problem that is addressed by, Terry Tomasek in his article “Critical Reading: Using Reading Prompts to Promote Active Engagement with Text”. Tomasek claims how students need to encounter a variety of readings and prompts in order to promote critical-out of class reading. Students don't read outside of class because professors go over the important material in class. I tend to pay less attention to the actual reading and wait for the professor to give it to us in class. Many of us students ponder that out of class reading has no connection to our performance in class. Whereas “Good readers connect their past experiences with the text: interpreting, evaluation, and considering alternative responses or interpretations. Critical reading is the art of analyzing and evaluating text...” (Tomasek 131). The better you can read something and make logic of it, the better you can access the significance of the concepts contained within your writing.
Intertextual Reading, and creative thinking assist in being helpful for primary school students and their development of basic creative writing skills. A claim made by Akdal, D. & Sahin, A. in the year 2014, with the sole purpose of getting teachers to determine, “The effectiveness and efficiency of an intertextual reading approach on the improvement of writing skills among fifth grade students.” Intertextuality signifies the way in which texts gain meaning through their referencing of other texts; “create interaction among thoughts by making connections between them” (181). Reading outside of the classroom assists you to combine numerous strategies into a method for understanding and retaining information. According to, Engstrom, E. “The active reading process mirrors the brain's memory process, offering the reader an effective system for comprehending and remembering text” in other words, when it comes to writing you’ll be more fluent in putting words together effortlessly. What you're writing will mirror off what you read as far as higher vocabulary, and give better realistic detail. Also, when it comes to writing it's easier for you to picture what you’re saying, so when it comes to writing it down on paper your words flow together making it easier for other people reading your paper to see that image you're writing about.
Here we have a student from our experiment writing out her page summary of what she did over the weekend.
Another important factor that outcomes is, how reading can increase writing skills; different skills that will be part in the creation of a better piece of writing. “Language, syntax, and structure are all at play. . . Because writing and reading involve the development of meaning . . . both involve planning, generating and revising meaning”, (Langer & Flihan 5). Writing is meant to be read and to be learned from. As we read, we get a sense of how writing works so therefore we try to implement it into our own writing. Reading leads to an increase in vocabulary, by reading we see a lot of examples and new words that we will pick up on and learn meaning to. Reading helps us get new ideas that replace the ways we think about a certain topic, thus giving us something to write about. I myself acquired most of my high vocabulary knowledge due to reading books in school, and on my own free time. When I read either a book or a magazine; and I encounter an unfamiliar word, I look up the definition of the word and try to memorize the meaning.
Reading provides the key to all types of knowledge necessary for writing; being able to read more intellectual writings leads to the advancement in own writing. Reading about what interests us can be the most beneficial, because it will lead us to have a deeper purpose in reading, creating critical thinking as said before. According to my personal experience, I usually have to read about a certain topic, whether it is a topic I am assigned, or just interested to write about. I feel I need to read beforehand, since I will understand much more, and have a better knowledge of what it is I’ll write about. In order to have a better engaging piece of writing, I must know what it is I want to write. “When reading like a writer, the reader uses the author’s text as model for text that he or she will eventually write”, (Langer & Flihan 5). The idea of reading to write being key to a more complex and creative way to write.
The root of the problem is that students aren't performing to their full potential when it comes to writing because professors don't have the right tools and methods to teach students how reading helps increase your writing abilities. It is important for teachers to look for methods of states “... the use of direct instruction and a wide variety of writing tasks and practice over the improving their teaching process and to sharpen the skills of students. In Mermelstein’s article he course of one academic year did result in significant improvement..” In his year long research focusing on enhancing extensive reading, he discovered that students who read more often resulted in having a better ability in vocabulary use and fluency. Their vocabulary span had increased, and varied with multiple new words learned. Just as well as they learned the words, they could also use them to uphold a conversation with higher educated people than average. It made students who have read more books intellectually at ease with the English language. They were not afraid to speak out their own words over something they had an opinion on. Overall it made the students more confident with the knowledge they knew and how to properly use it in real world situations.
The Problem
A problem with the research mentioned above, is that the studies are being generalized to a specific group of students; exempting first year composition students. There is a big transition from high school to college, the expectations when it comes to writing are at a higher level. The students who more vigorously need to be aware of extracurricular reading; they seem to ignore the importance of what reading can bring to them, a critical mind. The ability to achieve flexibility, and a increase number of connections, which means an advancement in vocabulary with the involvement of new words.
How exactly are reading and writing connected? Well I myself do not read for fun, I just find it to be super tedious, and I could never concentrate my attention towards a book. Whenever I am reading I find myself having to go back over and over, because I forget what I was reading. It's like the saying “going in one ear and coming out the other” I just could never get myself into it no matter how desperately I tried. I saw it affect my writing because I had the problem of trying to get my words across with the right vocabulary. I couldn’t get my thoughts and ideas transfer to my writing. So, i came to understand reading did have an impact on my writing.
This makes the perfect examples why I am conducting this experiment between two first year composition students. To prove that reading not only in the classroom, but also outside of it, can enhance your writing abilities as a first year composition student and even be useful in your everyday life.
The Experiment
I conducted an experiment between a student who reads as an extracurricular activity, and a student who does not read; if not for homework. These were both first year composition students, who willingly volunteered by answering a question prompt of “How was your weekend”? A quite easy prompt which allowed for these students to write with ease, and show us clearly if any differences in writing appeared. The results we retrieved, were quite the opposite. I observed how the student who involved extracurricular reading to his daily routine, in fact showed to have a more expanded vocabulary, a more fluent organization as well as a more intellectual sense of writing.
The highlighted sentences showing the high vocabulary, and more fluent writing of Student #1
Student # 2 shows a run-on problem with their sentence.
This emphasizing and supporting how the more reading a student does, the increasingly enhanced of a writer he/she may become. The only similarity observed from both writing responses was the the overall structure. Both followed the regular intro, body paragraphs and conclusion structure. The student who did not practice reading as an extracurricular activity, showed to have a less coherent essay, which included run-on sentences, implying that the student does not have the background knowledge needed from reading, to have an idea of when to add syntax or simple grammatical issues not only intellectual writing.
The fact that extracurricular reading does indeed aid in the growth of a student's writing process, makes this a step in the right direction to get students to acknowledge this. If you're a first year composition student and feel like your analyzing skills as a scholarly writer are not sharp then you might want to reconsider taking some of your free time, and reading a book, article, or even a magazine. I would like to challenge all students in their first year composition English course to pick up a college level book on their free time and maybe learn some words they didn't know, become better at analyzing, or even just for their free entertainment.
Works Cited
Akdal, D & Spain, A. (2014). The effects of intertextual reading approach on the development of creative writing skills, Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 54, 171-186. Engstrom, Ellen. “Reading, writing, and assistive technology: An integrated developmental curriculum for college students” Journal of adolescent & adult literacy. Volume 10. No (2005): 30-39. Mermelstein, Aaron David. “Improving EFL learners’ writing through enhanced extensive reading”. Journal of Reading in a Foreign Language. Volume 27. No.2. (2015): 182-198. Tomasek, Terry. “Critical reading: Using reading prompts to promote active engagement with text”. International Journal of teaching and learning in higher education. Volume 21. No 1. (2009): 127-132.
