18 ms·

I grew up in a household that had passed that 350 book mark, and beyond all of the actual meaningful improvements it has made to my life, it also meant that rea

by fhood 8y ago

I grew up in a household that had passed that 350 book mark, and beyond all of the actual meaningful improvements it has made to my life, it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy. So teach your kids to love books, and enjoy reading. It doesn't have to be high-brow intellectually challenging shit, just make sure that they associate books with fun.

Insanity 8y ago
I think that last part is especially true. Due to school and forced reading assingments, reading gets associated too often with work or boring assignments.
- ThetaOneOne 8y ago
  Yeah, I strongly believe that all books carry significant value. You don’t need high level concepts to gain value. We sometimes over focus on the best case scenrerio ignoring what we can get kids interested in.
- fhood 8y ago
  In elementary school we would have assigned reading periods, during which we were supposed to read one chapter of the book we were on. Turns out that if you read five chapters instead you just fail all the quizzes because you don't have a fucking clue what happened in chapter 12, given you read that weeks ago and can't really tie chapters to events anyway.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's true. I was reading a lot as a kid but I barely read anything we had to read for school. Reading assignments took the fun out of reading because now you had the pressure to be able to report on the reading.
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    To be fair, interpretation and writing are just as important as reading.
    - fhood 8y ago
      I strongly disagree. I think enjoyment of reading is vastly more important that interpretation and writing. What is the point of these kinds of assignments if it causes the kids to have negative associations with reading? Even beyond school though, I find the idea that good novels require careful analysis antithetical to the concept of a good book. Good writing should be excellent at every level. It is wonderful if new narratives and ideas can be discovered upon careful analysis, but if that analysis is necessary for comprehension it ruins it for me. I believe that reading a story should be something natural and seamless.
- thrower123 8y ago
  They tend to try to make reading excruciating, particularly before high schools. I don't know if they still do this, but for some reason it was a big trend when I was in grade school to break up into "reading groups", and you'd go around in a circle reading a paragraph at a time out loud. I still despise reading aloud for that reason; I always got a rash of shit for being a few chapters ahead when my turn came up again and having to page back to find the right spot.
  - veebat 8y ago
    Reading aloud is something I've returned to in later years as speaking practice, vocal warmup, and testing my own writing. It was, of course, a chore in school.
- kirsebaer 8y ago
  School assignments should always be voluntary.
  - cweagans 8y ago
    In a sense, they are. You'll just lose points for not doing the work. Clearly not what you were suggesting of course, but it's true. Can you clarify how you think this would work?
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  What I really hated in primary school was that when you finished your homework, you were allowed to read a book. However, all the books were pretty dated and not all that interesting. Furthermore, when you'd finished it, you'd have to write a report on it. One year, I got sick of this system, so I found one book I enjoyed and basically read that one a couple dozen times over the rest of the year.
TallGuyShort 8y ago
>> it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy I'm actually curious to hear how various HNers have done on on standardized reading comprehension tests. I grew up with massive bookcases in the house, I've now populated my own, I read a lot, get a lot out of it, and enjoy it. On the ACT I had perfect scores on every category but a literal 0 on reading comprehension. As far as I'm aware, that's always been the case on my standardized tests, and I wasn't surprised because the questions seemed ludicrous to me (I nodded vigorously while reading [1]). I primarily read non-fiction and have wondered if I just don't grok fiction. What are other people's experience on that? [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.980b67e62e34 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/...
- hobs 8y ago
  I always found that the reading comprehension part of the test as the easiest by far, and would generally score at the highest level the test could predict.
- Izkata 8y ago
  We were explicitly taught to read the questions first, then scan for the question's keywords in the text, and pick the answer based on the best match for that sentence alone. I agree; I typically finished a book a week just reading between classes in highschool (and more at night), and was one of the only ones who could fully read the passage and still have time to answer all the questions. They were weirdly analytical and overly-literal, not something that made any sense in a "comprehension" test.
- ip26 8y ago
  I read a ton as a kid, and I always struggled a bit on reading comprehension tests. To me it generally seemed like the "reading comprehension" questions would focus on minutia I didn't consider important, and simply didn't bother to remember. It's been a long time since then, but I want to say I'd read a story about a kid sledding on a hill with his friends, and then later to test your reading comprehension they'd ask you what color his shirt was. Maybe that is reading comprehension and I am just bad at it, but to me shirt color was unimportant.
jriot 8y ago
We all can't be high brow, at times the VCR manual does the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNcMKWIuhBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNcMKWIuhBk
JamesBarney 8y ago
I think most parents with large household libraries are probably pretty bright. And most kids from pretty bright parents are pretty bright too. You could fill a library with all the studies that tried to improve people's lives through increased reading. And none of them replicated in large way.
- simplemts 8y ago
  You should check out '30 million words'. It's a book about the importance of spoken language on young minds, and books may be a means. Fascinating data in it.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    https://smile.amazon.com/Thirty-Million-Words-Building-Childs/dp/0525954872 https://smile.amazon.com/Thirty-Million-Words-Building-Child...
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    Before I invest the time.and money in buying a book. How did they deal with the confounds? And was there a study on the intervention you could point me to? Reading the summary of the book on Amazon, the experiments looked pretty confounded and it didn't mention any successful interventions.
bsenftner 8y ago
I grew up in a house of readers. My earliest exposure was a 500+ comic book collection before I knew how to read, which graduated to children's novels by early elementary, and devouring the classics beginning in 3rd grade. By high school I was finishing most the 'great american authors'. During HS french existentialists and the beatniks were perfect foundations for a too-smart-for-his-own-good arrogant teen. I am lucky to be alive. I dropped out of high school, but tricked my way into Harvard. Worked with Mandelbrot, was on the Sony PSX OS team, and quite a bit more. Primarily thanks to my exposure to multiple lifetimes of wisdom, generating inner confidence, thanks to reading. It's been quite entertaining, to say the least...

by fhood 8y ago

Insanity 8y ago

I think that last part is especially true. Due to school and forced reading assingments, reading gets associated too often with work or boring assignments.

ThetaOneOne 8y ago
Yeah, I strongly believe that all books carry significant value. You don’t need high level concepts to gain value. We sometimes over focus on the best case scenrerio ignoring what we can get kids interested in.
fhood 8y ago
In elementary school we would have assigned reading periods, during which we were supposed to read one chapter of the book we were on. Turns out that if you read five chapters instead you just fail all the quizzes because you don't have a fucking clue what happened in chapter 12, given you read that weeks ago and can't really tie chapters to events anyway.
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's true. I was reading a lot as a kid but I barely read anything we had to read for school. Reading assignments took the fun out of reading because now you had the pressure to be able to report on the reading.
- jlarocco 8y ago
  To be fair, interpretation and writing are just as important as reading.
  - fhood 8y ago
    I strongly disagree. I think enjoyment of reading is vastly more important that interpretation and writing. What is the point of these kinds of assignments if it causes the kids to have negative associations with reading? Even beyond school though, I find the idea that good novels require careful analysis antithetical to the concept of a good book. Good writing should be excellent at every level. It is wonderful if new narratives and ideas can be discovered upon careful analysis, but if that analysis is necessary for comprehension it ruins it for me. I believe that reading a story should be something natural and seamless.
thrower123 8y ago
They tend to try to make reading excruciating, particularly before high schools. I don't know if they still do this, but for some reason it was a big trend when I was in grade school to break up into "reading groups", and you'd go around in a circle reading a paragraph at a time out loud. I still despise reading aloud for that reason; I always got a rash of shit for being a few chapters ahead when my turn came up again and having to page back to find the right spot.
- veebat 8y ago
  Reading aloud is something I've returned to in later years as speaking practice, vocal warmup, and testing my own writing. It was, of course, a chore in school.
kirsebaer 8y ago
School assignments should always be voluntary.
- cweagans 8y ago
  In a sense, they are. You'll just lose points for not doing the work. Clearly not what you were suggesting of course, but it's true. Can you clarify how you think this would work?
AllegedAlec 8y ago
What I really hated in primary school was that when you finished your homework, you were allowed to read a book. However, all the books were pretty dated and not all that interesting. Furthermore, when you'd finished it, you'd have to write a report on it. One year, I got sick of this system, so I found one book I enjoyed and basically read that one a couple dozen times over the rest of the year.

TallGuyShort 8y ago

>> it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy I'm actually curious to hear how various HNers have done on on standardized reading comprehension tests. I grew up with massive bookcases in the house, I've now populated my own, I read a lot, get a lot out of it, and enjoy it. On the ACT I had perfect scores on every category but a literal 0 on reading comprehension. As far as I'm aware, that's always been the case on my standardized tests, and I wasn't surprised because the questions seemed ludicrous to me (I nodded vigorously while reading [1]). I primarily read non-fiction and have wondered if I just don't grok fiction. What are other people's experience on that? [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.980b67e62e34 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/...

hobs 8y ago
I always found that the reading comprehension part of the test as the easiest by far, and would generally score at the highest level the test could predict.
Izkata 8y ago
We were explicitly taught to read the questions first, then scan for the question's keywords in the text, and pick the answer based on the best match for that sentence alone. I agree; I typically finished a book a week just reading between classes in highschool (and more at night), and was one of the only ones who could fully read the passage and still have time to answer all the questions. They were weirdly analytical and overly-literal, not something that made any sense in a "comprehension" test.
ip26 8y ago
I read a ton as a kid, and I always struggled a bit on reading comprehension tests. To me it generally seemed like the "reading comprehension" questions would focus on minutia I didn't consider important, and simply didn't bother to remember. It's been a long time since then, but I want to say I'd read a story about a kid sledding on a hill with his friends, and then later to test your reading comprehension they'd ask you what color his shirt was. Maybe that is reading comprehension and I am just bad at it, but to me shirt color was unimportant.

jriot 8y ago

We all can't be high brow, at times the VCR manual does the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNcMKWIuhBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNcMKWIuhBk

JamesBarney 8y ago

I think most parents with large household libraries are probably pretty bright. And most kids from pretty bright parents are pretty bright too. You could fill a library with all the studies that tried to improve people's lives through increased reading. And none of them replicated in large way.

simplemts 8y ago
You should check out '30 million words'. It's a book about the importance of spoken language on young minds, and books may be a means. Fascinating data in it.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  https://smile.amazon.com/Thirty-Million-Words-Building-Childs/dp/0525954872 https://smile.amazon.com/Thirty-Million-Words-Building-Child...
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  Before I invest the time.and money in buying a book. How did they deal with the confounds? And was there a study on the intervention you could point me to? Reading the summary of the book on Amazon, the experiments looked pretty confounded and it didn't mention any successful interventions.

bsenftner 8y ago

I grew up in a house of readers. My earliest exposure was a 500+ comic book collection before I knew how to read, which graduated to children's novels by early elementary, and devouring the classics beginning in 3rd grade. By high school I was finishing most the 'great american authors'. During HS french existentialists and the beatniks were perfect foundations for a too-smart-for-his-own-good arrogant teen. I am lucky to be alive. I dropped out of high school, but tricked my way into Harvard. Worked with Mandelbrot, was on the Sony PSX OS team, and quite a bit more. Primarily thanks to my exposure to multiple lifetimes of wisdom, generating inner confidence, thanks to reading. It's been quite entertaining, to say the least...