Name: NRC Presents: Stephen Krashen on Reading Because You Want To (Part 2)
Uploaded: 2024-12-17T23:51:49.000Z
Duration: 34 min 4 s
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Adverbs of degree

Well, I've just given you the case that reading is good for you.

Reading gives you all this language stuff, all this literacy stuff.

I want to give you some other advantages of reading.

Victor Nell wrote this amazing book in 1988 called Lost in a Book.

If you can find a used copy of this, this is such an entertaining book.

First of all, he interviewed people about their reading habits.

Reading removes me from the irritations of living.

For the few hours a day I read trash, I escape the cares of those around me, as well as escaping my own cares and dissatisfactions.

Somerset Maugham, quoted by Nell, who was a very weird guy, Conversation After a Time

And my thoughts, which were told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry.

Then I fly to my book as the opium smoker to his pipe.

It's in the book about reading before you go to sleep.

He had people come into his lab and bring a book.

These were dedicated pleasure readers, 26 people.

They'd bring a book that they were deeply involved in, that they really were enjoying.

Of the 26, 14 brought The Power of Reading by Steve Krashen.

He then asked them to sit down and he hooked them up with all kinds of devices, galvanic skin response, like lie detection, respiration, perspiration.

But then when they put the book down, the arousal level went below the baseline.

There's one other bedtime activity that does that, but we can talk about that later.

When he talked to these people, he found they were nearly all bedtime readers.

24 out of 26 read in bed nearly every night or most nights.

Even if I read for only five minutes, I must do it.

My addiction to reading is such I almost can't sleep without a minimum of 10 minutes, usually 30 to 60 reading.

We keep worrying about how to get kids to read.

No, once they're into books, man, you can't get them to stop.

Okay, we've got two things going for reading.

It gives you all these grammatical and vocabulary things and it's fun.

When I talk about these studies, I'm about to tell you, I'm really talking about fiction because these are studies in which they ask readers how much they know about certain topics, compare them to non-readers, et cetera.

When they ask people how much they read, they're talking mostly about fiction.

Two-thirds of books taken out of libraries are fiction.

People accuse me of writing fiction, but it's not true, okay?

I looked at the New York Times bestseller list for young people, 10 books, all fiction.

Keith Stanovich, University of Michigan, a number of studies correlating how much people say they read and how much they know about certain topics.

People who read more know more about literature.

You get all these things from reading stories.

They have more everyday practical knowledge.

Keith Simonton is my all-time favorite author on research on creativity.

One of his books, his conclusion is, omnivorous reading in childhood and adolescence correlates positively with ultimate adult success.

Lots of case histories, only two, just for illustration.

Spike Lee, did you see that 10, 15 years ago?

He was so good that he was a better Malcolm X than Malcolm X.

Anyway, the movie was very good, except they left something out, which was in the autobiography of Malcolm X, and that's his history as a reader.

He says in the autobiography, when he grew up in the Midwest, when he was in seventh grade, he was the president of his class doing okay, but then the family moved east, and he said his life in the streets erased everything he had ever learned in school.

In prison, in his early 20s, he met a significant other, very important term in sociology, someone who opens a path for you.

This other prisoner introduced him to the library, the prison library.

You couldn't have gotten me out of books with a wedge.

He tells about every night the guards would come by with flashlights.

He was under the cover reading, reading with a flashlight, just like you did when you were in high school.

My favorite quote from the book, he said, a reporter telephoned me asking questions.

Michael Faraday, genius scientist, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, chemist who basically discovered electromagnetism and changed the world.

Einstein had Faraday's picture on his wall.

Well, as you see, he lived 1791, 1867, a while ago.

Michael Faraday grew up in London, lived in very high poverty.

When he was 10 years old, he left school and was apprenticed to a bookbinder.

He told Michael Faraday when he was a little boy, yeah, I want you to help me get the books together, put them together.

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NRC Presents: Stephen Krashen on Reading Because You Want To (Part 2)

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