Reflection On Academic Reading

Reading is a nice way to just sit back and let your imagination be free. In an article titled “How Reading changed my Life” by Anna Quindlen she goes on to talk about how it shaped her as a person and it helps strengthen emotional connectedness. In her book she states, “Socrates was wrong: a reader learns what he or she does not know from books, what has passed and yet is forever present through print”. Ultimately, its about having this joy where we can just grab a book escape and lose yourself in the book, to get lost in the print forgetting about any matters going on in ones life. Being lost and having no care in the world are the reasons to want to grab a book and develop our minds, books will also help shape who we are due to the fact that when we read we are constantly learning new things and educating ourselves. Romanticism can be a feeling used to describe how a reader feels when cracking a brand new book open, the smell of the ink on paper and the creases a book acquires from constant use are physical evidence of the journey the book has taken with its reader that cant be duplicated with an

To me, reading means many things, not only the reading of text on a page but actions of others and myself as well. Most other people may not say that they will think of baseball games when thinking of how they read in real life, but I view the game of baseball that way and I like to share about how I can read in many different ways in life. Reading books is definitely not one of my favorite hobbies to do, but every once in a while I will find a good book that will catch my interest for the next couple of months. My learning experience from reading on the field has taught me another meaning of literacy that I would not have realized if I had not thought about what reading really meant to me. I can now understand how I use reading in all different aspects of my life better, and not just in the classroom but throughout my everyday activities, like baseball.

At this point in my life I find myself in an interesting predicament regarding my attitudes toward reading and writing; more so towards reading. Years ago I used to love reading books for pleasure but nowadays I find myself reading things that little to no effort to digest. This includes the very basic posts on facebook expressing one’s opinion on something or articles and threads on reddit discussing topics I find intriguing. Perhaps it’s the severe senioritis that has overcome me as I enter my last semester at Chapman University. As I’ve gotten lazier I can see it start to reflect in my everyday life. Deep down I still love to read but I rarely find myself getting truly invested into the action unless it relates to something I am very

Ever since I was in elementary school, I have had a strong fascination with literature. Overtime, I had a plethora of books lining my bookcases and barely had room for any more. Reading was a necessity to me and it still is to me today. I eat, sleep, and breath literature because I feel like it’s essential to my academic career. Literature does many wonderful things like, teach me about life lessons, transport me to a new world that I have only dreamed about going to, and discover new vocabulary.

Chapter 10 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor is called “Never Stand Next to the Hero.” This chapter claims that character’s deaths are important plot devices. Foster made a great point of saying how readers become emotionally attached to characters in books. He makes to point that characters aren't real people. “They’re not people because they have never existed. I mean, have you ever met one on the street?” Characters are simply an outline made by the author and the reader coloring in that outline to make the character what they want it to be. Foster also pushed the point across that the main character can’t ever die in the beginning or middle of the book. If the main character dies, what’s the point of the book

As I was reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I was thinking about how much I have missed in the books I have read due to not knowing how to look for certain literary devices. Something as simple as not knowing how to read between the lines caused me to miss out on points the author was trying to make. Over the course of reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I have learned many ways to analyze literature that I did not know before.

Reading can promote more meaningful learning. According to results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, 2004),

In the first chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster, it states that “the quest consists of five things a questor, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there.”(Foster) The poem Beowulf is a good example of a quest because it contains all of these characteristics. The part that is most important for the characters on the quest is finding out the real reason they partook in a quest. This is not revealed until the questor has either failed in the mission or is in a rut. The knowledge that the questor learns from this challenge is how the character can grow and fulfill their purpose.

Throughout my childhood I enjoyed reading a variety of books as a method of escaping my troubles and delving into someone else’s world for a short time. But it is my belief that being an avid reader also helped me become

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are,” (Cooley). Reading has impacted us in many ways throughout our lives. Often time’s books give people different perspectives on their lives. People with high stress levels often find comfort in reading books to take their mind off of their concerns. Sometimes, people just need to take a step back from their life and relax for a while; therefore, reading is a great tool. Reading all kinds of books has also helped me become a better writer. There are many different books that have impacted me over the years.

If the world were perfect, the average Joe would read voraciously- in his free time, waiting for the light rail, while riding shotgun in the car or even in the tub. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. People are changing the way they spend their free time. They are trading their books for the television and Wi-Fi. Every day the amount of time spent reading is decreased and people are spending all of their free time on their electronics. You should read because it’s one of life’s leisure’s that can improve your knowledge, make you a better person, and expand your imagination.

A growing body of researchers claim that if students are not motivated and engaged in reading, they will not achieve their full literacy potential (Gambrell, 2011; Serravallo 2015; Warner, 2014; Irvin et al., 2007; Parsons et al., 2015). How and why would they read a “broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging” texts if they are not interested? Research now shows that engagement and reading achievement actually have a symbiotic relationship, such that they must exist simultaneously (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000, as cited in Springer, Harris, & Dole, 2017). As students become more engaged in reading, they develop an increased level of competence, which supports their literacy achievement (Irvin et al., 2007; Springer, Harris, & Dole, 2017). As students’ reading abilities increase, they hold a greater desire to continue reading, along

Reading is enjoyable for the average reader because people can learn astronomical words that they can use when they are speaking to other people. When a person is reading, they are able to expand their thinking. Also, reading helps fix any writing mistakes that the average person may be struggling with. Reading helps the person become a critical thinker and knowledgeable about what is going on in this world. Reading can expand the average person’s thoughts on certain topics. Without reading, people will not know how to be a critical thinker, utilize big vocabulary words, and speak to others properly. The reason why I enjoy reading books because I learn from what I am reading, I learn new words that I can utilize, and I enjoy

Reading is everywhere, it is one basic skill that we all must learn at some point in our life. Whether it is reading a book, text messages, posters, or a billboard. Everybody has their own success story of who and what taught them how to read. Most have been taught by their parents as a child, others had the help of sibling and school teachers. Between my mom, older sister, school events and my teachers I could master the art of reading. At an early age, I discovered this deep desire for education which helped prosper in school.

The reason why I chose this class is I would like to write graduation thesis in English. I have some difficulties as an English speaker, as a university student in U.S. because of three reasons. Firstly, I thought that there were many differences between writing in Japanese and writing in English for me. I could not understand why I could not write what I want to write in English, why I cannot find what I want to write in English. Secondly, I did not know the way to writing in English as I write in Japanese. Thirdly, I was not good at reading in English. I liked to read in Japanese. However, I cannot read in English as I read in Japanese. Thus, I was not sure I could write, read and think in English and I could not find why I can not.