SparkNotes: the scourge of the SAT reading section

[icarus]

"Yes, but describe the setting in the Lord of the Rings," I ask.

The student gives me a vague recap of the entire setting of Middle Earth, including stuff he shouldn't be able to know from the first two chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring.

"No. I mean in the first chapter. Where do the first scenes take place?" I reel in the net.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't tell me about The Shire, or the party field, or even Bag End. A book that is nothing but rich, detailed description of scenery, he could describe nothing.

With a nervous laugh, he admitted to reading SparkNotes.

His SAT reading scores, of course, were crap.

After three years of SAT tutoring, I've learned to expect this. When I see a low reading score combined with a startlingly low vocabulary score (about 43-53% on the vocab sentence completions is very common) I know I have a student who's short circuited his or her education with SparkNotes.

Some have never read a single book assigned to them.

SparkNotes dumbs the vocabulary down and explains the plot, setting, theme in simple terms. No complex sentences, nothing tough. As a result, these student can't handle college level reading. They don't do well on the SAT and get exactly the score they earned.

At my school, if you were caught using SparkNotes, you got an instant F.

Comments

[crazed_delusion]

In one of my high school English courses we all quickly learned to use Sparknotes, because our teacher stole the Sparknotes trivia test word for word.

Needless to say she was a complete dingbat, how she managed to get a teaching job at a private school I will never know.

[everbright]

You know, I've never read on of those sparknotes, or the yellow ones... My reading comp is sort of terrible for details though. *laughing* I tend to skip over descriptions and just read dialogue on accident.

Sorry about tutoring frustrations!

[wenelda]

I admit I used Sparknotes when I was in college, but it was usually when I was in dire need or had a stack of books that was 3 feet high for the semester. I don't know how I was expected to read all of those books and write 10-15 page papers for three or four different English classes.

I knew about it when I was in high school, but the reading load was so light there was no point in using them. It kind of bothers me that there are 'kids' out there that can't read a rich book like LotR because they were raised on Sparknotes or Cliffnotes.

[greyeyes]

I used SparkNotes rarely in high school, but usually to explain something I wasn't sure about (ACK papers on symbols and how flowers are metaphors and stuff!) or to review AFTER I READ THE BOOK.

Admittedly, my sister's junior or senior English class expected her to read the whole trilogy in a few weeks and remember names of places and minor characters, which was ridiculous.

But yeah, READ!