What should high school students read?
Feb. 14th, 2010 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusHappy birthday, amothea. I know, I'm a couple days late. But I'm always late.
Teens should be able to read, yes?
Hellooooo, English majors. Prepare to be appalled.
The local school district's high school reading list includes not one, but three books by Stephanie Meyers.
Yes, three out of five recommended books are the Twilight series.
Now I'm a populist when it comes to books. You like it? Read it! I even enjoyed the first Twilight movie (sorry, folks). I can see the teenage girl emotions, the fears and hopes that it hooks.
But. As an SAT tutor I'm finding again and again that my students are stymied by vocabulary.
I'm talking about advanced placement English students and non-AP kids. They're stumbling over sentence completions, unfamiliar with a third of the words presented. They misconstrue college level journal articles because key phrases go over their heads. One poor girl couldn't grasp the meaning of a paragraph because every word she could have used to triangulate the meaning of the others ... she'd never encountered before.
One look at what they read, and yeah, I can see why.
Even books assigned for English classes are accessible modern lit, accessible world lit, or easy translations of The Odyssey. I don't complain about the exposure to a broad range of literature. That's excellent. But aside from the occasional Dickens, I don't see any challenging vocab.
Now I've been asked to create a reading list for our tutoring center. Thank god.
Off the cuff, I'm thinking 19th century lit, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters (what Twilight fan wouldn't love Wuthering Heights?), the bible (for those who lean that way), the British-produced World Air Power journal for the military-minded boys (I've had to look up vocab in their country-by-county analysis).
I'm open to suggestions. What do you think high school students should read?
amothea. I know, I'm a couple days late. But I'm always late. Teens should be able to read, yes?
Hellooooo, English majors. Prepare to be appalled.
The local school district's high school reading list includes not one, but three books by Stephanie Meyers.
Yes, three out of five recommended books are the Twilight series.
Now I'm a populist when it comes to books. You like it? Read it! I even enjoyed the first Twilight movie (sorry, folks). I can see the teenage girl emotions, the fears and hopes that it hooks.
But. As an SAT tutor I'm finding again and again that my students are stymied by vocabulary.
I'm talking about advanced placement English students and non-AP kids. They're stumbling over sentence completions, unfamiliar with a third of the words presented. They misconstrue college level journal articles because key phrases go over their heads. One poor girl couldn't grasp the meaning of a paragraph because every word she could have used to triangulate the meaning of the others ... she'd never encountered before.
One look at what they read, and yeah, I can see why.
Even books assigned for English classes are accessible modern lit, accessible world lit, or easy translations of The Odyssey. I don't complain about the exposure to a broad range of literature. That's excellent. But aside from the occasional Dickens, I don't see any challenging vocab.
Now I've been asked to create a reading list for our tutoring center. Thank god.
Off the cuff, I'm thinking 19th century lit, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters (what Twilight fan wouldn't love Wuthering Heights?), the bible (for those who lean that way), the British-produced World Air Power journal for the military-minded boys (I've had to look up vocab in their country-by-county analysis).
I'm open to suggestions. What do you think high school students should read?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-14 09:15 pm (UTC)Now, my background favors a more fantasy/sf bend, so if I were to go that route, I'd also say The Gate to Women's Country by Sherri Tepper, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, and for sheer fun, add some Mary Stuart, like any of the Merlin books. Mary Renault, too. Hmm. My list is female heavy, innit?
The Child (who isn't a child any more and is going to be an English teacher) adds Flowers for Algernon, Shakespeare (not the overused ones, but the good ones, like King Lear, Coriolanus, Richard III). Both of us say Neil Gaiman, because for modern lit, nobody can beat him.
BTW, she was as appalled as you at the Meyer thing.