Adolescent Reading: A Cautionary Tale

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Have you ever noticed how motivated little kids are to read and write? With intense focus, they imitate what are crucial skills for a successful life. Yet, by the time these toddlers reach their adolescent years, a cautionary tale might be written thus: Parents, beware the adolescent years in reading, lest your child become "aliterate."

Aliterate means that a youngster knows how to read, and may have even functioned pretty well academically in elementary school. But come the "wonder years" of adolescence, enthusiasm for reading may slump. Some kids shun it altogether, or read maybe just enough to squeak by.

The years during kids' transition from elementary to middle or junior high school are when their motivation to read drops, note the authors of "Improving Adolescent Reading," a Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory research synthesis. The publication is designed to help secondary school teachers to coach students to read well in the rigorous subjects that students encounter in the upper years.

"Improving Adolescent Reading," by authors Deborah Davis, Jean Spraker, and Jim Kushman, points to student-engaging literacy activities that kids enthusiastically take part in outside of school hours. They term youngsters' use of technology—CD-ROMs, digital cameras, text messaging, and the Internet, for example—the "new literacies," suggesting that these may be used in motivational ways to reinforce literacy skills. Traditional texts and materials may seem a bit b-o-r-i-n-g to an electronically savvy generation.

The authors say that a study on reading motivation showed that "students' top five types of materials they like to read included magazines, adventure books, mysteries, scary stories, and joke books." Other studies showed that students valued free reading time, hearing their teacher read aloud, and one found that "adolescents are motivated by nonfiction on topics they are passionate about."

An interesting finding is that "students who struggle with reading indicated that they prefer schools and classrooms with a strong focus on academics... A high degree of teacher warmth and support enhances student satisfaction, persistence, curiosity, problem-solving capabilities, and motivation—but only when accompanied by efficient classroom organization, stress on academics, and goal-oriented lessons..."

Parents, like teachers, strive to come up with ways to help kids to read well and to succeed academically, to engage them in learning endeavors. Recognizing kids' efforts and accomplishments can help to spur development in many areas—make sure that reading is one of those areas during the adolescent years.

This column by Karen Lytle Blaha is provided as a public service by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit institution working with schools and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.