Introduction and First Body Paragraph

When is the last time you voluntarily picked up a book to read?  Students tend to take their time while answering this question, because they truthfully do not remember the last time they read for fun.  Students are lacking the motivation to read for pleasure anymore.  Some argue it is because they do not have enough time, while others rather spend their time watching television, surfing the Internet, and mastering videogames.  According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the “average time these children [spend] online on a typical day rose to one hour and 41 minutes in 2004, from 46 minutes in 1999” (4).  This dramatic increase is not benefiting the Digital Natives’ education, but hindering their academic success.  Although all reading, from the Internet to a novel, is valuable, books help students develop better habits of the mind.  Several scholars argue this issue and whether students are in fact reading less or reading more.  The lack of reading amongst our generation is evident through statistics, surveys, and studies.  The information presented in the scholar’s articles explains how the benefits gained from reading novels’ text are far more beneficial than the reading done on the Web.

Students may argue that teachers have made reading miserable and not fun anymore.  In class reading assignments are brutal, difficult, and sometimes plain boring.  The truth is all the reading done in the classroom is extremely beneficial.  For instance, when Mrs. Channell assigns a reading everyone comes to class prepared in order to contribute to discussion.  This interaction and participation in the classroom is made possible by novels.  Students are able to mark up their readings, flip to necessary pages, and connect to the author’s text more effectively.  Motoko Rich, author of several New York Times articles, one including “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?”, refers to Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale.  Pugh states that “reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching” (8).  Our minds are being worked while discussing chapters, metaphors, doppelgangers, plots, characters, and much more.  Typically, students reading online are in “30-second digital mode” (8), jumping from webpage to webpage and not understanding the meanings behind the text presented.  Critics such as Mr. Spiro of Michigan State argue that with the Internet a reader is able “to cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view” (8).  Although a reader is able to ‘cover’ more ground, students are not processing the information as effectively.  The Internet is helpful for finding quick facts but is the enemy when it comes to reading.  The Internet is “diminishing literacy [and] wrecking attention spans” (2).  Oftentimes students are spending their time on the Internet unproductively, which is weakening their academic success.  Children spend their time instant messaging and facebooking which involves “minimal reading at best”(3).  The negligible amount of book reading, done by students, is oftentimes represented by their poor test scores or low grade point averages.