> ..... it seems almost
> criminal to me to want to change the terrific motivation there
> already exists to read such material. Parents and educators want
> kids to read (and also want kids to love reading) but when they
> do, as in your case, it is the wrong kind of reading (!).
Who says? and why is it wrong? What's wrong about it? Is it too much
> fun? Is it too true? Does it provide something too good? Is it too
> easy? I would certainly feed the "mainstream educationist" with
> alternatives and have them handy to offer, but deep down I would
> ride with the motivation gold mine.
Francoise, this expresses realy clearly what I feel and what I was trying
to say in my other posting. Just as a P.S. to the comics sideline ...
After the comments on the list I became curious about what my adolescent
kids were actually doing/reading. In our family the sixteen year old has
always been an "avid reader". Somewhere around fourteen she graduated
from the Babysitters Club to reading Kundera, Dostoievsky (in English)
and latin-american authors like Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. In
summary, she likes reading and reads a lot both in English and Spanish.
The 13 year old, on the other hand, is a non-reader in the family
stereotypes and he himself proclaims that he "doesn't like reading".
However, he spends hours poring over computer manuals, thick D&D manuals
and rule books and lately X-Men comics.
Just out of curiosity I pulled one of these comics out of his box and
typed it into the computer and then ran a word frequency program on it.
The results were the following:
There were 1981 word tokens
794 different word types with a
.401 type/token correlation
This is an approximate breakdown of word-classes
Nouns: 215
Verbs: 167
Adjectives: 194
ProperNames: 61
Adv/pron/preps/etc. about 160
"effects" : 19
Here's a sampling of some of the vocabulary:
NOUNS: acolyte allies
assault blasphemer
chambers containment
crusade diagnostics
electropathy fold
massacre predilection
pretentiousness reflections
teleportation vacuum
VERBS: awaits borne
coalesces deemed
delivered flooding (with emotion)
forged indicated
predicted persuaded
ravaged referring
seared tarry
"effects" (term given by my son to forms like the following)
fsszz skreeeeeech thrakaboom (19 types - 22 tokens)
ADJECTIVES:
adamant astral
bizarre catatonic
confused convenient
emaciated frazzled
ineffectual invigorated
magnetic orbiting
paranoid secretive
traitorous wondrous
I asked him the meanings of a lot of these words and he had good
comprehension as long as they were "in a sentence". In some cases the
meanings given were approximations, e.g "acolyte" someone who works for
another. Sometimes he went through Spanish to get at the meaning of the
English word:
"massacre": "you know like 'masacre', killing a lot of
people"
"vigil": "to stay watching something, like 'vigilar' "
Anyway, the results of the vocabulary count and the actual vocabulary
used were surprising to me. Although I have no word-count comparisons, it
seemed that there was a high TTR and a wide variety of not-so-common
words used.
Angel does mention a problem with comics especially sexism and violence.
I think this is another serious issue. At this point I have no opinion
formed about X-Men as such, but the vocabulary used impressed/surprised me.
Rosa
Rosa Graciela Montes
Area de Ciencias del Lenguaje
ICSYH - UAP
Puebla MEXICO