busyAnd I was just ... bewildered. It would never have occurred to me, growing up, that not knowing the words in a book might be considered a reason to stop reading the book. If the subject interested me, and I had to trot to the dictionary a second or third time, I simply lugged the dictionary back and plunked it next to the book, and alternated between the two. I have some early memories of doing that, but probably not past 8 or so. I was reading at the adult level at least by the time I was 6, possibly earlier. My vocabulary got so big, so fast, that it quickly became rare for me to find new words unless I went entirely outside my knowledge sphere. That was actually part of the reason for me bookworming my way through a substantial portion of the Danville public library in junior high and early high school, new-word-hunger. (I can understand that it wouldn't be prudent to force someone to read a book that they couldn't understand, but frankly, I never saw concern about that; if a book was assigned, you had better handle it, and if you couldn't, tough. The only books anyone ever tried to take away from me were ones I'd picked out myself.) The books that fascinate me the most are the ones that take me into new territory.
Neither would it have occurred to me to abandon a book just because it was hard to understand. If the topic was interesting, I would reread challenging sections, or look for other references and then come back to see if the hard one made more sense, or ask my parents for an explanation, or find some adult who knew about that topic and pester them (not excepting total strangers, at times).
I can even remember that kind of persistence with a few fiction books, that I just couldn't get into but for some reason seemed like they ought to be interesting. Some became interesting later; others never did. But really, there are only two things that have a high likelihood of bouncing me out of a book: it's badly written and/or it bores me. It's possible for a book to be so far over my head that I have no interest in it, but the percentage of recognized words and concepts has to be minute and far from anything I might find useful. I have puzzled my way through a page or few of writing in languages I'm not even fluent in just for the fun of hunting for English borrowings or words that are close enough to some other language or root-word for me to recognize them.
This illuminates for me some of the reasons why I'm so different from most people, if those leveling techniques are at all common as they are described to be. There is my innate fascination with words, which causes unfamiliar words to be attractive rather than off-putting. There is the looping effect of seeking books to explain things I've encountered elsewhere, and seeking people to explain books. There is the context that my parents let me read whatever I wanted, whether it was at an "appropriate" level or not; and my disgust and outrage at other adults who occasionally tried to part me from books they considered inappropriate. I think anyone with an indelible attraction to words will tend to develop a larger vocabulary, even in the absence of outside encouragement; that anyone in a supportive environment will tend to develop a larger vocabulary than they would on their own, even if they aren't especially interested in words; and that combining the two probably accounts for many of the people with the largest vocabularies. There's logic to that, when you look for it.
But still, it seems utterly alien to me that not knowing the words in a book, or not immediately understanding its content, would be reasons to put it down.
February 14 2009, 21:50:47 UTC 12 years ago
Actually, that makes sense to me. In my life, I've put down a lot of books because I didn't immediately get what was going on. I think it depends on the individual temperment of the child. As a kid, I didn't like to do things that I wasn't immediately good at, or play games that I lost consistently. I liked to do things I was good at because I had serious confidence problems. So I didn't like to read books that I didn't comprehend well or had words too big for me.
For some kids, seeing words they don't know is exciting, because it means that there is a chance to learn something. But for others, and indeed for a lot of people, not knowing a word comes with the implication that it makes them stupid for not knowing, that they should know, but somehow, they're dumb and don't.
And who likes to be made to feel stupid? I certainly don't, and I know that if, even today, I come across books that sail too far over my head, I'm reluctant to keep going at them or to ever read anything by that author again, because life is short and there are plenty of books that don't make me feel like a mouthbreathing idiot.
Hmm...
February 15 2009, 00:47:40 UTC 12 years ago
I don't like doing things I'm bad at. If it's something vital though, I'll do it. For me, that's typing: I hate it, and I'm bad at it, but I need it for my work. I took a typing class in high school not because it was required, but because I knew I needed the skill. Fortunately the rise of computers has mostly compensated for the things that make my typing bad, so now I type fast, make a zillion mistakes, and just backspace to fix them. If I had been bad at reading, a vital skill in this culture, I'd have slogged through that.
>>For some kids, seeing words they don't know is exciting, because it means that there is a chance to learn something. But for others, and indeed for a lot of people, not knowing a word comes with the implication that it makes them stupid for not knowing, that they should know, but somehow, they're dumb and don't.<<
That's an important point, too. It's half nature and half nurture: I've always had an apt awareness of what I am and am not good at, but I also had fairly supportive parents. That makes it easier to distinguish when a problem is internal or external. It's never a good idea in education to make people feel stupid; the idea is to encourage students to do what they can with what they have.
>>I know that if, even today, I come across books that sail too far over my head, I'm reluctant to keep going at them or to ever read anything by that author again, because life is short and there are plenty of books that don't make me feel like a mouthbreathing idiot. <<
Fair, and closely related to one of my premises, that of time efficiency: I don't have time to do everything in the world, so I'm less likely to do things that require a massive expenditure of time and energy, unless they're super-crucial. I'll get more done if I do things where the same amount of time and energy yields higher rewards.