SWA #1

Mohrmann, John
English 101 056
August 28, 2007
Carolina Reader: Chapter 1, Question 3

In his article, Skube expresses a severe concern about college freshmen’s vocabularies. He feels
that high schools are not giving reading and writing skills adequate emphasis. He is readily disappointed
whenever he encounters a student who does not know the meaning of a certain word. Skube believes
these words should be in common usage for college freshman. He credits this problem to teenagers not
reading enough literature. He clearly demonstrates this problem with an example from his class. He
inquired to his students as to whom their favorite author was. Everyone was silent in response. One
person offered Dan Brown as a response. The only problem is that this was the only answer anyone
could come up with. This was a strong representation as too the level of his students reading. In my
experience, Skube’s feelings are fairly accurate. I have been in plenty of English classes where everyone
around me failed vocabulary quizzes. This was probably because most of them abhorred reading books
of any sort. I usually found this to be quite entertaining.
Hagstette’s concept of “aggressive reading” would be extremely beneficial to the students
mentioned in Skube’s article. Reading in general would most likely be progressive for these students.
Thoroughly involving yourself in a literary work really helps the content sink through all of the other
stored information in your brain. This way, vocabulary and other knowledge gained from the reading will
actually be retained for use. If the average student could realize the joy and privilege of reading, and
focus on it so, both writers complaints would be solved.