HowMuchReadingADay < Kitchen

21 Jul 2006 - 22:25

how much reading a day?

The best readers in 5th grade spend an hour a day reading books —

By the time a child reaches the middle grades he or she must read in order to develop his vocabulary —

I particularly like the finding that college graduates use a spoken vocabulary only slightly more sophisticated than that found in books written for preschoolers.

I believe it.

source:
Reading Can Make You Smarter
by Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich
PRINCIPAL volume 83 number 2, November/December 2003 » page(s) 34-39

Examples of words that do not appear in two large
corpora of oral language (Berger, 1977; Brown, 1984) but
that have appreciable frequencies in written texts
(Carroll, Davies & Richman, 1971;
Francis & Kucera, 1982):

display            literal
dominance       legitimate
dominant         luxury
exposure         maneuver
equate            participation
equation          portray
gravity            provoke
hormone         relinquish
infinite            reluctantly
invariably

WHAT READING DOES FOR THE MIND
BY ANNE E.CUNNINGHAM AND KEITH E. STANOVICH
AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
SPRING/SUMMER 1998

E.D. Hirsch has been quoting Keith Stanovich's & Ann Cunningham's research:

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.
Cunningham AE, Stanovich KE.

A group of 1st-graders who were administered a battery of reading tasks in a previous study were followed up as 11th graders. Ten years later, they were administered measures of exposure to print, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and general knowledge. First-grade reading ability was a strong predictor of all of the 11th-grade outcomes and remained so even when measures of cognitive ability were partialed out. First-grade reading ability (as well as 3rd- and 5th-grade ability) was reliably linked to exposure to print, as assessed in the 11th grade, even after 11th-grade reading comprehension ability was partialed out, indicating that the rapid acquisition of reading ability might well help develop the lifetime habit of reading, irrespective of the ultimate level of reading comprehension ability that the individual attains. Finally, individual differences in exposure to print were found to predict differences in the growth in reading comprehension ability throughout the elementary grades and thereafter.

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.
Cunningham AE, Stanovich KE.
Dev Psychol. 1997 Nov;33(6):934-45.

from Cunningham's & Stanovich's American Educator article (pdf file):

In several studies, we have attempted to link children’s reading volume to specific cognitive outcomes after controlling for relevant general abilities such as IQ. In a study of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children, we examined whether reading volume accounts for differences in vocabulary development once controls for both general intelligence and specific verbal abilities were invoked (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991).

[snip]

[W]e found that even after accounting for general intelligence and decoding ability, reading volume contributed significantly and independently to vocabulary knowledge in fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children.

[snip]

In a study we conducted involving college students, we employed an even more stringent test of whether reading volume is a unique predictor of verbal skill (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992). In this study we examined many of the same variables as in our study of fourth- to sixth-grade students. However, we decided to stack the deck against reading volume by first removing any contribution of reading ability and general intelligence.

[snip]

We found that reading volume made a significant contribution to multiple measures of vocabulary, general knowledge, spelling, and verbal fluency even after reading comprehension ability and nonverbal ability had been partialed out.

the Practical Knowledge Test
[I]n the Practical Knowledge Test, we made an effort to devise questions that were directly relevant to daily living in a technological society in the late twentieth century; for example, What does the carburetor tor in an automobile do? If a substance is carcinogenic, it means that it is __? After the Federal Reserve Board raises the prime lending rate, the interest that you will be asked to pay on a car loan will generally increase/ decrease/stay the same? What vitamin is highly concentrated in citrus fruits? When a stock exchange is in a “bear market,”what is happening? and so forth. The results indicated that the more avid readers in our study—regardless of their general abilities—knew more about how a carburetor worked, were more likely to know who their United States senators were, more likely to know how many teaspoons are equivalent to one tablespoon,were more likely to know what a stroke was, and what a closed shop in a factory was, etc. One would be hard pressed to deny that at least some of this knowledge is relevant to living in the United States in the late 20th century.

This reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me.

His wife was and is a severe dyslexic, and sometime after they married he realized that she knew almost nothing about the random dumb stuff the rest of us waste time shmoozing about at parties.

For instance, she had no idea who Kato Kaelin was.

This was back when Kaeto Kaelin was new.

I asked him, "Doesn't she watch TV?"

She did.

She was a smart, educated person who basically couldn't read and who watched TV.

Apparently the amount of information you can get from TV is pretty limited.

TV and the "cognitive autonomy" of misinformation

In other questions asked of these same students,we attempted to probe areas that we thought might be characterized by misinformation. We then attempted to trace the “cognitive anatomy” of this misinformation.
69.3 percent of our sample thought that there were more Jewish people in the world than Moslems. This level of inaccuracy is startling given that approximately 40 percent of our sample of 268 students were attending one of the most selective public institutions of higher education in the United States (the University of California, Berkeley).
[Correct] scores among the group high in reading volume and low in television exposure were highest, and the lowest scores were achieved by those high in television exposure and low in reading volume.
The cognitive anatomy of misinformation appears to be one of too little exposure to print (or reading) and over-reliance on television for information about the world. Although television viewing can have positive associations with knowledge when the viewing is confined to public television, news, and/or documentary material (Hall, Chiarello, & Edmondson, 1996;West & Stanovich, 1991;West et al., 1993), familiarity with the primetime television material that defines mass viewing in North America is most often negatively associated with knowledge acquisition.

reading makes everyone smarter

[W]e observed that firstgrade intelligence measures do not uniquely predict eleventh-grade reading volume in the same way. Thus, this study showed us that an early start in reading is important in predicting a lifetime of literacy experience— and this is true regardless of the level of reading comprehension ability that the individual eventually attains.
This is a stunning finding because it means that students who get off to a fast start in reading are more likely to read more over the years, and, furthermore, this very act of reading can help children compensate for modest levels of cognitive ability by building their vocabularly and general knowledge. In other words, ability is not the only variable that counts in the development of intellectual functioning. Those who read a lot will enhance their verbal intelligence; that is, reading will make them smarter.

I think this may answer a question I asked years ago: are early readers better readers?

I became interested in this when the principal of our grade school in Studio City told parents that it didn't matter if their children were slow learning to read. Everyone learns to read eventually, she said; the timing doesn't matter.

That struck me as unlikely given what I knew about tennis prodigies and musical prodigies and the like, who start young. Also, I'd taught myself to read earlier than the kids in my town learned to read. I think I must have learned to read the summer before first grade, which isn't especially young for a lot of ktm commenters, I realize, but was young for my school where reading instruction started in first grade. I entered first grade able to read proficiently all of the books we would use for the next 9 months. I was a year ahead, and this gap never went away. I read earlier than my peers, and 11 years later I was a better reader than my peers. I think Stanovich's research would probably predict that outcome; early reading leads to better reading. I think. I've just read a couple of his abstracts thus far, so I don't know.

In any event, Stanovich's & Cunninghams' research does show that reading early and reading a lot matter.

perfect SATs

From 1600 Perfect Score: The 7 Secrets of Acing the SAT by Tom Fischgrund, who inteviewed 160 of the 541 "perfect 1600" SAT scorers in the year 2000:

[S]tudents who ace the SAT read an average of fourteen hours a week. Average score students, on the other hand, read only eight hours a week—an immense drop-off. The biggest difference, however, was found in the amount of time students spent reading for school. Average score students spent four hours a week reading literature, textbooks, and other assigned reading for school. Perfect score students put in nine hours a week for school-assigned reading, more than double the amount of time.

[snip]

What do 1600 students read for fun?...The book most frequently mentioned—by a total of 6 percent of perfect score students—was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores
how much reading each day?
Vocabulary Workshop
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

Back to main page.

Comments

After entering a comment, users can login anonymously as KtmGuest (password: guest) when prompted.
Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.

Cartoon shows are more sophisticated in vocabulary than adult prime-time shows. I guess Yogi Bear really is "smarter than the average bear."

If he reads a lot, anyway.

-- BrendaM - 22 Jul 2006

Backing up BrendaM^? ...

Dr. D. P. Hayes has quantified vocabulary difficulty with a measurement he calls LEX. In LEX, both positive and negative numbers are used and larger numbers indicated that the vocabulary is harder. His reported numbers:

   Thing Measured       Samples  LEX
   ------------------   -------  -----
   TV--cartoon shows    N= 26    -28.6      
   TV--primetime shows  N= 44    -36.4

Yep, cartoons have a more sophisticated vocabulary than primetime TV shows. And it isn't really all that close, either.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 22 Jul 2006

that's amazing!

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Jul 2006

You see some of the same effects above: Comic books have more rare words per 1000 words than "adult books". (This probably isn't a surprise if you've read many comic books.)

Another such source of complex vocabulary is role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons and its peers). I've heard many players talk about the utility of playing D&D to success in SAT vocabulary sections.

-- DougSundseth - 22 Jul 2006

that's amazing

I've never played Dungeons & Dragons - where does the complex language come in?

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

I entered first grade able to read proficiently all of the books we would use for the next 9 months. I was a year ahead, and this gap never went away.

This comment reflects something E.D. Hirsch has been trying to say. But, I think what he is trying to say is, the "gap" does not have to persist. The gap can be narrowed and eliminated by systematically assisting students to gain a broad knowledge base. He criticizes current education because they spend so much time in the early grades decoding (a necessary skill) at the expense of assisting kids in expanding their vocabulary so that they can comprehend what they read.

Teachers should spend some significant portion of the day speaking at a high enough level in a variety of pursuits so students can expand their vocabulary and their knowledge. I think it's really interesting idea.

-- LynnGuelzow - 23 Jul 2006

"I've never played Dungeons & Dragons - where does the complex language come in?"

It's scattered throughout the rules. Note that this is a game with thousands of pages of rules if you use all the expansions; serious players need to be able to systematize tremendous piles of knowledge.

For an idea of the writing, you can take a look at the System Resource Document, or SRD, which includes the full text of about 99% of the basic rules.

-- DougSundseth - 23 Jul 2006

Doug

wow

I think that's very challening reading, too (rules reading, instruction manual reading, etc.)

IMO

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

Hi, Lynn

I agree absolutely

Plus Ken has written about an Engelmann DI program, used in Baltimore I believe, that tackles the Kindergarten vocabulary gap head on. They teach those little kids the words they're missing.

I just got my copy of a book called "Robust Vocabualry Instruction" (something like that). It has terrific data on how much vocabulary you can pick up from context.

I'll write a post in the next couple of days.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

My friend Kris, who is an expert parent, has had a policy for years of choosing some word her kids didn't know and then using it in conversation every day for a week or two.

I think that's a great idea.

I'm still doing my dinner table thing (Greek & Latin roots).

We've all learned 13 Greek & Latin roots at this point, and we all can spot them in some words.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

Of course, I have to put up with a fair amount of eye-rolling.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

"I've never played Dungeons & Dragons - where does the complex language come in?"

I used to play. As an example, you start by rolling dice to get values for various attributes (or you used to, at least!). These attributes are:

Strength
Intelligence
Wisdom
Dexterity
Constitution
Charisma

I'm guessing that dexterity and charisma might not come up in a typical 5th grade reader.

Then you pick an occupation. Some choices (there are others) are:

Cleric
Druid
Paladin
Monk

Each level for a given occupation has a name. Examples for cleric are:

acolyte
adept
priest
curate
perfect
canon
lama
patriarch

Part of the game usually involves battling monsters and encountering strange beasts. A partial list is:

ghoul
wraith
nymph
sylph
pixie

There are hundreds of creatures in the basic "Monster Manual", and probably thousands in the expansion packs.

Magic using characters can cast spells like:

clairvoyance
ventriloquism
levitate
pyrotechnics
phantasmal force
conjur earth elemental
animate dead
sancturary

There are hundreds of basic spells.

Characters can go on quests, interact with deities, forge alliances.

Most of the extra vocabulary is nouns, but some of the extra vocubulary is verbs.

Consider this description of the first cleric spell listed (I've underlined the words I think are a bit unusual):

Upon uttering the bless spell, the caster raises the morale of friendly creatures by +1. Furthermore, it raises their "to hit" dice rolls by +1. A blessing, however, will affect only those not already engaged in melee combat. The spell can be reversed by the cleric to a curse upon enemies, which lowers morale and "to hit" by -1. The caster determines at what range (up to 6") he or she will cast the spell, and it then affects all creatures in an area 5" square centered on the point the spell was cast upon. In addition to the verbal and somatic gesture components, the bless requires holy water, while the curse requires the sprinkling of especially polluted water.

The basic "player's handbook" has about 60 pages of text like this, just for the spells. :-)

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 23 Jul 2006

D&D also borrows ideas for monsters from all over the world, and makes distinctions between lots of different weapons, so you wind up learning about centaurs and scimitars and so forth.

Plus you know the difference between die and dice, and dexterity and constitution.

-- TracyW - 23 Jul 2006

that's fantastic!!!

I've got to get this list into a frontpage post

amazing

I've been reading Penrod out loud to Christopher, and the vocabulary is so advanced we can't get through it - he knows maybe half the words (maybe more, but it's REALLY intense)

Last night the book had the word "octoroon"!

When I looked it up I was amazed.

The book also used the word "inimical" in a novel way....I'll have to see what it was.

John Saxon constantly throws in bizarre, arcane words.

edentate being one

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006

I grew up in the South (Southern USA, for those non-USAsians among us), in an area steeped with colonial and Civil War history, so I remember being taught "octoroon" in a social studies class, along with "quadroon" and "mulatto" and "high yellow" (although maybe I read "high yellow" in a book somewhere). I think by the 1970s we were no longer using those terms, except maybe in the deepest South, but our textbooks probably dated from the 1960s. It's possible that we covered them in a "terms from the recent past" section.

-- GoogleMaster - 25 Jul 2006

wow!

I had NEVER heard that word (though obviously I read it in Penrod several times as a child...)

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

Speaking of reading, my son has to read 4 Newbery Award books this summer. He was given a list that goes way back 60 years or more. I was curious as to the make-up of the (current) selection panel. As I expected, the ratio was 14 female to 1 male.

There are lots of touchy-feely books with a big emphasis on ethnic cultures, racism, feelings, and dysfunctional people. The one he (and I) just finished reading is called Maniac Magee - dysfunctional families, blatant racism, and some real bad dudes. Real Life. Annoying writing style. Heavy on the moralizing. Tedious.

Any recommendations for Newbery books?

-- SteveH - 25 Jul 2006

From this site, I'll recommend A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle; Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes; and The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting. I've read all of them and enjoyed them.

I've had The Matchlock Gun, by Walter Edmonds, highly recommended (perhaps by one of the commenters here?).

Several other titles from that list sounded interesting as well, but I've not read them.

-- DougSundseth - 25 Jul 2006

My kids loved Amos Fortune Free Man and "Old Yeller".

-- LoneRanger - 25 Jul 2006

Everyone MUST read Matchlock Gun.

I read it out loud to Christopher, and by the end I was terrified, the story was so tense. It's supposed to be based on a true story, according to the preface.

I think Matchlock Gun should be a litmus test for schools & boys - & girls, too, frankly. Would your son's teacher read the story out loud to the class?

If the answer is yes, you're in good shape.

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

You guys should read MATCHLOCK GUN, not just kids.

It's incredible.

Deeply moving.

Doug - you especially!

For months after Christopher and I read it, every time the dogs would kick up a fuss we'd say "The French and Indians are coming!"

Ed enjoyed that.

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

I LOVE the Doolittle books. I read them all over and over when I was a kid.

I read Dr. Doolittle to Christopher a few years ago.

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

Johnny Tremain is INCREDIBLE.

I read it as a kid, and bought a copy for Christopher, but he hasn't looked at it yet.

We're reading Penrod.

(You're not going to see Penrod on a lot of summer reading lists, I'll wager.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

Megan's 5th grade class read Johnny Tremain. We toured the Revolutionary War sites in Boston this summer, and she kept referring back to the book — it gave her a nice contextual reference. She suggested that we buy the book and read it as a family, so we bought a copy at the gift shop in Lexington. After all, if you're going to buy the book, why not buy it there, right?

Megan loved The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. After she had read it, she insisted on reading it out loud with me.

Other family favorites include 26 Fairmount Avenue, Holes, Number the Stars and Bridge to Terabithia. 26 Fairmount Avenue is short and sweet, but Tomie dePaola is a family favorite.

-- KarenA - 25 Jul 2006

"Speaking of reading, my son has to read 4 Newbery Award books this summer."

Hmmm ... "has to" ... what if he doesn't? What if he just reads four (or more!) books that he wants to read that you, his parent, agree are comparable in terms of some readability metric?

For a readability metric, I'd suggest Lexile:

Lexile Framework for Reading

Under the "Families" section they have a form that lets you get Lexile scores out for books in the database.

I prefer the LEX scores by Dr. Hayes better, but LEX doesn't have a big DB of books already entered.

-Good Luck, Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 25 Jul 2006

wow - thanks so much for the readability metric!

I'm thrilled to have that.

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

Penrod is basically unreadable by any American kid with a standard American vocabulary.

I read it at least 3 times when I was young. I wish I remembered how old I was at the time.

I can barely read it out loud to Christopher, there are so many novel words.

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

Isn't Old Yeller too sad?

Does the dog die?

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

A followup on dungeons and dragons as scored by Dr. Hayes' LEX measurement (keeping in mind that this only scores the difficulty of the vocabulary):


   Thing Measured              Samples  LEX
   ------------------          -------  -----
   The Cat in the Hat                    -53.9
   TV--cartoon shows           N= 26    -28.6      
   TV--primetime shows         N= 44    -36.4
   Harry Potter (first)            -23.9
   Smithsonian--articles                 -9.1
   National Geographic
       -articles                         -0.6
   NEWSPAPERS:
       English-language, Intl.  N=61      0.0  
   Economist--articles                    0.9
   Time magazine--articles                1.6
   Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
       Players Handbook (1st edition)     4.4   
   Popular Science--articles              4.6

[Bigger numbers are harder]

The AD&D "Players Handbook" also has very long average sentences (26 words per sentence, on average ... which is the same average sentence length as the Fagles translation of the Illiad). Sentence length correlates well with grammatical complexity.

It is probably typical for boys (and it is mostly boys) who get into dungeons and dragons to start in 6th or 7th grade. The AD&D manuals are much more complicated in terms of grammar and vocabulary than the typical 6th-7th grade reading textbooks (no opinion on subject complexity).

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 05 Aug 2006

Plus Ken has written about an Engelmann DI program, used in Baltimore I believe, that tackles the Kindergarten vocabulary gap head on. They teach those little kids the words they're missing.

The vocab program is called Language for Learning.

Although you would never know it from the ELA programs in use today, it's not to difficult to teach kids to decode if taught properly. However, the vocab deficits start to present problems in the lower portion of the curve once reading instruction starts focusing on compreshension in 4th grade or so.

I'll also chime in an advocate reading the D&D, even if you have no intention of playing. There is a lot of sophisticated vocabulary and concepts presented in the manuals that tends not to get taught in schools anymore.

-- KDeRosa - 06 Aug 2006

This Dungeons & Dragons stuff is amazing.

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

I had no idea.

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

practicalknowledge

-- CatherineJohnson - 16 Sep 2006

Christopher just read A Wrinkle in Time and loved it.

He's a tough customer when it comes to fiction, so I'm guessing this book may be something to try for non-bookworm boys. (He's 12.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Oct 2006

I've been reading Penrod out loud; the vocabulary level is MILES over his head, and miles over what I presume to be most adults' heads — kind of horrifying.

He was pretty resistant until we got to the scene where Penrod is forced to ask an 8-year old girl to the cotillion, and the 8-year old girl is sobbing because she can't stand Penrod.

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Oct 2006

WebLogForm
Title:	how much reading a day?
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	AboutBooks, AssessmentTests, LanguageArts
LogDate:	200607211824

Navigate KTM

Kitchen Table Math

KTM User Pages

Service Groups

Parent Groups

Personal Pages

Blogs

Special lists

Help

how much reading a day?

Comments