Learning From Motivated Readers

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A group of college-age Americans was living in Germany, trying to learn German but making slow progress. An old hand offered a piece of advice that made an enormous difference: “If you want to speak like the Germans, listen to the way Germans speak.” Embarrassingly simple and obvious, it changed the course of their learning, which until then had been too formal and academic.

“If we want students to be motivated readers, look at how motivated readers read.” Teachers sometimes believe that students need careful preparation to read a book or that they have to be bribed or prodded into reading. Yet some children jump right into books, reading without the benefit of preparatory steps or the intervention of either a carrot or a stick. Two principles underlie the motivation of these eager readers: (1) Reading is personal. (2) Reading is a natural process. The following common characteristics of motivated readers reflect these two principles:

1. Motivated readers read not for others, but for their own purposes. They read what is important to them and know that real reading is not done to answer someone else’s questions or fill out a worksheet.
2. Motivated readers have personal and identifiable likes and dislikes in books: subject matter, authors, illustrators, formats, styles, and so on.
3. Motivated readers feel rewarded during the reading process. They find immediate pleasure in the book and don’t read because they will need the information next year.
4. Motivated readers do not feel trapped by a book. They can put it down without guilt when it no longer meets their needs.
5. Motivated readers are not hesitant about passing judgment on a book. They have their own viewpoints and do not apologize for them.
6. Motivated readers read at their own rate. They skip, scan, linger, and reread as necessary or desirable.
7. Motivated readers don’t feel obligated to remember everything they read. They find reading worthwhile even if they can’t recall every concept or idea, and they allow themselves to skip over words they don’t know as long as they understand the idea or story.
8. Motivated readers read broadly, narrowly, or in between, depending on how they feel.
9. Motivated readers develop a personal attachment to books they like.
10. Motivated readers find time to read regularly.

Motivated readers don’t look over their shoulders as they read. They are in charge. We adults shouldn’t get excited when they put down books without finishing them, when they devour what we think are worthless books, when their taste does not reflect our own, or when they read very narrowly.

Yet teachers with the best of intentions can interfere with motivated readers. Often the most difficult hurdle is simply getting out of their way. Whatever an adult does that keeps the child from becoming involved with the book is something to be avoided. It is easy to spot mind-numbing exercises that treat the book as merely a repository of facts to be mined, and those practices should be avoided.