@colorado_mom, yes, I cannot praise the Series of Unfortunate Events books highly enough! Both of my kids loved them, especially their snarkiness.
My kids read all of time They always have 1 or 2 in progress at anytime… I think it helps that my wife and I both do the same thing.
Ha… a mom at church was shocked when I mentioned Series of Unfortunate Events. Her son is younger, and she worried about them being too “dark” (and yes, they are snarky too). The right time for that series is probably when the friends start saying it’s cool stuff… then they are probably old enough to recognize the humor in them.
I’ve read probably 10 books max in my 18 years of life. I was the kid that used reading summaries or watched the movie instead of required reading.
I tested out of elementary and middle school reading classes and was put into GT programs which were more of critical thinking courses and my high school was weird in that there were no classes that required lots of reading.
With that said, I got a 31 on reading and 35 on English. I’m not sure how much of a correlation there is between amount of reading and reading scores. I have noticed I have weird habits in reading such as not reading full sentences. I read important word or phrases and will skip over detail sentences. I’ve also noticed I read a little slow. That might be why I skip details, to compensate. It’d be interesting to see how I would’ve done on the ACT or SAT had I been an avid reader.
A Series of Unfortunate Events, like other great children’s literature, can be a pleasure for an adult reader. Because you are still an inexperienced reader, I suggest you try that series or Harry Potter or other books that both children and adults enjoy. They will be a little easier for you, and will help you build up your reading skill so that you can move on to more complex literature. Reading gives you the chance to experience many lives other than your own. It is wise of you to start the habit now. It’s never too late.
Okay. I’m posting again. I’ve read your other thread. I suspect that English isn’t your mother tongue. If I’m wrong and English is your mother tongue, then I’d bet a lot of money that your parents didn’t spend a lot of time reading to you in any language when you were little. While I am in this category myself…getting advice from middle and upper middle income US born parents isn’t going to help much. You’re 20. Nobody is going to start reading you good night stories now.
At 20, you can’t catch up with middle and upper middle income US born kids–or poor kids whose parents made extensive use of the library—by matching their reading habits. It isn’t going to work. It’s as if you learned to float last week and asked what the training habits of people who make it to the Olympic trials for swimming are.
Seriously, try my suggestion. Instead of forcing yourself to read a certain number of pages per day or week, force yourself to read a certain amount of time every day. Subscribe to a word of the day service. Do what I suggested with the steno pad.
Then, after 6 months, try the CR portion of the SAT again online just for “fun.” See how you do.
Just want to comment that the Netflix version of Series of Unfortunate Events is also wonderful - worth watching even if you haven’t read the books.
Again, I think a tutor who can focus in on what it is you need is the best route. There is often free tutoring at libraries and other agencies. I think you may be going about increasing your scores in an ineffective way, and I also think that is a misguided reason to try to read.
Many 20 year-olds don’t read much. My kids were always reading when children but are too busy now to read much.
I would suggest you stop stressing yourself out with this. If you gain skills, reading will become easier. Yes reading can build skills and vocabulary if you are able to get meaning from context. But much better to do this with a tutor.
Are you in school? Community colleges and many other schools often have free tutoring.
My kids started reading a lot since early elementary. I used to check out 2 bags of books for them every week from library. They would read 3-4 hours a day. They read less in high school as they do/did not have as much time, particularly after they started using internet. In summer when they have nothing to do, they would still read a book in a couple days (~200 pages a day). Both got 700+ in reading but I forgot the scores.
@wis75 , I believe you on the 800 pages. That’s my older and we simply gave up buying her books or bookstore gift certificates as presents, since she ate them up so quickly. One Christmas, we just got her a stack of library books and she did her disappearing act.
But OP, this non-school reading started when she got excited about particular authors. She enjoyed reading and wanted her hands on as many of those books as possible. Are you reading for this sort of real pleasure? Do you then indulge in the next in a series? Find what you like and I agree with @twinsmama that it will evolve from there.
D1 wasn’t interested in Harry Potter. What turned her on and lit her up a a young age was Stephen King and the English classic romances. Each has to find what ignites them.
I say this because, despite growing sophistication and complexity, no, voracious reading did not help with her scores. She did well, but not the heights some parents of readers speak of. No issues with vocab, usage, any of it, in real life, nor managing college-related reading. But she was not into the standardized testing, itself. Many kids don’t lean into that.
So, OP, if you have a goal, I agree about getting tutoring. Let someone guide you, coach you in reading (not just SAT coaching), help you find what interests you, someone who knows the progression that will help and puts you on a different pace. That’s a life help.
I’ve looked at OP’s old threads. I believe he is a high school graduate who is currently attending community college. If this is true, there is no point in taking the SAT again. If you are looking to transfer to a 4 yr school, they will not want ( or even look at?) an SAT you took years after high school graduation.
You should keep reading because that will help you in all your courses and in life in general, but it shouldn’t be a chore or something you need to measure in pages or time spent.
Any one have advice they want to offer. I also want to raise my writing score I will do anything I got a 440 in writing on the old sat. Any books for writing grammar k-12.
My kid didn’t read one book for pleasure through college and he was a slow reader. I really worried about how he wouid manage once in college when the amount of reading increased dramatically, as both his major and minor were reading intensive. But it wasn’t a problem.
I blame our school district who assigned a specific number of minutes reading starting in Kindergarten and kid had to fill out #of minutes read every day. He’d read for those minutes and that was it. It made me sad as both H and I are voracious readers.
S just started reading for pleasure this year when his commute changed from driving to T. He even buys hard copies instead of downloading books.
I think people have offered advice…mine, again, is read whatever will make reading a pleasure instead of a chore, possibly by starting with the kind of children’s books that adults enjoy. Then read a lot, not by number of pages, but by time. You can find books with test-taking strategies, but the way to improve your reading ability and your mind is to read. A lot.
This is a book with lots of writing prompts for short amounts of writing. You could use it and take what you wrote to the writing tutors at your college. They could then go over the grammar and word choice with you.
https://smile.amazon.com/Things-Write-Francisco-Writers-Grotto/dp/1452105448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492440101&sr=8-1&keywords=writing+prompts
I’d recommend KhanAcademy.org for grammar. Go through the lessons. It should help.
We homeschooled K-7. One of the most important things we did…was build a culture of reading at our house. We visited the library routinely twice a week, and made reading a huge part of everything we did.
When she was a little person, I read to my kiddo an hour every day staring during pregnancy. My husband read to her an additional hour every evening starting when she was about three. When she started reading, we had her read to each of us for a half an hour every day. She also had four living grandparents back then who loved to read to her and listen to her read. Every year, we’d hit library book sales in three cities, and shopped at a lot of used book stores. We have a pretty impressive library in our basement, and custom built shelves to contain it. Non-fiction is organized by the Dewey Decimal System, Fiction by author’s last name. Cause we’re just that geeky.
My kiddo swears she learned to read because her Dad read her the Clan of the Cave Bear books and edited out the naughty parts. She said she had to learn to read…so she go back through and read his edits. LOL:)
Reading is a pretty big deal to us.
On vacations, we’d either read books aloud in the car, or listen to books on tape. I remember listening to all the David Sedaris books this way, Hairy Pooter, All Creatures Great and Small, all kinds of stuff.
When my hubby and I were dating, I think the relationship took a deeper turn with him when he suggested we take a picnic to the lake…and he started reading me The Hobbit. Yes, I know this makes us mega nerds…but very seriously…the man’s reading voice is the sexiest thing about him. Fell madly in love with listening to him read.
We go fishing and read to each other in the boat. We read to each other at the dinner table. We have a wall of post it notes…memorable quotes we’ve read, that looks like an obsessed homicide detective has been adding to it for decades to try to solve a horrendous crime.
There were a couple of weird selling points for my daughter’s University.
- They have a velociraptor in their natural history museum.
- You can visit a rain forest in the middle of winter at their botanical garden.
- They have an amazing antique book dealer/used book store that looks like it has mogwai gremlins in the back...within walking distance to campus.
My kid’s idea of a celebratory splurge…is a tall double mocha, and two used paperbacks.
I have seen her stop in the middle of unwrapping Christmas presents and start reading…unwilling to tear herself away to finish opening her gifts. LOL.
Where ever any of us go…there are always books in our bags, pockets, purses. For some weirdos, books are like crack. We are those weirdos.
I’m sorry, but as a one of those book-loving weirdos who is clearly part of MaryGJ’s tribe, I find this really sad.
OP, do you have a public library near you? If you can find a sympathetic librarian, they can help suggest books based on your interests. My suggestion would be to find young adult chapter books, because those are often driven by plot and therefore are especially interesting (and I say this as a middle-aged person who reads a great deal of serious literature, and yet still loves children’s books).
@marygj, And where might this be? As we are in the looking stage and kids have CRD (compulsive reading disorder)…
Our public schools did a great job with reading. btw- my gifted kid majored in math, added computer science and works as a software developer/engineer. Despite going the STEM route he did just as well in the other areas (top SAT scores all around, point shy ACT)and is a definite reader for pleasure. It doesn’t matter what your college major or profession is- one can be a reader. Son did well on those tests because he had read a lot of good (ie good grammar et al) literature, including popular fiction (sci fi such as Star Wars comes to mind). He never studied for standardized tests- except for me making him do the free practice ones. Likewise I was never taught a lot of parts of speech (learned those taking HS French) but through a lot of reading picked up vocabulary, grammar et to be in the (preAP days) Honors required lit class.
My point is that reading a lot will improve your vocabulary and grammar. You can even start with reading many children’s books from the library as they will have proper grammar et al. It can be fun to learn about all sorts of things from nonfiction children’s books and the published fiction libraries have is likely to be well written.
You get better by doing. You may want to look up words you are iffy on to be sure you got the right meaning from the context. You learn a lot of meanings from the words that surround them as well. You are never too old to improve your skills.