I found it interesting that, one the second page of his introduction chapter, Striphas writes how poor reading skills seems to relate to people becoming “deadbeats, dropouts, and criminals.” Right away he shows that he wants to talk about the impact of literature, and overall reading on the nation. But at the same time, just in class we realized that we probably do more reading than we thought. Does this imply an increase, as opposed to the former observed decline in literacy? Then again, considering what DOES get written on the internet, grammar and literacy seem to not apply.
It is also interesting to note that renowned aptitude scientist Jonathan O’Connor found that the highest correlation for success were those with strong vocabularies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_O'Connor
It seems that Striphas should have used “poor vocabulary” rather than “poor reading skills”
I was pretty surprised when Prof. Phillips mentioned that reading posts from facebook, twitter, and the like actually count as reading. Obviously, yes you are going through the motions of reading, but it seems so strange having that type of reading be on the same level as say reading a novel. In both cases you are reading, but to me reading a novel is more professional and thus should be thought of as a different kind of reading; while people do read a lot from social networking sites, they are not doing the same type of reading as they would to read a book- the level of concentration is not as demanding.