Comic Book Reading, Reading Enjoyment, and Pleasure Reading Among Middle Class and Chapter 1 Middle School Students

Joanne Ujiie and Stephen D. Krashen

Seventh grade boys in two schools, one middle class and one in which 82% of the students were eligible for Chapter 1 funding were asked about comic book reading. Those who reported more comic book reading also reported more pleasure reading in general, greater reading enjoyment, and tended to do more book reading. There was no difference in frequency of comic book reading between the two schools.

Contrary to the view of some writers (Wertham, 1954), research shows that comic book readings does not replace other kinds of reading. Comic book readers, in gerneral, read as much as non-comic book readers (Witty, 1941; Heisler, 1947; Bailyn, 1959; Swain, 1978) and the results of one study suggest they read more (Blakely, 1958). Krashen (1993) suggests that comic book reading and other kinds of light reading may serve as an important bridge from everyday "conversational" language to what Cummins (1991) terms "academic language." This view is supported by studies showing that comic book texts contain more rare words than ordinary conversation does (Hayes and Ahrens, 1988), as well as case histories of readers who credit comic books with providing them with the linguistic basis for reading more difficult texts (e.g. Mathabane, 1986).

To our knowledge, all previous studies of comic book reading have been done with middle class children. In this paper, we examine comic book reading in two middle schools of different socio-economic class, one middle class and one less affluent, in order to determine the extent to which comic book reading varies with social class. If comics are less available for these children, it may help explain the oft-observed social class differences in literacy development (e.g. Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins and Kolstad, 1993). A second goal of the study was to further examine the relationship between comic book reading, book reading, and reading enjoyment.

Method

Sample I (Chapter 1): 302 seventh graders (86% of the seventh grade class) from a middle school in a city near Los Angeles provided information about their comic book reading. Students filled out a questionnaire in their English class that probed comic book reading, book reading, amount of pleasure reading in general, and reading enhoyment. The school qualified for Chapter 1 funding; 82.2% of the children were eligible for free or reduced price meals. 28% of the students were classified as Limited English Proficient.

Sample II (middle class): 269 seventh grade students from a middle school in a suburb of Los Angeles filled out the same questionnaire as the children in sample 1. Only 30.5% of the children in this school were eligible for free or reduced price meals. Nearly all were native speakers of English; only 3.8% were classified as Limited English Proficient. Included in the sample were 156 students enrolled in a program for gifted students, and 136 "regular" students.

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