The Home Run Book: Can One Positive Reading Experience Create a Reader?
Debra Von Sprecken, Jiyoung Kim and Stephen Krashen
California School Library Journal 23 (2): 8-9, 2000.
"When I read Garfield books in first grade, I thought I found something better than TV."
There are numerous controversies in the field of literacy, but there is firm consensus on one point: Reading is good for you. Moreover, there is an emerging consensus that free voluntary reading is especially powerful. Free reading appears to be the source of much of our reading ability, our writing style, much of our vocabulary knowledge, our spelling ability, and our ability to handle complex grammatical constructions (Krashen, 1993; Elley, 1991, 1998).
If reading is so beneficial, how can we motivate children to read? There is evidence that suggests that reading itself is a powerful incentive: Students who participated in sustained silent reading programs report that they do more free reading at the end of the program than they did at the beginning (Pilgreen and Krashen, 1993). Even more important, students who participated in sustained silent reading say they read more than comparison students six years after the SSR program ended (Greaney and Clarke, 1975)! Similarly, McQuillan (1996) found that university students in Spanish for native speakers classes that emphasized interesting and comprehensible literature reported reading more in Spanish than comparisons seven months after the course ended.
These results suggest that a limited number of positive experiences with reading may be enough to create a reader. Jim Trelease (personal communication) has in fact suggested that one very positive experience can create a reader, one "home run" book.1 The purpose of our study was to test this exciting hypothesis.
Subjects were the entire population of 214 fourth grade students from three elementary schools in the Los Angeles area. In one of the schools, 59% of the students were considered low income (received free or reduced lunch), while at the two others, 17% and 18% were in this category. Forty three (20%) of the students were categorized as limited English proficient, and of these, five were considered beginners in English.
Students were asked only two questions:
1. Do you like to read?
2. Is there one book or experience that interested you in reading?
1