[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Generally I agree with you about scripts, but Shakespeare is different. His writing is pure poetry.

I never could read Shakespeare. Mostly because I hate reading poetry. It's not the language, it's not the words. It's the form. I just can't read it. I'll see disjointed sentences, and not the whole. So, I won't understand the story.

Originally Posted by Cyberman tM

Guilt by association.
Shakespeare is horribly hard to read. -> Reading is hard. -> Reading is no fun. -> Why read anything at all if all it gets me is a headache and is annoying?

Yep, exactly.

Originally Posted by Yolina

But surely by the time they get to read Shakespeare, they have also read other books that they have enjoyed?

When I went to highschool here, in the Netherlands, we had for every language you took a reading list. I had Dutch (mandatory) and English (one foreign language was also mandatory). For Dutch, we had to read 3 books from the middle ages, 3 books from the renaissance, etc., till the modern day. In total we had to read about 20 or so books, all from a limited list. I hated it. Even now, when I see or hear about those books I had to read back then, I shudder.

Yet, for English, we had to read 10 books. And we were free to chose our books. The teacher did have a list, for those people that needed it, but it wasn't the complete list. The only requirement was that the book was an original English book. I ended up reading 1984 and Animal Farm, but also Shogun by James Clavell and the Clan of the Cavebears by Jean M. Auel. All in the original language. These weren't easy books, considering I'm not a native speaker, and I loved it. I read the rest of the series by Auel too, that year (and they were not allowed on the list of 10 you had to read, as you could only read one book per author).

I still hardly read Dutch books, at all. I just can't stand it anymore. But I devour English books. Had I been allowed to pick my own books for Dutch, just as I had been allowed to pick my own books in English, I might have appreciated the Dutch authors more. But even after more than 20 years, the association to those books I had to read back then, stops me from reading new books.

Originally Posted by Yolina

I admit I have problems understanding the attitude that "if something is a bit difficult, I'm not going to bother and just give up instead. "

It's not the difficulty. Make it a challenge and they'll read it. Make it an order and they'll give up.

But I must say, when I was an exchange student in the US, I was shocked by the level of reading done by the senior year of High School. They had trouble reading books I had finished by the time I was 14. In English...