Quote:
Originally Posted by Keryl Raist
What I have noticed is my take on popular works has changed quite a bit. Some of the fantasy novels I adored as a kid read like cardboard cut outs of themselves. And my take on 'good' tv has changed radically.
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This is absolutely true for me. A lot of the popular stuff I read as a kid are so insubstantial now. I kinda feel betrayed by them now because I loved them back then and those memories are totally spoilt now with the knowledge that I don't like them now.
My school started us on Shakespeare with The Midsummer's Night Dream in 6th grade (we were all about 11 ish ) and most of us loved it and for most of us, that experience cemented the Shakespeare-is-awesome idea in us pretty young (as a show of hands, about 75% of the class professed to like Shakespeare's writings even after we finished King Lear in 11th grade, even though most of us hated King Lear itself.) We also got started on George Bernard Shaw with Pygmalion which had a similar effect. Of course, there was a lot of stuff about it we didn't understand as kids, but it felt so good that I've always carried the idea that I love Shaw which makes me read more of the stuff he wrote.
Where I come from, they ease us into reading. And we never start with classics. Like by 2rd grade, we were reading Enid Blyton (it was a ex-British colony country) and collections of popular local fables and then we did some popular stuff like Agatha Christie and commercial fiction before we started Dickens in like 4th grade or something. We need to teach kids to read first before we teach them to handle the heavy stuff.
This theory has worked with a friend who didn't know any english too. She never read much in her original language, but then when she learnt english, I suggested she read popular fiction until she was hooked onto reading and then I rolled in the heavy guns. She even made it through Vanity Fair! (Vanity Fair is probably my --our-- least favourite book in the universe...but we never give up reading a book midway even if we hate it)