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Lit College Student Literacy is Down, but My Determination is Up

Jan. 16, 2025
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In theory, I love to read. I’m a literature major. I keep a novel in my bag, on the table, at my bedside. One of my favorite annual traditions is a book swap with my friends, my favorite store is Barnes & Noble, my favorite place to study is the campus library. I adore creative writing and my college classes push me to develop this skill—what better fuel for good writing than avid reading? I haul a shelf’s worth of books (both recreational and academic) back to my dorm each semester with the noble intention of eating through a healthy portion of the stack like the bookworm I’m supposed to be. 


Why, then, do the books always wind up creaseless and dusty, their purpose reduced to keeping a literature student company while she watches Netflix instead? Where has that childhood hunger for reading gone? Why don’t I finish assigned books for class anymore?


Reading rates among adults and children have been declining steeply over the past decades. The last Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, which is administered every five years by the National Endowment for the Arts, showed that fewer than half of U.S. adults read a single book in 2022—a six-point decrease from 2012. Reading of novels and short stories has been declining at a 17% rate for the past decade. Reading rates among college students like myself have been dropping since at least the early 1980s; between 1982 and 2002, the rate of decline was 18%. Students in 2021 read, on average, 6 fewer books per year than they did in 2002.


Despite the long duration of this decline, the subject of college students’ literacy has garnered heavier media attention recently—particularly in the form of an article published in The Atlantic titled The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” Although the article mentions the role of smartphones in the declining literacy of college students (when is it not the damn phones?), it primarily puts the onus on educators: middle and high school teachers assign far fewer full books than they used to, opting for shorter excerpts that are more likely to prepare students for the rigors of standardized testing. This method, while allowing students to develop their synthesizing and argumentative skills, deprives them of the ability to digest long-form texts like books. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated this issue as online syllabi demanded that even fewer books be read. 


In turn, college professors have had to adapt. Since incoming students are unable or unwilling to handle a heavy reading load, professors are sometimes forced to assign shorter texts or excerpts. Some professors see this as a natural progression. In his opinion piece for The New York Times, the author and professor Jonathan Malesic hypothesized that students are reacting tactically to modern standards of productivity and career readiness that have been set for them: since most lucrative careers don’t require a background in literary comprehension, students have lost the motivation to pursue literary studies.


The ability to read lengthy texts for extended periods of time is sometimes referred to as “reading stamina.” Sustained silent reading and Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) programs in the 1960s and 70s were founded on the belief that students could learn by reading consistently. Despite schools’ earlier attempts to bolster reading stamina, Education Week surveys have found a precipitous decline in the  stamina of grade school students since 2019. Only 17% of educators reportedly use full texts in their programs nowadays, although they are the best resources for building reading stamina. Students arrive at college unprepared in part due to the fact that they lack the proper stamina for long-form reading.


The development of poor reading habits can begin even earlier, however. As soon as children are able to read, they are required to do so. Although some students will instinctively take up reading as an enjoyable hobby, others will immediately associate reading with the reports, tests, and assignments they must complete in school: they come to see reading as a means of completing work. Granting students the autonomy to choose their own books is crucial to the development of their healthy reading habits, but this choice is frequently restricted to ensure that students are reading the same materials and progressing at the same rate.


Back in fourth grade, when I was in love with The Tale of Despereaux, a medieval fantasy about a heroic mouse, my teacher took the book from me right before I could finish reading it. It was below my Lexile: the Lexile Framework for Reading was developed to match children with books considered appropriate for their reading level, which is determined with a computer test. My teacher asked me to choose a book in my Lexile range so I would be challenged accordingly. I did not end up with a more challenging book, however; I wanted to finish The Tale of Despereaux. I was bitter about those final chapters being snatched from me (perhaps I still am), and did not end up choosing a replacement, having momentarily lost the motivation to read.


However, I don’t want to go through my adult life without reading. I want to read vigorously, for pleasure, for information, for the betterment of my own writing. Reading was one of my favorite activities as a kid, and the joy derived from inhaling a book hasn’t waned since I’ve gotten older—but my attention span has. Personally, I think it is the damn phone. Social media apps that run on short-form video content, the ability to constantly multitask and gain sensory input, having unbridled access to information—these things have slivered down my concentration and diminished my desire to consume lengthier narratives. I find it alarming that I may have possessed more focus and motivation in grade school than I do in college, and I want to change that.


Granted, I have done better in recent years—I don’t let the year go by without reading a few recreational books anymore, but I certainly went through a teenage slump where all literature fell by the wayside. I still struggle to complete books for class without hastily skimming over the endings, or what’s worse, leaving them entirely unfinished. Plus, I want to read more than just a few books per year. I want to constantly be reading, to let it replace my scrolling habits.


So, I devised an experiment. Using the book I received at my annual book swap, She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, I will test a variety of techniques to improve my reading speed and stamina. This book seemed the proper choice; it’s not a breezy romance nor a thrilling fantasy, but a novel on investigative reporting that could easily mimic the type of reading I am assigned in college. The goal of this experiment is not to make me a speed reader, but rather to reestablish good habits, to show myself that I can still get a hefty chunk of reading done in a short amount of time, and to discover which methods work best for me.


My personal stats: it takes me approximately 22 minutes to read 10 pages of She Said without any special circumstances (I timed myself on my living room couch, reading the way I would normally, to establish a baseline speed). My speed is slower than average—most people read 238 words per minute, and since one page of She Said contains roughly 350 to 400 words, your average Joe could get through 10 pages in only 15 to 17 minutes. I’ll chalk my snail’s pace up to three primary factors: a low reading stamina due to smartphone usage and poor reading habits, distractibility and inattention caused by ADHD, and a whole lot of necessary rereading (this particular book divulges dense information quite rapidly).


I chose 5 methods meant to increase my focus and motivation in the hope that they would subsequently improve my reading speed. Some of these were pulled from the Internet, while others are strategies I’ve been advised to try previously, or have seen others use:


1. Reading in an unusual location. This involves going someplace where you wouldn't typically choose to read, because a change of scenery can help with motivation and focus. 


2. Reading while walking/standing. I figured there must be a reason why standing desks and walking pads have become so popular. Thankfully, this strategy requires no purchases: books are as mobile as any phone.


3. Reading aloud. I predict that this will improve focus and reading retention more than it will improve speed, but it’s worth a shot.


4. Reading with white noise. White noise is a static-like drone composed of many frequencies. It’s meant to block out background sounds, reducing distraction and stress. Many people use white noise to help them fall asleep, or to aid their studies and work. Although these noises technically come in a wide spectrum of colors (“brown” noise refers to a deeper, more rumbling sound, while “pink” noise has a lower pitch), a number of studies have shown that white noise can reduce ADHD symptoms, so I’ll stick to the classics.


5. Reading using the Pomodoro Technique. The Pomodoro Technique was developed in the 1980s as a time management tool. The principle here is that you work for 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break, and repeat; this is meant to reduce procrastination and improve efficiency and focus.


I spent the bulk of a day testing out these methods, and based on my personal findings, ranked them from worst to first. My reading time per 10 pages is listed next to each technique I tried.

Reading while walking/standing | 28:42 minutes


This was, unfortunately, an enormous letdown. I was truly looking forward to milling about with a book pressed to my nose like a regular Jo March or Rory Gilmore, equal parts mystique and elegance, but alas. The reality of this technique is that you must shuffle slowly in order to avoid bobbing the book up and down, you must sustain your peripheral awareness to avoid tripping, and you can only read without squinting for the couple steps that lead you past a window.


I figured that the slight motion would improve my concentration—that walking would be akin to fidgeting—but the level of awareness required to maneuver around obstacles and the temptation to glance at every passing car and neighbor were too much to handle. I know what it is like to be a dog when a squirrel runs by. I found myself constantly rereading sentences and not comprehending them while growing increasingly frustrated with the situation I had put myself in. Spending nearly half an hour on 10 pages is as trying as it is ridiculous, and whether it was cognitive overload or total incompetence that stunted my success, I cannot recommend this method to anyone but master multitaskers and those with extraordinarily tidy floors.


Reading aloud | 22:37 minutes


What most surprised me about this technique was how close my oral reading speed was to my baseline of 22 minutes. I expected that reading aloud would take roughly the same amount of time as listening to an audiobook chapter (which I am always compelled to bump to 2 or 3x speed). This made me conscious of the fact that I practice “subvocalization” when I read silently: subvocalization is the internal voice you might hear pronouncing every word on the page, as if you were speaking them aloud. It is considered a bad habit by numerous speed reading websites, which present tips on how to curb it. Thankfully, I harbor no ambition to become the world’s fastest reader, and I enjoy being able to hear the dialogue in a book. 


I found that reading aloud sustained my attention quite well, and I focused on the content significantly better than when I was reading silently—my inner monologue is liable to wander, but this method eliminated distractions and made me concentrate solely on the story. There were a few moments where I paused to reread a passage, but I enjoyed the sensory aspect of hearing the book read aloud. The downside to this technique is that it’s not particularly fast or especially sustainable for your vocal chords: my throat was a bit scratchy after only 10 pages. Downloading an audiobook in conjunction with reading by sight could easily solve this problem.


Reading with the Pomodoro Technique | 21:10


Finally, a decrease in my reading time! The Pomodoro Technique is made more fun by an app called Focus Tomato, which does nothing except set the requisite 25 and 5 minute timers, but boasts a woodcut print-style tomato icon with a comically serious face and a clickable gramophone that can play white noise. I read 10 pages during the first 25 minute session and another 10 after the short break; my first time was 23:08 minutes and my second was 21:10. 


I became somewhat frustrated with reading during the first 25 minute period, as external distractions mounted and I found my attention slipping frequently. I was concentrating poorly by the end of the session and was disappointed in my slower speed. However, the 5 minute break allowed me to reset on multiple fronts: I went to a quieter location, I used the restroom, realized I was hungry, got a snack. All of these were distracting external factors that I likely wouldn’t have noticed or corrected if I hadn’t taken 5 minutes to reevaluate my working situation. This method will likely aid those who have trouble focusing on the bigger picture and remembering to take short breaks. Enjoy the ponderous tomato app.


Reading in an unusual location | 18:20


I should emphasize: unusual. I didn’t just go with my second-favorite chair in the house. I wanted a complete change of scenery, somewhere I would never consider a suitable reading spot, so I sat at the bottom of the staircase like a toddler in timeout and read my 10 pages—quickly. I am still slightly baffled as to why this technique was so effective. The novelty of the situation was compelling enough to kick my motivation into high gear, but I did not find myself distracted by my surroundings. My speed and my focus were good, and I found a certain flow in reading that I had not yet experienced with this book.


I made sure that I was still physically comfortable on the staircase, but not too comfortable (I still remember my fourth grade teacher proclaiming that being too comfortable in class would impede our attention spans, and perhaps she was on to something). My best guess is that sitting in a liminal space must imbue your psyche with just the right balance of unease and intrigue to make you read swiftly, both to distract yourself from the situation and, somehow, to savor it.


Reading with white noise | 16:54


I took great delight in finally achieving a reading speed within the average Joe range. Admittedly, this chapter contained an embedded letter which flowed slightly quicker than the usual prose, but the white noise was magic nonetheless. I tried a setting called “White Noise Ocean Surf” on the app Calm, which was slightly boring (a pure static sound, really) but highly effective. I tend to put on some variety of ambience when I’m working, so I knew this technique would be a hit, but the nearly 12 minute discrepancy between “Reading while walking” and “Reading with white noise” is a surprise.


The main benefit I notice when using white noise is the lessened volume of background thoughts: it quiets the constant earworms, worries, and abstract nonsense, allowing me to focus on the matter at hand. I find myself rereading passages far less frequently.  Especially when paired with noise-cancelling headphones, white noise will help anyone with an excess of internal monologue.



I have no doubt that another reader would yield much different results from their own experiment: I can imagine, for example, that someone who excels at focusing but struggles with comprehension would benefit from reading aloud more than I did. Someone who struggles to maintain their efficiency when reading would probably love the Pomodoro Technique. I’m sure that someone would benefit from shuffling around the house while they read, although I can’t imagine who on earth this person is.


In addition to showing me which reading techniques might propel me through my next assigned book in college, this experiment had a profound effect on my reading stamina. Goal-setting won’t work for everyone, but having a system of accountability in place with minor challenges sprinkled throughout allowed me to read far more than I usually would in this span of time. I read over 100 pages of She Said in a daya humble number for some readers, I understand, but a rarity for me. Knowing that you are capable of doing something is often half the battle: the other half is a matter of resolve, which will necessarily take time to develop.


Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how I’m reading books; just that I am. I don’t want to rely on ChatGPT to smash novels into a handful of bullet points, I don’t want to wait for the movie adaptation to come out, I don’t want to give up on this art form I love dearly just to save a few minutes of my day. What would I have done with that time anyway? I would much rather be reading my book perched on the staircase than reading nothing at all. 

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