Story Time for College Students Tread aloud to my students. Early each quarter, when I say, “Relax and sit back; it’s story time,” some students snicker. But after the initial grumblings, these same students quickly revert to the responsive posture of grade-schoolers listening to their teacher read an interesting story aloud. I have never had a research-documented reason for reading aloud, but I have felt it is important for stu- dents to hear the beauty of words and the flow of beautiful structure. I want them to relax and lose themselves in a story. Moreover, I want to cover my bases: even if my students don’t read well, they will at least hear well. Plus, the activity lends some variety to the hour and satisfies my own selfish desire to perform. Recently, as I wiled away an hour in a car dealer- ship, I turned to an article in Smithsonian (February 1995), featuring the work of Jim Trelease. One particu- lar passage caught my eye and confirmed my beliefs about the value of reading aloud to students of any age. Trelease quotes a skeptical father: “Excuse me, sir. Now this I just don’t understand. You say I should read to my son, but my son is in the fourth grade, and I’m mighty proud to say he’s in the top reading group! Now, why should you read to a child who already knows how to read? Why doesn’t he just read his books and I'll read my books, and we'll both be happy?” Trelease responds: “You say your son is reading at a fourth-grade level? Wonderful. But tell me: What's his listening level?” Listening level? “You see,” Trelease explains, “listen- ing comprehension comes before reading comprehen- sion, and it’s usually two to three years ahead. A child reading on a fourth-grade level may be able to listen to books written on a sixth-grade level. It is the child’s listening vocabulary that feeds his reading.vocabulary.” To illustrate, Trelease reprints the opening paragraph from Roald Dahls’ The Enormous Crocodile. “’In the biggest, brownest, muddiest river in Africa, two crocodiles lay with their heads just above the water. One of the crocodiles was enormous. The other was not so big.’ Now let’s suppose a child does not know the word ‘enormous.’ Which is going to be more effective? Hearing the word in the context of a story, or seeing it isolated from meaning on a flash card? And remember, if a child has never heard the word ‘enormous,’ he’ll never say the word ‘enormous.’ And if he’s never heard it or said it, it’s going to be pretty difficult when the time comes to read it.” Here was the affirmation I was seeking! The differ- ence between reading and listening comprehension is Suanne D. Roueche, Editor September 22, 1995, Vol. XVII, No. 20 © The University of Texas at Austin, 1995 Further duplication is permitted by MEMBER institutions for their own personnel. two to three years! Yes, with students enrolled in my remedial courses in particular, I have noticed that, no matter whether they’re 19 or 39, their sentences just do not come out right, and they’re contorted in ways that defy structural analysis. My students simply do not know how good language sounds. The most obvious reason for their trouble is that these students haven’t been introduced to good lan- guage: it’s not just that they haven’t read or written; they have not even had the opportunity to listen. How can they mimic structures and vocabulary to which they haven’t been exposed? Their reading skills are too weak for them to read competently, but they can certainly hear good language: the beautiful structure in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and E. B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”; the poetry in the prose of Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” and Langston Hughes’ “Salvation”; the power of analogy in Dr. Richard Selzer’s description of abdominal surgery in “The Knife.” I will continue reading aloud to my students, confident that we are not only having a good time but we are learning structures and vocabulary that are not accessible in any other form. Margaret Payne, Instructor, English For further information contact the author at Pierce College, 9401 Farwest Drive, Tacoma, WA 98498. QO INNOVATION ABSTRACTS (ISSN 0199-106X) is published weekly following the fall and spring terms of the academic calendar by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), Department of Educational Administra- tion, College of Education, SZB 348, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712-1293, (512) 471-7545. Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Austin, Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to INNOVATION ABSTRACTS, SZB 348, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1293.