A recent study reveals that people especially young people are reading far less literature—novels, plays, and poems—than they used to. This is troubling because the trend has unfortunate effects for the reading public, for culture in general, and for the future of literature itself.
While there has been a decline in book reading generally, the decline has been especially sharp for literature. This is unfortunate because nothing else provides the intellectual stimulation that literature does. Literature encourages us to exercise our imaginations, empathize with others, and expand our understanding of language. So by reading less literature, the reading public is missing out on important benefits.
Unfortunately, missing out on the benefits of literature is not the only problem. What are people reading instead? Consider the prevalence of self-help books on lists of best sellers. These are usually superficial poorly written, and intellectually undemanding. Additionally, instead of sitting down with a challenging novel, many persons are now more likely to turn on the television, watch a music video, or read a Web page. Clearly, diverting time previously spent in reading literature to trivial forms of entertainment has lowered the level of culture in general.
The trend of reading less literature is all the more regrettable because it is taking place during a period when good literature is being written. There are many talented writers today, but they lack an audience. This fact is bound to lead publishers to invest less in literature and so support fewer serious writers. Thus, the writing as well as the reading of literature is likely to decline because of the poor standards of today's readers.
The passage expresses dissent over the fact that the readership of literature has decreased off late, a phenomenon that is mostly attributable to young people reading less. It bolsters this claim using three well-rounded justifications, each of which are refuted by the speaker.
First, the speaker rebukes the proposition of the author of a sharp decline in reading literature. She states that apart from literature, books on science, history and fiction are of high quality as well. Further, according to her, such books are well written and equally stimulating. Hence, the author's claim of literature being the highest source of intellectual stimulation is not true in its entireity.
Second, the author points out that people these days prefer spending their time in trivial forms of entertainment like watching a television or a music video. The speaker is quick to challenge this claim by stating that music and movies, although non-literature, do not necessarily lower cultural standards in general. In fact, there are many other sources of expression, which are often more intellectual than literature.
Lastly, the speaker ridicules the postulate of talented writers of this generating lacking an audience. She stands in support of the readers and attacks the fault of the authors in producing literature that is hard to understand.
Thus, although the author and the speaker share diametrically opposite views, they strike an important discussion on readership of literature in modern times.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, hence, if, lastly, second, so, thus, well, apart from, in fact, in general
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 10.0 10.4613686534 96% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 0.0 5.04856512141 0% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 7.30242825607 82% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 12.0772626932 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 22.412803532 76% => OK
Preposition: 36.0 30.3222958057 119% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 5.01324503311 120% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1280.0 1373.03311258 93% => OK
No of words: 234.0 270.72406181 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.47008547009 5.08290768461 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.91114542567 4.04702891845 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99446734575 2.5805825403 116% => OK
Unique words: 148.0 145.348785872 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.632478632479 0.540411800872 117% => OK
syllable_count: 391.5 419.366225166 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.55342163355 109% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.23620309051 85% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 2.5761589404 78% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 13.0662251656 92% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 21.2450331126 89% => OK
Sentence length SD: 29.0913312785 49.2860985944 59% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 106.666666667 110.228320801 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5 21.698381199 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.16666666667 7.06452816374 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.09492273731 122% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 4.33554083885 185% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 4.45695364238 22% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.27373068433 70% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.1245456333 0.272083759551 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0413125629193 0.0996497079465 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0391232033159 0.0662205650399 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0669595719302 0.162205337803 41% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0452870744172 0.0443174109184 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 13.3589403974 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 53.8541721854 81% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 11.0289183223 108% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.45 12.2367328918 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.23 8.42419426049 110% => OK
difficult_words: 69.0 63.6247240618 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 10.7273730684 84% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 10.498013245 91% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 76.6666666667 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 23.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.