Reading for College Readiness

Reading for College Readiness

If you're a high school student heading to college, be sure to keep using the important skill you will need for success in all your courses: reading. From stories to plays, biographies, essays, and poems, filling your mind with "healthy" mental nutrition can prepare you for all the work required during your four-year stint in higher education.

Beginning on day one, you will read syllabi, handouts, assignments, and textbooks. Then you must rely on books and resources for information to complete requirements for each professor. Time and again instructors find that the highest achievers are those who have done a fair amount of reading before college.

I have taught Basic Writing for students who come to college ill-prepared for reading and writing classes and require remedial coursework. I also teach English Composition as well as the first three years of literature courses. Honors courses, which I teach on occasion, enroll students who perform at or above the highest college expectations. Working with high school teachers in an Early English Composition Assessment So what should today's college-bound students be reading to prepare them for a successful college experience?

Fiction
Fiction stretches the imagination and contributes to life experience. Stories about American culture expand a reader's understanding of U.S. history and legacies. Instructors often recommend 20th century authors who write about themes like the following:

Recommendations:
- Julia Alvarez (the Hispanic experience)
- Frederick Douglass (slavery)
- William Faulkner (Deep South)
- Chaim Potok (Jewishness)
- Alice Walker (African American lifestyles)

Representative writers from Europe's past help to broaden awareness of our shared history and cultural values:

Recommendations:
- Jane Austen (social customs and mores)
- The Bronte sisters (Gothic romance)
- Charles Dickens (society's problems and stereotypes)
- Leo Tolstoy (Russian aristocracy)

Drama