Summer Reading for College Freshmen: Let's Nurture the Future

The world we live in today has high expectations. In the academic realm that leads to employment, this is also true. Organizations expect prospective candidates to have loads of education and experience under their belt. However, high schools today are not as thorough in their teaching skills to students as before, which means that there are thousands of high school seniors graduating without advanced reading and writing skills. Many of these students are entering the colleges and universities without the proper knowledge of how to write a decent essay. This is indeed tragic and speaks toward the future of our youth. So, what is the solution? Colleges should implement a summer reading requirement for its incoming freshmen in order to do the following: (1) Assess their level of reading, (2) expose them to a diverse set of genres, and (3) show students how great reading can be.

Reading for basic purposes is all fine and well, but if you want to be able to understand theoretical and hypothetical issues, then being able to read and comprehend takes practice. College is apart of the growing and learning experience, but it doesn't help teachers if they have to start all over. This has been the case because lots of freshman have no idea what a preposition is or how to avoid run on sentences. Reading and writing go hand in hand, so if a student is bad at reading and comprehension, then chances are their writing skills are worse. Young adults need to realize right off that reading is insight into a world full of possibilities.