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.
Both the reading and the lecture discuss the decline of literature and its consequences. While the reading mentions only shortcomings of this phenomenon, the lecturer looks on the bright side.
First, the reading points out that people who do not read books cannot enrich themselves intellectually. Since nothing else does not give the same impetus as literature we miss the opportunity to derive benefits from the reading. Nevertheless, the professor in the lecture rebuts this argument and casts doubt on the explanation made in the article because not every book stimulates our brain but only scientific, history or other high-quality literature.
Next, according to the reading the literature is replaced by other media which spoils readers’ minds and which quality is lower. it leads to decline of cultural level of the population. On the other hand, the lecturer believes this is not true and other media such as music, art or movies affect positively our culture and, furthermore, may speak more directly with the audience than the literature.
And last but not the least, the reading tells that despite a plethora of good books, the industry lacks investments due to reduction of the audience. The lecturer, however, sees other cause of this problem. She mentions the modern books are often too difficult to understand so readers spot to buy them.
To sum it, the reading provides three arguments illustrating disadvantages of the literature’s decline, but the professor in the lecture does not agree with them and says why they are not plausible.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 135, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: It
...apos; minds and which quality is lower. it leads to decline of cultural level of t...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, however, if, look, may, nevertheless, so, while, such as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 5.0 10.4613686534 48% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 2.0 5.04856512141 40% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 7.30242825607 178% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 12.0772626932 41% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 22.412803532 76% => OK
Preposition: 28.0 30.3222958057 92% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 5.01324503311 120% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1326.0 1373.03311258 97% => OK
No of words: 252.0 270.72406181 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.2619047619 5.08290768461 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.98428260373 4.04702891845 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93181736062 2.5805825403 114% => OK
Unique words: 157.0 145.348785872 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.623015873016 0.540411800872 115% => OK
syllable_count: 406.8 419.366225166 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.23620309051 97% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.51434878587 132% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 2.5761589404 155% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 13.0662251656 92% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 21.2450331126 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.4659555243 49.2860985944 113% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.5 110.228320801 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0 21.698381199 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.33333333333 7.06452816374 118% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.09492273731 122% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 4.33554083885 69% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 4.45695364238 157% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.27373068433 47% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.145685067763 0.272083759551 54% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0535630935406 0.0996497079465 54% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0289743725624 0.0662205650399 44% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0816213689918 0.162205337803 50% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0226615479413 0.0443174109184 51% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 13.3589403974 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 53.8541721854 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 11.0289183223 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.2367328918 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.42419426049 102% => OK
difficult_words: 63.0 63.6247240618 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 10.7273730684 112% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 10.498013245 99% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.2008830022 107% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 88.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 26.5 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.