Reading Without Nonsense: Well Organized but Oddly Pessimistic Study

Excerpts from the Paper

Reading Without Nonsense: Well Organized but Oddly Pessimistic Study
Reading Without Nonsense is a well organized but oddly pessimistic study about teaching how to read. Literacy is one of the cornerstones of Western culture and of course almost every other culture as well. However, from the start there is a propensity for the author to justify the necessity of teaching people how to read. Reading is a so fundamental to modern life that justifying teaching it should be considered erroneous. My impression is that Smith writes as if his readers, future teachers, lack confidence and intelligence, which makes the book less palatable to anyone wishing to become an instructor.
The beginning sets a rather defensive tone that is carried throughout...

.....k by taking the tone of a sort of life coach, gently goading the reader into believing that understanding written language in an important skill after all.
Perhaps because Smith does not write well, he does not have the confidence to talk about teaching English in an authoritative and persuasive way. Instead, he sort of goads the reader with semi-official sounding rhetoric, like the prose of an autobiography by an American politician who still has further to achieve in his or her political career, and so wants to say little in the most inspiring way possible. It is a boring an uninformative book that does nothing to inspire its readers.
Bibliograpy
Smith, Frank. Reading Without
Nonsennse
: 4th Edition. New York: Teachers College Press, 2006