Literacy shmiteracy
Dec. 8th, 2011 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flonnebonne"Fanfic in Chinese is better! All the English ones are so bad! And you know, there's so much...18+ stuff!"
--something a Gr. 8 student said to me the other day
Getting students to read fanfic to help them improve their language abilities sounds good in theory, but all the badfic and porn out there gets in the way. The last thing you want is parents complaining that you told their kids to read porn. I think anime fandoms are especially porny, for whatever reason. Too bad, since that's what the Gr. 8 student likes.
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On another note....when I read in Japanese (which isn't that much), I tend to read crap. I read celebrity news--about Westerners, so I can't even make the excuse that I'm gaining cultural knowledge. I read manga and rarely books. I read freaking MSN ads. I rarely ever read anything difficult or substantive. And because I don't read difficult stuff in Japanese, I don't have the language to even think about difficult stuff in Japanese. I am barred from higher thought.
It really hit home the fact for me that access to high levels of literacy = access to thinking = access to power.
(This is my way of saying, "Ugh, I should have read more essays to prepare for the stupid JLPT.")
--something a Gr. 8 student said to me the other day
Getting students to read fanfic to help them improve their language abilities sounds good in theory, but all the badfic and porn out there gets in the way. The last thing you want is parents complaining that you told their kids to read porn. I think anime fandoms are especially porny, for whatever reason. Too bad, since that's what the Gr. 8 student likes.
------------
On another note....when I read in Japanese (which isn't that much), I tend to read crap. I read celebrity news--about Westerners, so I can't even make the excuse that I'm gaining cultural knowledge. I read manga and rarely books. I read freaking MSN ads. I rarely ever read anything difficult or substantive. And because I don't read difficult stuff in Japanese, I don't have the language to even think about difficult stuff in Japanese. I am barred from higher thought.
It really hit home the fact for me that access to high levels of literacy = access to thinking = access to power.
(This is my way of saying, "Ugh, I should have read more essays to prepare for the stupid JLPT.")
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 04:03 am (UTC)Yeah, for the JLPT high levels, you have to do more serious reading. I think manga is good for conversational stuff, or specialty vocabulary, but not generally science (unless you're reading that one about the kid who can see bacteria and stuff.... name slips my mind).
no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 05:46 am (UTC)With the new JLPT you need some casual language too for the listening section (although you could definitely pass with just serious language). You don't need *rude* language though, which is what manga is good for learning.
Is the bacteria one Moyashimon or something? I've heard of it but never read it. Science makes me run away!