Rodriguez 1

Chantel Rodriguez
English 1102-132
Professor Anderson
May 16, 2015
Motivation to read
Reading is being lost each and every day due to distractions of the modern world and
even though the teachers of this realm is still trying to keep the books sacred, they are slowly
being forgotten from this nation. However, people dont read because they absolutely hate books
but because they arent being taught how to be and stay motivated in reading. Here, many
aspects on this topic will be addressed. What is motivation, why arent people reading anymore,
why should they read, the cognitive reasoning for motivating how to read, reading motivation in
children, teens and college students, how teachers are not helping students to read and how they,
peers, and parents can promote reading motivation and lastly how to be more engaging in school.
What is Motivation?
Motivation is the reason why someone does anything, but is someone does something for
only academic purposes then their enthusiasm will not be 100% because they will not be doing it
for fun. For a growing child, their brains have not yet grown to maximum capacity, age-related
gain has been reported in working memory, inhibitory control, task switching, adaptive problem
solving, and various other planning and problem-solving tasks while the association areas,
especially in the frontal and parietal regions, are the last to mature (Mizuno, Tanaka, Fukuda,
Imai-Matsumura, & Watanabe, 2011, p. 4). So for this reason, children are not focus in their
studies like a college students are. This is why teachers needs to promote reading at a young age
or else students wouldnt want to do it voluntary.

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There are two main types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic Intrinsic academic
motivation must engage the working memory system to relate achievements to an ultimate goal.
(Mizuno, Tanaka, Fukuda, Imai-Matsumura, & Watanabe, 2011, p. 4) and extrinsic motivation
means to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome (Mizuno, Tanaka, Fukuda,
Imai-Matsumura, & Watanabe, 2011, p. 3). Both motivations are highly needed when it comes
achieving reading learning and by having the confidence in both motivations then students will
be able to read without struggling in school. As shown below, our self-esteem which is our
confidence and achievement traits are second to important in our motivation levels.

However what does motivation have to do with reading? This days are filled with
advanced technologies that people are not taking time in their day to read a good book. Though I
dont blame them because since our era is filled with wonderful advances, we as a human race
should embrace it. However, reading engagement has been defined as the individuals
personal goals, values, and beliefs with regard to the topics, processes, and outcomes of reading
(Arzubiaga, Rueda, & Monzo, 2002, p. 3). This shows that students are motivated to read
because they want their personal goals exceed and their struggle to be overcome with the help of
reading. Also another reason why students need to have motivation to read is because
motivation is strongly influenced by one's expectation of success or failure at a task as well as
the value or relative attractiveness the individual places on the task.(Gambrell, Marinak,

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Codling, & Mazzoni, 2013-14, p. 518).This shows that with the right setting and a goal in mind,
anyone will want to read with the idea of successing in what they read
Prevention
Now anyone can say, Oh I want to start reading because Im super pumped up for
books but the first thing they need to do is pick up a book before they can talk the talk. For
them to succeed in this tasks they need to have four components Value, intrinsic value, extrinsic
utility value, and cost. Value is the individual's perception of importance of success in a given
task. Intrinsic value is enjoyment that task engagement brings about whereas extrinsic utility
value refers to the usefulness of the task. And cost is the perceived negative consequences of
engaging in the task which includes: extended effort, time and emotional expenditures. (Mori,
2002, p. 3) Through these four components, we can see that trying to motivate students to read is
hard to do because students do not understand the importance of reading but if someone uses
these four components then they can gain the confidence to actually pick up a book and read it.
A reason why students lack the motivation to read is because some of them live in a lower
income neighborhood or family which means living in a single-parent family or living in a
neighborhood where there is little money intake. Though for a child, it doesnt matter to them if
they are poor if the parent is willing to read with them then that child will want to read.
However, if the parents doesnt make the effort than it will damage their child because Children
from single-parent households would probably, on average, have less opportunity to interact with
nonresident parents in the ways inquired about in the study and have less knowledge of reading
habits, which were also a focus of several survey items. (Klauda & Wigfield, 2012, p. 4). Even
though children in lower income families dont always have the right resources to read because
either they cannot afford books to study or read from or their parents are too busy working to set

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an example for their children. The parents needs to suck it up and push harder to teach their
children the benefits of reading or they will never be motivated to read.
Cognitive reasoning
Now that we have a solid reason why people should read, let us go deeper in the
cognitive reason on what promotes motivation in reading because students can enhance their
learning by becoming aware of their own thinking as they read...(Paris & Winograd, 2013, p. 15)
When a student is presented with a work of literature that they need to read either by
themselves or with others that students needs to have a certain amount of confidence or else they
will lose interest and fail. However, whenever a teacher or parent tries to promote motivation
they need to show the student how to gain self- appraisal because to have the abilities to
appraise several of reading purposes, strategies, and their own understanding improves their
reading ability (Paris & Winograd, 2013, p. 1-5). Basically, when students understand their own
mental capacity that they will need to promote their own learning ability, they will start
improving their own abilities and will gain a boast of confidence to read and comprehend what
they are reading.
Other approaches
We can view why promoting motivation is good is three different approaches: the first
one is social, second is ecological and the third one is cultural. The reason we will see them in
three different approaches is so there is a deeper understand why reading is so important not only
for school but for life
For social approach, reading engagement is understood as a socially-mediated because
the individual influences with others will shape and mediate reading activities and performance

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(Arzubiaga, Rueda, & Monzo, 2002, p. 3) This is why when a child sees their family, friends, or
classmates read or at least talk about the topic, they get motivated to read as well because its
goes with the saying mind over matter, because they want to feel involved with the people
around them
For ecological approach, ecological factors shape everyday family routineswhich
provides an important insight into a childs reading performance. (Arzubiaga, Rueda, & Monzo,
2002, p. 3). This approach requires the need of others to help promote motivation but also it can
help in understand how important family is because with the help of families members kids
becomes more motivated to read with others and in general.
For cultural approach, events will happen over time that will shape or influence current
practices in reading (Raphael & Pearson, 1990, p. 2-3).This is why culture is a big impactor on
a students reading experience because most kids copy what others in their communities does.
For example, if a kid culture is surround around education then is more than likely that the child
will also love to read as well
Children
Even though teachers are showing students at a young age how to read and methods that
can promote motivation to read, the real question is why dont children read? Lack of
motivation is a one main reasons why but it is also due to lack of knowing the appropriate
reading skills, strategies, and approaches and knowing when to use them (Mcpherson, 2007, p.
2). children who are lacking motivation to read needs to understand that the reason why they are
not reading as well as others is not because they lack to understanding but because they are
lacking smaller reasons like strategies to find the main idea or creativity to see from someones

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other perspectives. If the parents or teachers can talk one on one to give the children positive
feedback than the child will gain more confidence to read.
In the classrooms of elementary school "it is crucial to encourage students high-quality
forms of reading motivation and, therefore, to stimulate them to read more frequently and master
important reading skills" (Naeghel, Keer, Vansteenkiste, & Rosseel, 2012, p. 83). Or else the
student will lack motivation to read. Teachers needs to help promote better ways of motivating
students how to read or else they will become ignorant to the culture they have. Also these
strategies will help in order to break through the declining trend in reading motivation
throughout childrens educational lives.
Teens
Motivation to read is compacted into the students minds when they are younger and
since they are fascinated by everything new they develop skills to read more independently and
will learn a smarter way to stay interested in their readings. But adolescents (Teens) are a
different story. At a certain age, most possibly after elementary school, they start to care more
about social outings and their peers than reading. So due to that reason there is a decrease in
intrinsic motivation among junior high school students, and is related to poor academic
performance. (Mizuno, Tanaka, Fukuda, Imai-Matsumura, & Watanabe, 2011, p.3). This shows
that if they start having poor reading skills when they are in middle school, then when they reach
high school then college they wont be able to read require material which can damage their
education greatly. However, a way for many parents to support their young childrens motivation
for reading by creating home environments that offer them a rich variety of reading and writing
materials and by reading aloud with them frequently in a warm, interactive manner. (Klauda,
2009, p. 1) parents still plays an important role right after elementary school because when they

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go into middle school they can start to forget the importance of reading. So its the parents job to
keep motivating their children to read.
College
Middle and high school students underestimate the importance of reading articles from
popular journals. Therefore, students do not gain the skill of reading journal articles when they
are younger; as articles become more difficult to read and comprehend, they are unable to keep
up in college (Lei, Bartlett, Gorney, & Herschbach, 2010, p. 7) Reading starts at a young age so
when they are not being taught the foundemental ways of reading then when they go to college
where the material is harder they wont be able to comprehend and so when they start to struggle
in school they wont be able to succeed in school
A way for college students to be more motivated to read is by using smart techniques like
receiving extra credit assignments tend to motivate students to read journal articles, and using
index cards during exam times have motivated them to read these journal articles (Lei, Bartlett,
Gorney, & Herschbach, 2010, p. 5). If students are able to recieve extra credit and extra help
from their teachers than students will be able to love to read the material and love the motivation
it takes to read. But the student needs to do some work to because by reading at least a few
minutes a day then they will be able to slowly learning the material more and be able to
understand the material
Teachers lack of
Teachers are the guider in a students life and even though each teacher has his/her own
teaching skills, if they completely leaves their student by themselves in their learning process
then they fail as an instructor. It seems logical and reasonable for instructors to decide their
level of reading reinforcement based upon the developmental level of students in the class (Lei,

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Bartlett, Gorney & Mazzoni, 2013-14, p. 3) This is an unfair and horrible mind set to believe that
teachers thinking that all of his higher advance class doesnt need extra help in reading because
even the smartest kids struggles with something as easy as spelling or grammar but when a
teacher actually takes the time to help the student then his or her motivation to continue reading
will increase
Though why dont teacher promote motivation in their students to read? Its because they
might believe that they are offending their students and its impact on student evaluations of
instructors, the developmental (remedial) level of students, the motivational level of students and
instructors, as well as the expectations and beliefs of instructors (Lei, Bartlett, Gorney &
Mazzoni, 2013-14, p. 2). This show that teachers plays a fair amount of importance to a students
reading motivation experience and even though teachers fears that their student will do poorly
its their motivation that will help them succeed
To elaborate on the students evaluations college instructors may hesitate to hold students
accountable for reading required assignments is due to their fear of receiving poor student
evaluations (Lei, Bartlett, Gorney & Mazzoni, 2013-14, p. 2) because students are the main
reason why teachers are still being able to work and get good pay raises because students are the
ones who watches the teachers work ethic. So at the end of the teachers course, the students will
be asked to take a review to evaluate their teacher and depending how "cool" the teacher was the
students till say how good they were or the opposite. So a main reason why teachers dont give
out difficult lessons or take an extra mile is because they dont want to lose their position
Teacher really do help
Now students are going to need someone to teach them the fundamentals of reading and
who better than the people who are their seven days a week; teachers. Then again, how can

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teachers and their classrooms help promote motivation to read? Well, the teachers first need to
set an autonomy setting first. By supporting students basic psychological needs for
competence, and relatedness (Naeghel, Keer, Vansteenkiste, & Rosseel, 2012, p. 84-85) it will
help them connect with others, help them be more confident and let them experience freedom
and in charge of their own learning abilities. When teachers provides their students with these
stepping stones then the student will be more interested in reading the material that they must
read. Also if they start reading for their own personal interest then they will be also to understand
what they are reading because they are actually fascinated at the material.
With the proper environment to read students will see reading as valuable and important
and will engage in reading in a more planned and effortful manner (Gambrell, Marinak,
Codling, & Mazzoni, 2013-14, p. 518). This will show the teachers their students mental state
and what drives them to want to read and when they find the motivators they can enhance it.
However, not all teachers are all that bad and not all teacher doesnt care. It is these
teachers who actually tries to make the classroom challenging and give reading assignments that
will pushing students to read because the material they are reading about is full of intriguing
information. The greatest teachers are the one who makes the reading material understandable
and shows how to find the main purpose of the reading while exercising critical and analytical
thinking. However, not all teachers are trained equal so the Instructor expectations and beliefs
are influenced by the subject matter they instruct (Lei, Bartlett, Gorney, & Herschbach, 2010, p.
4). Through subjects like social studies, math, science and humanities students are require to
show a decent amount of understanding, so the teacher will instruct the student to do their
reading matter by themselves but some believe that there should be little to no work at all. so this
is where students might struggle because if a student has a good reading motivation then they

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will be able to succeed in their class but if they need the extra help then the teachers who thinks
that little to no work is need then the student is bound to fail because they wont have the
confidence to do the reading and be able to understand the material
Lastly, through actual praise and awareness teachers can install an extra boast of
confidence in their students. The teachers praise must be sincere, specific, and based on the
teacher's or teacher librarians genuine conviction in his or her students' learning abilities and
potentials. Otherwise, students will ignore the praise and interpret it as being manipulative
(Mcpherson, 2007, p. 2). whenever a child notices false praise they will start to believe that they
are not special and when they start to feel that then they stop wanting to read because they wont
feel like they are really getting praised because they are good but since its the teachers job. So
for anyone teacher or parent for the child to read and have motivation to read, genuine praise is
needed
Teacher awareness means to inform their students about effective problem-solving
strategies and discussing cognitive and motivational characteristics and provide skills to promote
one's own thinking and to foster independent learning. (Paris & Winograd, 2013, p. 1-2). This
means that teachers need to understand that even though kids need to be taught the right way
they eventually needs to let go of that hand and let the student do things on their own or with the
help of other students because the students needs to understand that if they can do it by
themselves then they can achieve more
Engagement
Students wants to read and choose to read for a wide range of personal reasons such as
curiosity, involvement, social interchange, and emotional satisfaction. (Malloy, Marinak,
Gambrell, & Mazzoni, 2013-14, p. 518). But the teachers first needs to make their classroom

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engaging. There are eight ways to make reading fun in classrooms and at home by giving:
opportunities to engage in sustained reading, autonomous and controlled reading motivation,
making choices in what they read and how to engaging, classroom must value reading, wide
range of books, read challenging text, relevant to their lives, opportunities to socially interact
with others on what they read (Gambrell, 2011, p. 172-176).
To engage in sustained reading this is simply means to give a kid good material to read
and then discuss it as a class then the meaning of the book and the passage can be understood. To
have autonomous and controlled reading motivation that means that there are two ways why
students read: for fun or as punishment. Reading for fun is "autonomous reading motivation" and
when kids read for fun then they can feel more relax and comfortable to try to understand the
book rather than just reading it to finish an assignment.
For making choices in that they read that means people dont want to read boring
autobiolgy or non fiction at times because reading for fun means just that fun. If they find
something boring then they wont want to read it because they will lose interest fast and become
lazy to keep reading.
For teaching value reading if the teacher or school doesnt promote reading to be an
important aspect to everyday lives than the child wont want to take the intentiontive to read
because they will see that if no one care they shouldnt either.
For a wide range of books means in a classroom there has to be a large amount of diverse
books for kids to read because if one person is limited to the same book all the time then they
wont be able to have the motivation to read more difficult books nor be able to understand harder
concepts.

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For read challenging text that means when kids read easy information they can get bored
very fast because for them its the same things over and over again. So if they read books like
chapter books then they can learn to love reading more because they are being pushed and
challenged.
For relevant to their lives that means when people read for fun they dont want to read
about people who they cant relate with like some shakespeare novels so for kids to have
motivation to read it has to be relevant and relatable.
And lastly for opportunities to socially interact with others on what they read that means
kids live to socialize with each other so if its hard for them to talk about a book that they find
boring, so that why to promote motivation to read they students need to find a book that they can
relate and talk to each other about. As soon in the picture below, teachers needs to promote
motivating in their students for them to grow.

Peers helps peers

Even though teachers are extremely helpful for a students academic, peers are the real
reason why students get motivated in school and even in reading. Whenever a child sees
competition they will either run away or fight. A low self-esteem child will probably run away
because they feel like they already lost and will be teased but a high esteem child will see their
value and prove how good he is. By showing how good they are they will have confidence to
read more frequently. Reading with families and teachers are great but when children reads with

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someone who are younger like their peers then they will have more motivation to read because
they wont feel embarrassed if they make a mistake and by pairing them up together they will
pushed themselves to read more and with confidence
However, reading with peers can also be seen as a bad thing because their peers will not
encourages them to focus on their own progress, and will avoids attributions of failure which
may come from comparisons with peers (Miller, Topping, & Thurston, 2010, p. 420). Reading
with peers has a bad side to because children judge each other harder than parents or teachers
because they are both the same age so they think that they have to same brain knowledge. So if a
kid who has more high self-esteem in reading is paired with someone with a low self- esteem
reader than the high self-esteem kid will make the other kid feel bad because they are not as
advance as the other which will make the low self-esteem child lose more motivation to read
Parents are still helpful
With the help of parents, students are able to gain the confidence to read because their
parents are helping them gain sureness in themselves. Parental support [for reading] includes
such factors as the availability of reading materials in the home, parental reading behavior, and
the frequency of reading to the child. (Klauda & Wigfield, 2012, p. 5-6). parents plays an
important role in reading with their children because by promoting them with reading skills and
shortcuts the children will learn how to apppreciate reading more becuase they wont feel
pressured to read for only academic but for fun as well. Reading with teachers will help them
feel comfortable to read in class and with others. parental actions and beliefs play a key role in
supporting preschool and primary-grade childrens development of reading motivation as well as
reading skills ways or extent to which parents support older childrens reading or how such
support relates to older childrens reading motivation (Klauda & Wigfield, 2012, p. 2).

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Parents are important to a child's reading experience because they need to feel reassure
that their parents are supporting them no matter what is going on. Also parents needs to help
their children develop reading skills because if the parents show that they care than the child will
care
Conclusion
To understand how to promote motivation in reading we must understand that students
who no longer are reading is becoming a problem for our society. We saw that the key points in
being able to promote motivation in students and we were able to address key ideas: What is
motivation, why arent people reading anymore, why should they read, the cognitive reasoning
for motivating how to read, reading motivation in children, teens and college students, how
teachers are not helping students to read and how they, peers, and parents can promote reading
motivation and lastly how to be more engaging in school. If we can slowly show this newer
generation the benefits of reading and learning how to stay motivated during their reading time,
then the art of reading will not die within their generation.