| Developing Critical Reading Skills, 6/e Deanne Spears,
City College of San Francisco
Exercises
Online Exercises- On page 53, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., discusses the problem of reduced literacy
among American schoolchildren. In this paragraph, he specifically criticizes
American schools, rather than the medium of television itself, for creating
this situation. He suggests that if schools gave children more homework, kids
wouldn't have so much free time to sit in front of the tube. Just what is
the relationship between more homework and higher reading scores? Investigate
this matter by performing a search using your favorite search engine. (I used
www.google.com and typed in "reading scores"
+ homework.) Or investigate this matter using one or more of these sites:
http://ncesed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/results www/smarterkids.com/rescenter/library/articles.asp?article=1291&redir=true nces.ed.gov/commissioner/remarks2000/8_24_2000.asp family.go.com/raisingkids/child/skills/feature/bapp97homework/bapp97homework3.html
- How easy is it to locate the number of calories and grams of fat in your
favorite fast-food cheeseburger? (See the excerpt from Eric Schlosser's study
of the fast-food industry on pages 55 - 56.) Assume that you are buying a
Big Mac, a Whopper with cheese, or a regular cheeseburger with a medium order
of French fries. Here are three web sites to begin your search, but feel free
to check out the home pages of any other of your favorite fast-food outlets.
www.mcdonalds.com www.burgerking.com www.in-n-out.com/
- Bill Buford, in the Practice Essay "Among the Thugs" at the end
of Chapter 1, describes the crowd mentality and behavior of British football
fans. Elsewhere in the book from which the essay is taken, Buford refers to
these fans as "hooligans." What exactly does this word mean, and
what is its etymology? Consult the list of online dictionaries on page 14,
look up the word "hooligan" on each of the sites, and note which
one provides the most complete information.
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