Persuade Me

PURPOSE: To persuade.

SPECIFIC PURPOSE: The purpose of my speech is to alert the audience to the problems associated with low reading abilities and persuade them to read to young children.

INTRODUCTION

ATTENTION GETTER: Unemployment! Prison! Suicide! Welfare! Are these the things we want for the children in our lives? Is this where we want the country to go? Do we want this kind of future for our children?

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS: Answer: Of course we don't! Every one of us in this room has been a child and has seen what struggling in school has done to our classmates or to ourselves. Each of us who has children watch sometimes helplessly as our children or children in our lives struggle to read then struggle to catch up as a result of poor reading skills.

THESIS STATEMENT: The inability to read and absorb information is a nationwide problem that directly effects suicide rates, unemployment rates, and crime rates and on which each individual can have a positive impact by implementing two simple solutions, read to children from an early age and support education policy reform to enable teachers to better help those students in need of extra help.

BODY

PATTERN: Monroe's Motivated Sequence

I. Inadequate ability to read contributes to the suicide rates among adolescents and adults.

A. Of the suicides that occurred in the United States in 1998, 45% were high school dropouts or at achievement levels significantly below that of their peers; of that number, 80% suffered from below average reading levels throughout their academic careers.

(Nicholas Lemann.PhD. Ready, Read! The Atlantic Monthly. Boston: Nov 1998. ProQuest 6/28/04)

1. Low reading levels contribute to low self esteem which leads to clinical depression over time and contributes significantly to feelings of worthlessness which increase incidence of suicide by 50%.

(Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998.)

B. Low reading levels increase the chance of dropout prior to completion of high school.

1. 36% of 9th graders and 46% of 10th graders were forced to repeat in 2003 in the New York School system due to the inability to read well enough to absorb information in textbooks.

(Lewin, Tamar. New York Times.B-11 4/14/04 from ProQuest 6/28/04)

2. Researchers have found that repeating a grade doesn't work, in fact, it magnifies the negative effects of the low reading levels.

(Mathews, Washington Post A-09,3/23/04, Lexis Nexis 6/28/04)

(1) Nearly 60% of 6th graders retained in that year showed no improvement over a two year period.

(2) The dropout rate for this group of 6th graders was 85% of those retained.

(3) Locally, of WOCCISD students, only 76.4% passed the TAAS Reading tests in 2002 and only 14.2% of the students from this district scored above the minimum criterion on the SAT and ACT tests with an average dropout rate of 2.3% which is equal to approximately 4 students per year from the total of 12th graders in the district.

(http://tx.rand.org/cgi-bin/annual_edtx.cgi. Texas Statistics 6/28/04)

(a) The dropout rate for WOCCISD that encompasses total enrollment is equal to a staggering 77 students per year.

3. People with low reading scores, below 6th grade level, have a 23% higher probability of becoming unemployed and when unemployed, an average of 3.4 additional months of unemployment.

(Avshalom Caspi, et al. American Sociological Review. June 1998 ProQuest 6/28/04)

4. Americans barely reach the international literacy average set by advanced democracies, according to a report issued by the Educational Testing Service after looking at the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).

(http://www.nrrf.org/essay_peterson_1102.htm. 6/29/04)

II. Possibly the easiest and best solution for low reading levels in children is to begin reading to them at an early age, as early as birth; continue throughout their formative years, through age 10; and encourage reading for pleasure in the preteen and teenage years, through age 18.

(Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children 1998)

A. It is acceptable to read aloud almost anything that is being read for pleasure or education to newborns.

1. Newborns gain linguistic skills through hearing spoken words.

2. As the child ages, choose more age appropriate material that engages and entertains their minds.

3. Volunteer at a local library, school, or church to read to preschool and younger school age children.

4. Start a reading program in your city for children through your local school or library if there is not one already in place.

5. Encourage older school age children to read aloud to you in order to instill confidence and build skill.

6. Encourage preteen and teenage children to read for pleasure and praise them often when they choose to do so.

B. Another, more global solution, is to support policy reforms that enable teachers the flexibility to intervene with those students in danger of falling behind through voting and legislation for increased funding for reading programs and teacher training. Earlier testing practices will allow teachers to take more time and identify students at risk earlier on in their academic careers by giving a preliminary picture of each students' reading acuity.

(1) Better pre school programs will ensure that all children have a better foundation in the fundamentals of reading prior to entering school.

(2) Changing the punitive consequences of low test scores to a more solution based approach will decrease teacher stress over scores and increase their ability to address concept and skill acquisition.

(3) Enabling teachers to modify or tailor testing environments to better serve the students taking the tests will help improve overall test scores

(Reading Research