My students sometimes complain about their outside reading assignments.  This mystifies me, because virtually ALL of their outside reading is self-selected!  They have to read for a certain number of minutes each week, but THEY choose what they read!  I often suggest that they read a novel, but they are free to read anything as long as it is interesting and comprehensible.  If they like it and they can understand it, they can read it. If they are reading in the target language, it counts.

So when a student complains about reading I am stumped.  You know what they say:  They say that what they read was boring.  But here’s the thing again, they can choose anything they want to read in the TL.  They can go where their interests lead them.  They can choose fiction or non-fiction, literally anything:  children’s stories, legends, news.  They can follow their interests wherever they take them.  They can choose from our considerable and growing classroom library, the school library, the public library, a nearby book store, or read online.  I give them scores of on-line resources at many different levels and on many different topics.  There are virtually no limits on what they can read.  I tell them explicitly, week after week, “If you don’t like it, or can’t understand it, put it down and read something else.”

So I don’t get it.  They chose to read it, but they were bored with it.  When someone says something like that, I enjoy telling this joke (in the target language, of course—can’t pass up an opportunity for interesting comprehensible input!):

There are three workers on a construction crew that is building a skyscraper. When they sit down to eat lunch, the first worker opens his lunch box and says, “Tuna fish again!  I can’t stand it anymore!  If I get one more tuna fish sandwich, I’m going to jump off of this building!”

The second worker looks in his lunch and says, “Baloney again!  I can’t stand it anymore either!  If I get a baloney sandwich tomorrow, I’m going to jump off of this building too!”

The third worker opens his lunch and say, “Another peanut butter sandwich!  I can’t stand it anymore either!  If I get a peanut butter sandwich tomorrow, I’m going to jump off of this building too!”

The next day they all sit down high up on the skyscraper and look into their lunches again.  The first worker gets out his lunch and looks at it.  It is a tuna fish sandwich, so he jumps off of the building.

The second worker looks in his lunch.  He sees a baloney sandwich, so he jumps off of the building too.

The third worker looks in his lunch.  It’s a peanut butter sandwich, so he jumps off of the building too.

A few days later at the funeral the wives of the three workers are talking to one another.  The wife of the first worker says, “If I had known that he hated it so much, I wouldn’t have made him a tuna fish sandwich every day!”

The wife of the second man says, “If I had know that he hated it so much, I wouldn’t have made him a baloney sandwich every day either!

They both look at the wife of the third man.  She says, “Don’t look at me!  He always made his own lunch!”

Students “pack their own lunches.”  They are in charge of their own reading.  They choose what they want to read.  They are not forced to read something boring.

I realize that, “When people are bored, it is primarily with themselves (Eric Hoffer),” but this is too good of a teaching opportunity to waste.  They are responsible for their own choices.

So when students sabotage their own grade (and even worse, sabotage their own education) by not reading and then claim that they just can’t read because everything that they read is soooo boring, remind them of the joke:  “Don’t be like the third worker.”