Dear Editor,

I have been teaching high school English in the public school system for 29 years and have witnessed the decline in expository writing skills cited in your article "2 R's Left in High School" (Monday, May 19, 2003). I would like to add an "R," however. Part of the reason writing is so wretched is that reading is nearly non-existent. Outside of a few core novels, most students do little to no reading in high school, certainly not the texts in their content area classes. I know because I have asked them and surveyed them. Most classes are entirely oral experiences for students. That is, teaching is talking and learning is listening.

This oral education has a profound effect on writing skills, which are partly the result of deep and broad reading. Such reading embeds sentence patterns and is the primary vehicle for vocabulary acquisition. Years ago I could read long papers, making one to two marginal notations on each page. Now, virtually every sentence is flawed. No teacher can repair every sentence on every page. Even some bright students with high test scores are virtually disabled at expository communication.

The textbooks themselves are part of the problem; many teachers simply ignore them or teach around them. They are filled with color and graphical content, icons and discontinuous textboxes. They look like no other book in the world. They mimic web pages. Open them and take a look.

Ask your teenage sons and daughters, or your neighbors' children, how much reading they are doing in their content area texts. Be prepared for the troubling answers.

Jack Farrell
Newbury Park High School
Newbury Park, California