TPO-11 - Integrated Writing Task A recent study reveals that people especially young people are reading far less literature, novels, plays, and poems, than they used to. This is troubling because the trend has unfortunate effects for the reading public, for v.2

The reading states that people are reading less literature than they used to, so this trend has some negative effects for the reading public, for culture in general, and then it provides three reasons of support. Meanwhile, the lecturer casts serious doubts on this claim by presenting some counter-arguments and examples. She clearly believes that none of these reasons are practical for the issue and refutes all of them. To begin with, the reading declares that nothing can provide the intellectual stimulation that literature does. The lecturer, however, disagrees and asserts that for encouraging the imagination, there is no need to study literature. That is to say, other forms of the writings like science, political analysis can also stimulate the imagination. Second, although the reading passage claims that the level of the culture will be lowered by watching the trivial forms than reading literature, the lecturer makes the argument that there are plenty of other materials like music and movies that can benefit people. She states that the culture has changed to other forms and in some cases they may have more cultural influences than the books have. Third, in contrast to the reading passage statement claiming that the standards and the audience have been affected in a negative trend because of not having good literature, the lecturer refutes and then states that it is the author' s fault. She believes that authors tend to write complex contents, and thus readers cannot understand their works appropriately.