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 culture in general, and for the future of literature itself.

Both the reading and the lecture talk about decreasing rate of reading literature, novels, plays, and poems. The reading brings up three different points to argue that the fact that people read less than before in these fields is a catastrophic phenomenon for readers and culture. However, the lecture refutes each of author’s notions. First, the article argues that due to the sharp decline in reading literature books, people would lack intellectual stimulation. The lecturer opposes this point by discussing the books of history, science and political analysis that can exercise imagination and are creative and well-written as literature does. Therefore reading books other than literature doesn’t mean that they aren’t good. Second, the reading claims that changing the time that already had been spent on reading literature to worthless activities like watching TV programs is worse than not reading. The professor refutes this point by saying that nowadays culture has changed and represents in other forms. Thus, music and movie aren’t a waste of time and doesn’t mean collapse of culture but just other ways of expression. Third, the reading article posits that the regrettable side of diminishing rate of studying literature is coinsiding with the age of gifted writers. The professor disputes this statement by saying that readers’ support shortage is a result of author’s fault not readers consequently they shouldn’t be criticized since contemporary literature is hard to understand even for readers of previous decades.