Did your reading skills suffer from your JW experience? (page 2)

daystar

rwagoner

I find myself, like above, using way too many "..." continuations in my writing and I tend to be a bit wordy when its not needed.

D'oh! Yes, I tend to be verbose as well.

Nosferatu

I can't see why it affected your ability to read.

Well, looking back on it, after I was beaten for something I did, my mother would pull out the YPA, YY, or Great Teacher book, make me sit there for an hour, follow along, and get my "spiritual" discipline. As if the beating wasn't enough.

My mother would say, "So, we're going to read our favorite chapter, Obedience Protects You". We went over that goddam chapter so many friggin times. I hated it.

Terry

In my opinion, the writing style of the Watchtower publications is among the worst possible.

If you can read anything straight through written by the Bethel writing committee you can read War and Peace in Russian!

What might make it difficult to read secular books after leaving the organization is having had your rational mind destroyed by the spoonfeeding of the Governing Body.

I hated the word "happifying" which old man Franz loved to use.

Gahhhh!

stillajwexelder

No my reading skils are enhanced because of being a JW - gave many, many bible readings in public. Gave many many Watchtower readings in public. read at Bookstudy with CO etc. Read a huge amount of literature on a regular basis. All this enhanced my reading skills

beezknees

i must say that is one good thing i feel came from the wbts i was able to read very young and have always been a competent reader so didn't affect me in that way... just in numerous other ways!

Reefton Jack

If anything, I think that my reading skills were enhanced by being a JW.

They certainly did not suffer in any way: - I was an avid reader before ever meeting up with the JWs, and I remained an avid reader afterwards (That was actually my undoing, I had to read anything I could get my hands on, including the stuff put out by the WTS).

I agree with others here who note that ones writings skills tend to suffer from reading a diet of largely WTS written material. Particularly during the time of FW Franz, these were badly written.

As my work (nearly said "Secular Work" - old habits die hard!) involves much report writing, I have had to de-train myself into a clear but concise writing style.

My thoughts anyway,

Jack.

SickofLies

I read two or three books a week, that on top of all my reading for school. When I did read the Watchtowers I would find them very annoying, I don't understand the pratice of just quoting scriptures all the time, who was to spend 20 minutes looking up damn scriptures. If your going to write an article on something and you have useful information from another source material you think they should know you should quote from the material then site it! In They are at about an 8th grade reading level and their grammer and sentence structure is suspect. They are also extremely guilty of 'quote mining', ie, taking a sentence of context and using it as an authoritve source and only looking at things from one side. This is a horrible way to argue and think about issues. They do their readers a great diservice by this, that why they must discourage education if a person learns how articles are suppose to be written or learns that issues aren't really as one sides as the WTS makes out then they will quickly lose faith.

Quentin

Reading no...writting yes...

tetrapod.sapien

(double post)

tetrapod.sapien

no, i always read a lot, even as a witness. if what i read conflicted with the wts, the only way i would keep reading is if it could be interpreted as metaphorical too. which explains why i avoided skeptical like the devil plague. it was specific. and that's not good for a wit.

but i know many a wit i grew up with who stopped reading when grade 12 ended. the ones who kept going aren't really found anywhere "in there" anymore.

ts

Did your reading skills suffer from your JW experience?

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