VI. Fill the gaps with the correct prepositions.

The video wave has swept too far. It bears a large responsibility …..(1) the declining interest …..(2) reading among the young. If we don't do something to stem the tide, the reading impulse will soon be drowned.

The time-honoured way of improving reading is …..(3) reading fiction. Everyone, psychologists tell us, needs stories. Cavemen told them …..(4) their fires. Mythologies and folk stories have been passed …..(5) generations for centuries. Most of us are literate and …..(6) theory our fictional needs could be satisfied by reading.

But it's not so. Today's generation …..(7) average and below average school children rely …..(8) video, television and film. While many of these offerings may be harmless …..(9) themselves, they do nothing to build …..(10) reading skills. They are replacing the consolidatory work which turns halting mechanical reading …..(11) the real thing. If some of the hours children spend watching television were devoted …..(12) reading, the population would be better educated.

Watching a story is a totally passive pastime. Someone else has made all the decisions …..(13) casting, set, clothing, facial expressions, tone and so on. Reading a story is an active partnership between writer and reader. Ideas are sketched and the mind of the reader creates the rest.

Why is dramatized fiction usurping the written kind? It is because children whose reading is hesitant cannot readily identify and enjoy the plot. Watching something is easier. This is leading …..(14) a generation whose mental processes are too stultified. The problem is that many children read very slowly. I worry, for instance, about children who carry the same 100-word book …..(15) with them …..(16) a fortnight. I meet them daily. They conscientiously decode a page or two in a class and about the same again …..(17) homework. It is hardly surprising that such children then declare that they find reading boring and prefer to watch television. Their difficulty is not reading the words − it is interpreting them. They need to be able to read fast enough to feed the mind's hunger …..(18) a story.

That means practice. Only …..(19) reading daily will a child become a strong and independent reader. Parents need to be convinced …..(20) the importance of preventing their children …..(21) wasting their hours …..(22) inert viewing. Without the television the child is likely to turn …..(23) books for entertainment.

I used to think that filmed versions of enjoyable books were a spur …..(24) reading. I have changed my mind. Visual images drown the imagination. A dramatization, seen once, can spoil your reading for ever. Dramatized fiction is the literary equivalent of empty calories. It replaces the appetite …..(25) real food. Children must have a nutritionally balanced reading diet.