The importance of reading

Introduction

Reading is an essential language skill. Students who have limited reading ability not only have a smaller vocabulary and therefore experience more trouble learning English quickly. But they also may do poorly in the other school subjects that require a lot of reading, such as science and geography.

Reading and vocabulary development

The following graphic shows the relationship between reading and vocabulary development.

In other words, the best way to acquire a large vocabulary is to read extensively. And if you read extensively you are likely to become a good reader.

Reading for academic success

Apart from learning vocabulary, there is another important reason why ESL students should become regular readers.

Educational researchers have found that @ there is a strong correlation between reading and academic success. ~ In other words, a student who is a good reader is more likely to do well in school and pass exams than a student who is a weak reader.

The following diagram adds academic success to the reading/vocabulary development cycle.

Academic success is achieved by good readers who can understand the individual sentences and the organizational structure of a piece of writing. They can comprehend ideas, follow arguments, and detect implications.

They know most of the words in the text already, but they can also determine the meaning of many of the unfamiliar words from the context. Failing this, they can use their dictionary effectively to do so.

In summary, good readers can extract from the writing what is important for the particular task they are doing. And they can do it quickly!

Encourage your child to read

I have outlined above the value of reading for the development of English, particularly vocabulary, and for academic success. It is important, therefore, to encourage your child to read at home. Reading non-fiction in English is probably the most useful type of reading for academic success. But it is good if your child also reads interesting and enjoyable fiction.

Perhaps even more important is to encourage your child to read in his own language too. Elsewhere on the Parents site is more information about the importance of the mother tongue.

You might also be interested to read the advice I give to students about how to be a better reader.

References

Here is a quote from an educational researcher that emphasises the correlation between reading ability and academic success

"Research findings in applied linguistics and reading research consistently show a strong correlation between reading proficiency and academic success at all ages, from the primary school right through to university level: students who read a lot and who understand what they read usually attain good grades." Pretorius, E.   [ Source ]

Here is a brief video on the same topic.