There are reasons why your English teacher yowled about reading so much
They want you to read because so much language development hinges on it.
It’s not a grimy recruitment ploy to get more warm bodies to our diminishing book clubs. English teachers do go on about reading. Most meetings between language educators and parents end up with a dialogue something like this:
‘[Delightful Child’s Name] isn’t reading enough at home. I can see it in their writing.’
‘Yes! I tell you, [Delightful Teacher’s Title and Surname], I don’t know where it comes from. I’m such an avid reader myself!’
Now, whether all the parents who assured me they were readers actually were, or just trying to look good when meeting with a representative of the one profession that triggers memories of adolescence, I don’t know, but there are good reasons why reading outside class is so critical in language subjects.
I taught English Home Language for more than a decade. I also studied applied linguistics at postgraduate level, so I’ve seen the impact that reading has on language development and academics.
1. Reading allows for incidental vocabulary acquisition
Something quite magical happens when your brain encounters language – whether through listening or reading. You don’t have to think about it consciously, but the mind actually acquires vocabulary just from exposure to text. Linguists call this incidental vocabulary acquisition. English teachers know it works.
Students who read independently at home, especially those who read a wide range of texts (different genres of fiction, levels of language, types of nonfiction writing, including opinion pieces), show up in class with a much broader, more sophisticated vocabulary. They seem to locate the right words to express their ideas quickly. They can even make subtle adjustments to their diction (choosing between two similar but not equal words) to get their meaning just right. They have lexical options.
When I was a teacher, I could recognize non-reading students easily. They repeated themselves. Their words seemed fuzzy and awkward.
What I love about reading is that vocabulary will come unconsciously. There is a role for consciously looking up unfamiliar words, yes, but the incidental part is what really enriches vocabulary.
2. Reading broadens stylistic repertoire
Having impressive vocabulary is only part of writing and speaking well. You have to know how to put words together. This is called style. Readers expose their minds to the many ways that words can be strung together in different tones, registers, voices, contexts and needs. When they need to write, they have a repertoire of styles at their disposal.
Non-readers tend to write woodenly. Every sentence uses the same structure (often, compound sentences with clause after clause after clause, ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ for page after page after page; and everything reads like a group chat).
3. Reading sharpens deep analytical skills
Students who read extensively at home tend to read faster and more efficiently than their peers, but they also see beyond literal meaning more easily. They’re exposed to so much good text and so many modes of persuasion that their minds start to detect subtle tonal shifts, problematic positioning, bias, propagandistic leanings and even the writer’s agenda. This makes them more critical and aware in the world, especially when they engage with politicized texts.
It’s actually quite difficult to teach students how to read more deeply. It can be modelled and that’s what English teachers do, but real reading prowess comes from deep and wide of reading.
4. Reading brings world knowledge to word knowledge
Some more linguistics jargon for you: scholars distinguish between a person’s word knowledge (their vocabulary and understanding of how words work in language) and their world knowledge (their general understanding of the world, not just factually but emotionally and contextually).
We’ve already covered how reading expands your word knowledge through incidental vocabulary acquisition and expansion of stylistic range. What reading also does is challenge your assumptions about the world. You learn how systems work, how different people interface with those structures, how humans across time and space think and act and feel and interact and do life, and how all of that describes the world as it is.
That knowledge isn’t just important for general knowledge quizzes or street smarts. So much information is hidden behind language. You need word knowledge to unlock the meaning of world knowledge. But you also need world knowledge to give background and nuanced interpretation to words.
Students who read a lot have both knowledges. They become smarter across the full gamut of human intelligence.
5. Readers are more empathic
This applies especially to fiction readers. Reading is one of the most empathic acts in human culture. It forces us to think through and almost embody the worlds and lives of other characters. When those characters are utterly different from us and our own lived experiences, reading compels us to empathize and see humanity in minds unusual to our own.
This is partly why English teachers keep prescribing literary fiction – dramatic stories with sometimes horrific plot lines. It’s true that those books are often the finest examples of artful language, but they make you feel for the marginalized and antagonized and othered. It’s radical. It’s political. It can be life-changing – if you let it be.
If you find yourself hearing your English teacher poke at your conscience again, reminding you to read more, or if you’re a parent sitting again with your child’s English teacher, it can be so important to recognize how much meaning and baggage is behind the educator’s simple injunction to read more.