Read for Pleasure
Have you been telling yourself you would like to read more? How does 100 books a year sound? Perhaps that sounds like an impossible goal. However, I will show you not only is it possible, but you can even do so with a busy schedule! The first step? Reading for pleasure.
J.K. Rowling once said, “If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” Many of us may have grown a distaste for reading from the fact that in school we were expected to read books that many of us didn’t have an interest in. For example, the study “Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys” found that in one high school, students had found at least 30 different strategies for making the teacher think they were reading a book that was assigned to them (even students in honors and AP classes) rather than just read the material that was assigned to them. In many cases, we may have learned more about how to cheat than how to read.
So why find books that we actually want to read? Research has established that reading for pleasure is positively associated with not only reading achievement, but it also extends to an increase in our writing ability, comprehension, vocabulary development, positive attitudes about reading, self-confidence in reading, and pleasure reading in later life. (Reading for pleasure: A research review – Lark, C. & Rumbold)
This is something I’ve seen firsthand as well. With a previous 8th grade class I had worked with, many of the students started out the year reading at a 3rd grade level. 6 months into the school year, those same students were reading at or above their grade level. Much of that can be attributed to reading for pleasure. In fact, there was one student that had recommended to me a 7-book series that he enjoyed so much, he read the whole series in a month. Another student was telling me that he had found a series he liked so much he was reading over a hundred pages a day!
Would you like to read more? Clearly the first step is to simply find a book that we would enjoy. Rather than picking a book out of obligation, we should find a book that we are genuinely excited to read, regardless of what it is about. Just ask yourself, what book do you think you would really enjoy?
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