Why is Reading So Important?

Regular reading for pleasure can enhance student performance in literacy, as well as support their growth and attainment across their academic studies.

How does regular reading influence literacy?

So much of what we do in everyday life involves written or verbal exchanges that rely on our command of literacy skills. Whether we are texting a friend, reading a bus timetable, or trying to convince a prospective employer to offer us a job, we are drawing on our literacy skills. We want students to have strong literacy skills, which will influence their academic performance across the curriculum, as well as help them to achieve their vocational and social goals.

Literacy skills also influence our ability to understand vital public health messages, which are important for securing both individual and societal health and wellbeing. Literacy skills also help us to understand financial arrangements at banks and other institutions, something that can have lifelong implications.

Students who read more frequently can enjoy a range of literacy benefits. Regular readers will be exposed to far greater vocabulary than their non-reader peers, and more frequent reading for pleasure, particularly of books, is related to better reading comprehension.

Like many other skills in life, literacy is a skill that we lose if we do not use it. While New Zealand students have, on average, reading literacy levels that are higher than the international average, students’ reading literacy levels have declined over time.

The benefits of regular reading for pleasure extend beyond literacy and improved performance in other learning areas. Researchers have found that reading fiction can build social skills such as empathy. Regular reading for pleasure can also offer cognitive and behavioural benefits, building the stamina needed to apply sustained attention to completing complex tasks. This ability is a beneficial life skill that can help students focus, and we cannot take for granted that young people have opportunities to develop their cognitive stamina in an increasingly digital world.

Reading can also support wellbeing. It can provide a pleasurable and immersive escape from stressors. Young people have described using reading for the purposes of regulating their emotions and coping with challenging times.

Should they just read anything?

Young people are reading all the time, consuming diverse texts from YouTube and comments on social media posts to Discord messages. This might lead to questions about why it is important to encourage them to read more, if they are already reading. However, research suggests that when it comes to literacy benefit, not all reading is equal. The reading of fiction books is most closely associated with literacy benefits, unlike magazines, text messages, emails, newspapers and comics. There is also a growing body ok research indicating the reading from a printed page, i.e. a proper book, results in greater retention of information than reading from a screen.

Of course, students can benefit from reading a range of text types. For example, reading a non-fiction book on depression can support students’ health literacy both at and beyond school, reading translated graphic novels can build cultural understandings, and reading the comments on Booktok can connect young people with book recommendations. However, if we are encouraging teens to read for literacy benefit, it is important that fiction books that match their interests be part of their literary diet.

The role of parents

Research suggests parents can play a powerful literacy supportive role in the teen years, and that teens may look to their parents for encouragement and recommendations. Supportive parents respond to their child’s individual taste and interests. Rather than just expecting their children to read, they model keen reading themselves. They also provide recommendations for their children, and facilitate access to books. Parents do not have to be highly literate to be positive influences themselves. Parents who are struggling readers, but who are seen to prioritise reading, can make a powerful difference.

This summary is from an article (How to encourage teens to read) published by The Education Hub. "The Education Hub was launched in 2017 with a mission to bridge the gap between research and practice in education in order to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for children and young people. Our work is focused on providing early childhood and school teachers and leaders with access to high quality, reliable, and practical evidence from both research and practice to support them to enact meaningful change in their contexts of practice."