Reading is hard. It takes time, stamina, effort. It can feel, sometimes, like a frustrating chore. That’s true for students reading in their first language – it gets even harder if they are learning a second one! I understand the struggle – if you’re a parent, sometimes it seems like the battle to get your kids to read just one more chapter isn’t worth it. If you’re a student yourself, it can be difficult to find the motivation to push through reading in your second language when you’re buy

              So why do we do it?

You’ll see some language schools that put an emphasis on speaking and listening, leaving the reading until later, once the students have enough of their target language to be able to read more easily. That sounds logical – until you realize that if you’re reading, you’re going to get to the point of having enough of the language faster and better. Students in classes that use novels and stories instead of grammar text books and scripted conversation learn to speak more in a shorter amount of time – they can use the new language and make themselves understood more effectively. (Cummins, 2014)

              It’s true! The more you read – in your first language, or in your new language – the faster and better you will develop your language skills – even if it really doesn’t feel like it at first. We can use texts – stories, articles, poetry – as a vehicle to focus on language forms and patterns – and those lessons are transferable when you talk about other subjects later (Bateman et al., 2020). 

              There are so many compelling reasons – all deeply rooted in scientific research – to add reading into your language learning lessons, no matter what your background is.

Expanded Exposure

              Reading gives you access to the language in a way that speaking to your teacher or your classmates just doesn’t. It expands your exposure, and suddenly, you can be experiencing English every day. When you rely on speaking, you can only practice when you go to school, right? You’ve only got one teacher. When you read, now you’ve got dozens of teachers, any time you like. You’ve just exponentially increased your time with the language. Maybe you only have class once or twice a week. Maybe you’ve only got a few hours to work on your language. Maybe it’s just not enough to get you to where you want to be. But you can read every day, immersing yourself in the language, getting the practice and repetition your brain needs to learn and retain the language.

Authenticity

              When you read novels and stories and articles – real texts – you allow yourself to experience the language authentically, the way people really use it to communicate. This is so different from language textbooks and conversation exercises – you’re going to get the slang and the idioms and the vocabulary used in context. You’re going to get stories that are interesting and characters that make you want to keep reading, and you’re won’t even notice that your brain is retaining all those new words and sentence structures. It’s going to increase your vocabulary, your sense of good sentence structure, and the way natural, communicative language sounds when it’s used instead of when it’s scripted.

Culture

              Language doesn’t exist without culture – you can’t learn any language without learning at least a little bit of the culture the language comes from. Some of us are learning a language because we’ve found ourselves living in a new country, but a lot of us are learning languages from places we can’t get to regularly yet, trying to create the language in classroom environments. So how do we place the language in its culture, if we’re not there? How do we learn the idioms and the references and the phrases that people use? We read books from those cultures. We read characters who use the language in particular ways, and it starts to make sense to us.

Multimodality

              Can you get some of these benefits from watching tv or listening to podcasts? Yes. Absolutely, and this isn’t an argument not to do those things as well. But we know that the more we increase the avenues into a subject, the better and more authentically we learn. That means, we need to use as many different modes as possible – listening, reading, writing, art, stories, articles – to understand a new concept or skill. Our brain makes connections between the spoken and written language, and giving it access to both formats will increase our ability to understand and retain the information. (Rao & Torres, 2017) So watch movies, listen to audio books – and read the language in its written form, too.

Independence and Empowerment

              This one is particularly important for children, but it will apply to older learners too. When you teach someone to read, you give them independence. If you read, you don’t have to wait for your teacher to be able to advance your learning. You aren’t limited only to the lessons and the topics that someone else has chosen for you. You suddenly have choice and control – you can choose the book you want to read. You can learn with the topics and books you find interesting. You can control your own success, because you can choose to practice and advance. For your children – think of the pride they’ll feel in themselves. Think how much more worth it the effort will feel, when they get to use the effort to dig into something they’re interested in. That empowerment drives motivation – choice and independence are key components of learning.  Reading can provide that.

              All of these compelling reasons to choose language classes that include reading as a key part of the curriculum, and you don’t have to worry about drawbacks, like too much screen time. The skills are transferable between languages – students who read in two languages get better at reading than students who only read in one. (Ni Clochasaigh et al., 2021; Morcom & Roy, 2017)

Check out Kids Get Published to see some of the great novels and stories students at Teaching With Class have been reading!

Referenced in the Article:

Bateman, B., Child, M., & Berlendis Bueno, E. (2020). A focus on language in the immersion language arts curriculum. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 8(2), 200-229. https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.18031.bat
Cummins, J. (2014). To what extent are Canadian second language policies evidence-based? Reflections on the intersections of research and policy. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00358
Morcom, L. A., & Roy, A. (2017). Learning through language: Academic success in an Indigenous language immersion kindergarten. Journal of American Indian Education, 56(2), 57. https://doi.org/10.5749/jamerindieduc.56.2.0057
Ní Chlochasaigh, K., Shiel, G., & Ó Duibhir, P. (2021). Immersion in a minority language. Issues and Perspectives on Student Diversity and Content-Based Language Education, 9(2), 279-309. https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.21003.nic
Rao, K., & Torres, C. (2016). Supporting academic and affective learning processes for English language learners with universal design for learning. TESOL Quarterly, 51(2), 460-472. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.342