EFFECTIVE READING: 1.1

EFFECTIVE READING: 1.1
The Importance of Reading: Why is the Habit of Reading Important?

The Importance of Reading is difficult to express in words but can experienced by people from all walks of life. With the advent of modern technology, the Ipod and the X-box have probably overtaken the humble Hardy Boys or Tom Sawyer in managing to catch the attention of the young kids. Parents and others would however do well to inculcate the habit of reading in children from a very young age and that will prove to be in good stead for the years to come.

Although one can take to reading at any age, I have seen that it is much easier to begin at a young age and develop a love and passion for reading rather than forcing oneself to indulge in this at a later age in life. Reading has a host of benefits - tangible and intangible and should in fact become a habit as common as bathing or eating.

The Importance of Reading - Reason #1

Reading can make you Smarter

Yes. Reading is a very active state exercise for your mind as opposed to watching TV or listening to music. Reading forces your brain cells to engage in activity as you paint a vivid image in your mind about the story that you are reading. This is what is most fascinating for me and also why I am always scared of watching a movie about a book that I have read. As the imagination in my head could be totally different from that depicted in the movie.

Your Brain is also a muscle which must be worked on a regular basis as this will keep your mental faculties constantly engaged and thus keep you sharper and smarter.

The Importance of Reading - Reason #2

Reading can improve your Vocabulary and Language Skills

If you are a regular reader, you are bound to come across the works of various authors and will be exposed to several different literary styles. You will keep on learning new words, phrases, idioms and learn to use them in several different ways as well.

One handy tip for youngsters - Keep a dictionary handy. If you come across a new word you didn't know about, look it up immediately in the dictionary. From my own personal experience I can tell you that this has done wonders for my vocabulary and I loved interacting with new words every day and with each new book that I read.

Keep reading new books, new genres, fiction, non-fiction, etc. Give yourself some variety and I am sure that you will pick up some new words each day.

The Importance of Reading - Reason #3

Reading makes you Knowledgeable

Okay this one's a no brainer. Reading does make you knowledgeable. The more you read, the diverse books you read, each time you are adding valuable pieces of knowledge to your mental database.

Everyone knows how important it is to be knowledgeable to succeed in any area of life that you choose. It will perhaps be less surprising to learn that the most successful people in many walks of life would be the persons who are the most well read.

Noble Peace Prize winner and former President of Israel - Shimon Peres very wisely said ~

Your best friends are not only human beings, but books. To read books is like going to swim in a sea of wisdom, endlessly fascinating. And there are so many wise people all over the world, throughout history, and you can have it free, for nothing. And reading must become a daily habit. It's not that you can read once a week. I read day in and day out, and you make acquaintances with books. After a few pages, you know with whom you are dealing. Serious, unserious, far-sighted, repetitive.

The Importance of Reading - Reason#4

Reading boosts Creativity

What is Creativity - It's the ability to identify unusual or novel connections to a given set of facts. Creativity requires the individual to be knowledgeable in several areas to be able to make these connections.

Creative individuals are generally masters in their area of expertise and very good readers and thus knowledgeable about several different aspects. This constant reading and ability to think out of the box helps them to see patterns, novel connections or new solutions where others are not able to relate.

The author was once on his way to a presentation about Innovative Tax Planning Strategies and was struggling to find a good opening anecdote. While on his way he dug into his stack of magazines that he usually carried and began to flip through "The Economist" magazine. He read a story about an unusual hoarding along a highway in California. The hoarding just had a mathematical formula with the words ".com" at the end suggesting that the answer to the formula would probably lead to some website.

Persons who solved the formula got something like a 158302890.com (just an example) and when they landed on the website, they saw an even harder mathematical formula. A privileged few who managed to crack that were led to another website which just said.

"Google welcomes you to submit your resumes"

Fantastic. The point here was not only did he read something fantastic, it also gave a mind a great boost, he used the "Innovation" connection and used it as an opening anecdote for his presentation.

Thus It is not always necessary to know what you will do with your reading. The dots will connect at sometime in the future and will give you innovative and creative solutions. Keep reading. You will definitely be more creative in whatever area of life you choose to excel.

Other Benefits

Good readers 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 employed in. And they can do it quickly!

Educational researchers have also found a strong correlation between reading and vocabulary knowledge. In other words, students who have a large vocabulary are usually good readers. This is not very surprising, since the best way to acquire a large vocabulary is to read extensively, and if you read extensively you are likely to be or become a good reader!

The graphic below illustrates the interdependence of vocabulary, 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.

Start Reading Today. So these were the 5 major reasons to start reading today but it is sure you would find many more reasons to do so. Love reading and then the passion of reading will automatically take over. Once it becomes a habit and something that you love and you are crazy about, it will remain for a lifetime. Remembers, Readers are the Leaders !

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