The Benefits of Reading for Fun

An interesting article:

https://www.edutopia.org/article/benefits-reading-fun

"The Benefits of Reading for Fun: There’s a powerful academic impact, new research reveals, when students are voracious, voluntary readers."

"In a new study, Sandra Martin-Chang and her colleagues found significant differences between students who read for pleasure outside of class and those who primarily read books to satisfy school assignments. Not only was there a powerful link between reading for fun and stronger language skills, but students who disliked reading frequently attributed their negative outlook to experiences they had in classrooms."

“We found that often children’s experience in elementary school is far more positive, and then it drops in high school,” said Martin-Chang. While children in kindergarten and early elementary school tend to read storybooks as they develop their reading skills, by high school, the nature of reading changes as students are expected to read a steady diet of more challenging, information-rich texts. Somewhere during that transition, a love of reading seems to fade."

"In the study, 35 percent of students pinpointed a specific reason: They didn’t enjoy reading because “being asked to analyze books in high school made it less pleasurable.”

"We need to take reading for fun as seriously as we take academic reading, if we’re going to sustain voluntary reading through middle school and high school, and into adulthood."