READING HABITS IN STUDENTS

Reading Is The Gateway To Success In Education.

Reading creates a remarkable experience that unlocks the gate of success for a student. Reading habit is that the person carries out the reading activity continuously and regularly throughout life.  It is an important skill for learners to be able to cope with the advancing world. Reading is a conscious literacy process that influences the extent and accuracy of information as well as attitudes, beliefs, and judgment of a reader.

Why is reading so important for students?

Reading is important because it develops students’ minds and gives excessive knowledge and lessons of life. It helps students understand the world around them better. It keeps their mind active and enhances their creative ability, Communication Skills, Reading improves their vocabulary and develops communication skills. It helps children learn to make sense not only of the world around them but also people, building social-emotional skills and of course, imagination. “Reading exposes them to other styles, other voices, other forms, and other genres of writing.

Types Of Reading:   4 Kinds Of Reading Techniques are:

1. Skimming: It means going through the text to grasp the main idea. For example, read the table of contents or chapter overview to learn the main divisions of ideas.

2. Scanning:-  Here, the reader quickly scuttles across sentences to get a particular piece of information.  For example when looking up a word in a dictionary, or a  contact name or phone number of your phone directory, etc.

3. Intensive Reading:- The meaning of intensive reading is to read with full concentration and complete focus. It involves learners reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks. Examples of intensive reading are: 

Short stories, poetry with layers of meaning, Business reports packed with important information, numbers, and data, Articles or editorials in magazines, blog posts on various topics ranging from science and technology to art and culture.

4. Extensive: Extensive reading involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills. Examples of extensive reading are magazines, novels, and comic books,  stories, etc.

How can we encourage our children to develop good reading habits?

There are a number of ways that parents and teachers can help foster children’s love of learning.

Make reading enjoyable:

There are a variety of books on the market that are tailored to different age ranges. Choose pop-up books or other creatively published texts and if you are reading to your children you can vary your tone of voice to maintain their interest.

Use drama
Children love nothing more than acting and trying out different roles. If your child is a reluctant reader then encouraging them to play a character from a fictional tale, complete with dialogue, may help to motivate them to read a text.

Take them to the local library
Local libraries are a treasure of books for young children, where they will get various kinds of books, such as comic books, short stories, cartoon books, and they can select according to their age. Being surrounded by other children who love reading may be just the thing to improve learning interest. Comic books may also stimulate their interest in reading.

Class Library

Create class libraries in primary education. The books that need to be read primarily in the classroom should be added to the clipboard and provide students a meeting with books.  If possible, teachers arrange reading hours in the classroom, if not available in the school library, and prepare the environment for the children to read their own selected resources.

In the school

In the school, they create a wall – newspaper that tells the importance of reading books, and the written question about the books they read. In school meetings, teachers can inform parents about what they should do to help students learn to read. Make sure that students should not read the same kind of novels, stories. They must include a biography of great persons, travel, motivational stories of great persons, stories of animals, real-life blogs of animals, etc are giving them the habit of interest to readers. 

Read each night, Reading books together as part of a child’s night-time routine will ensure that children associate reading with relaxation.

Let them read as Per Their Interest.

Never force to read a book. That can’t enjoy children. Motivate them to read. You can help them to select good books. Ask them about their interest, when you select books it may be comic or animal stories, it will improve their interest because children like animals and their stories.

Benefits of Good Reading Habits

1. Good reading habits increase students’ reading skills.

2. Reading habits widen students’ experience and knowledge.

3. Good reading habits develop reading speed, fluency, vocabulary, general knowledge, and academic achievements.

4. All the researches carried out, the children who earned early reading habits vocabulary, and ability to think are increasing, it is stated that creative intelligence, listening ability develops. It is an important skill that people have to earn in order to make them enjoy this activity.

5. Improving communication skills: As children learn to read, their vocabulary expands and they gain a greater understanding of the meaning of words. This enables a child to be more expressive when they speak, and to use a broad range of words to share what they’re thinking about. Children can also learn how to communicate with others through the dialogue they read in their books. The wonderful thing about stories is they provide children with tools to use in their own lives, whether this is learning how to communicate with their friends or with other people they meet. Books can also teach etiquette, politeness, and friendliness in conversation.

5. Developing Confidence and Independence: As a child’s reading skills develop, they in turn grow in confidence and independence as they tackle unknown words on their own. Once they have a base knowledge of words, spelling, pronunciation, and grammar, they will feel more confident to learn new vocabulary alone using the knowledge they have previously acquired.

6. Enabling achievement in other subjects: If a child can read a book they are also able to read maths problems, questions in tests, and any other text they may face at school and outside. Strong reading skills, the ability to understand a paragraph of text, and a good grasp of grammar and punctuation help young children to excel across the board, and they face one less hurdle when completing any school work.

7. Help develop a range of academic skills: As a young listener, your child will observe your storytelling skills and learn to mimic these as their own reading ability develops. They will learn how to captivate an audience using tone, accents, acting, dramatic pauses, etc., as well as the components of effective storytelling like chronology and attention to detail

8. Character development: Storytelling is fundamentally about sharing – sharing plots, but more importantly sharing emotions and experiences. It is a great social activity that strengthens relationships and forges memories.

9. Imagination will develop or Creative growth:

Listening to stories will enrich their imagination. Unlike a picture book where images are prescribed, each listener has their own unique response to a story. Storytelling offers this imaginative freedom like no other medium. This enhanced creativity will filter through into role-plays children perform, games they play, pictures they draw, etc. making them more thoughtful and intricate.

Whether a child is giving their own narrative or listening to a story, through storytelling they are speaking, listening, and thinking, all wrapped up in a fun family activity.

Will get wide knowledge: Children’s books may be predominately picture-based and contain only a small amount of words, however, the information they contain is invaluable to a child’s development. These books can teach young children important lessons about family, friendship, growing up, and much more. They often share information about nature, animals, other cultures, and the world. Without realizing it, the young reader is broadening their knowledge by reading about the fictional characters within their stories; a life lesson can be learned from any book, regardless of the word count.

Vasantha. K.P