Page 2 - WH June 2019

I appeal to all my teachers

and children to stop

spending hours on

WhatsApp and Facebook

instead pick a book and

READ n JOY……

T he ability to derive meaning from letters on a page or screen can be life-changing. Reading is

an activity which you may take for granted, but the ability to derive meaning from letters on a page

or screen (if e-books are your thing) can be life-changing. Here are several ways researchers say
reading books is good for you.

It develops communication skills
It helps you get a better job
According to a study published in the Journal of
A researcher at the University of Oxford ana- Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, read-
lyzed the survey responses of 17,200 people ing just one picture book to a child every day ex-
born in 1970, and determined that people who poses them to about 78,000 words a year. Re-
read books at age 16 were more likely to have a searchers have calculated that in the five years
professional or managerial career at the age of before kindergarten kids who live in literacy- rich
33. The questionnaire asked respondents about homes hear about 1.4 million more words com-
other extra-curricular activities such as sports, pared with children whose caregivers don’t read
cultural outings, computer gaming, cooking and to them. This is important for their future selves
sewing, all of which were not found to be linked because the ability to communicate well is a skill
with future career success. which employers most often cite as something
they value in prospective employees.

It’s a workout for your brain

That’s according to Ken Pugh, director of re-
search at the Yale-affiliated Haskins Labora-
tories, which studies the impact of spoken and
written language? He says that reading books
is an activity which activates all the major parts
of the brain and strengthens skills in language,
selective attention, sustained attention, cognition
and imagination. And books which tell a story
through fiction or narrative non-fiction are par-
ticularly useful for building imagination and think-
ing ability which other kinds of reading can’t.

WIDENING HORIZON | JUNE 2019 2