the benefits of reading book essay

Essay on Benefits of Reading (1300 Words)

Reading helps our minds grow in ways that we can’t be taught in school or at home. No one is born with an innate love of reading, but everyone has the capacity for literacy, reading, and writing.

Essay on Benefits of Reading

1 – what is reading.

For most people, it’s hard to imagine life without reading. However, not everyone can read. Around 15% of the world’s population has some form of learning disability that prevents them from being able to read. This means that they cannot interpret words and sentences on paper or digital screens.

2 – Importance of reading

The first thing to know about reading is that it’s not something that you should force your students to do. Reading should be something you engage them in, not something you force them to do.

Let them enjoy reading for what it is — something enjoyable and entertaining at the same time. Engaging students will help them get more out of reading and will set the stage for future academic success.

It’s important to read. It’s not some new-fangled, modern idea that everyone is championing, but rather a human instinct that has been with us since the beginning of time. Books are more than just storytellers — they offer understanding and insight into different cultures, languages, ages, genders, classes, ideologies.

3 – The benefits of reading

Reading is the best way to learn new things, broaden your knowledge, and find inspiration. It also stimulates your brain.

Reading can help you keep your mind sharp and be in control of it. Reading in different genres helps you develop different skills in different ways.

Reading helps people to become better thinkers and is the key to unlocking people’s minds.

4 – How to develop reading habit

Binge on your favorite authors. Choose a genre that you’re interested in and read everything written by that author. Then find another author and binge on their books as well. Go back to the beginning of that author’s series and read all of the books in that series.

Read also: How to avoid distractions while reading?

5 – Tips for Better Reading

Here are some tips for better reading:-

6 – How to read more

Read also: Reading skills (types and strategies)

7 – Conclusion

Reading is something that everyone should do, so be sure to give it a try. There is no other form of education or experience that will give you more life knowledge than reading.

Importance of Reading Essay

500+ words essay on reading.

Reading is a key to learning. It’s a skill that everyone should develop in their life. The ability to read enables us to discover new facts and opens the door to a new world of ideas, stories and opportunities. We can gather ample information and use it in the right direction to perform various tasks in our life. The habit of reading also increases our knowledge and makes us more intellectual and sensible. With the help of this essay on the Importance of Reading, we will help you know the benefits of reading and its various advantages in our life. Students must go through this essay in detail, as it will help them to create their own essay based on this topic.

Importance of Reading

Reading is one of the best hobbies that one can have. It’s fun to read different types of books. By reading the books, we get to know the people of different areas around the world, different cultures, traditions and much more. There is so much to explore by reading different books. They are the abundance of knowledge and are best friends of human beings. We get to know about every field and area by reading books related to it. There are various types of books available in the market, such as science and technology books, fictitious books, cultural books, historical events and wars related books etc. Also, there are many magazines and novels which people can read anytime and anywhere while travelling to utilise their time effectively.

Benefits of Reading for Students

Reading plays an important role in academics and has an impactful influence on learning. Researchers have highlighted the value of developing reading skills and the benefits of reading to children at an early age. Children who cannot read well at the end of primary school are less likely to succeed in secondary school and, in adulthood, are likely to earn less than their peers. Therefore, the focus is given to encouraging students to develop reading habits.

Reading is an indispensable skill. It is fundamentally interrelated to the process of education and to students achieving educational success. Reading helps students to learn how to use language to make sense of words. It improves their vocabulary, information-processing skills and comprehension. Discussions generated by reading in the classroom can be used to encourage students to construct meanings and connect ideas and experiences across texts. They can use their knowledge to clear their doubts and understand the topic in a better way. The development of good reading habits and skills improves students’ ability to write.

In today’s world of the modern age and digital era, people can easily access resources online for reading. The online books and availability of ebooks in the form of pdf have made reading much easier. So, everyone should build this habit of reading and devote at least 30 minutes daily. If someone is a beginner, then they can start reading the books based on the area of their interest. By doing so, they will gradually build up a habit of reading and start enjoying it.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Importance of Reading Essay

What is the importance of reading.

1. Improves general knowledge 2. Expands attention span/vocabulary 3. Helps in focusing better 4. Enhances language proficiency

What is the power of reading?

1. Develop inference 2. Improves comprehension skills 3. Cohesive learning 4. Broadens knowledge of various topics

How can reading change a student’s life?

1. Empathy towards others 2. Acquisition of qualities like kindness, courtesy

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Benefits of Reading: Positive Impacts for All Ages Everyday

May 26, 2023

From apps to social media to Netflix to video games, there are so many ways to fill your free time that it can be hard to decide what to do. It’s also easy to overlook one of the most fulfilling and beneficial pastimes ever created. Let’s look at the main benefits of reading and how you can highlight them to your child.

What are the main benefits of reading books?

Benefits of reading before bed.

Benefits of reading to children

Benefits of reading out loud

Why is reading important.

Does listening to audiobooks have the same benefits?

What are the benefits of reading fiction?

What are the benefits of reading poetry, it’s a gym for your brain.

The act of reading is a remarkable mental feat and reading comprehension uses a lot of your brain power. When you’re thumbing through a novel you’re building a whole world of people, places and events in your mind and remembering it all as you follow the story. This gives your imagination and memory a thorough workout and strengthens networks in various other parts of your brain too. 💪

If you’re reading a non-fiction book you’re also getting an in-depth experience of a subject full of facts and details that you need to hold in your mind to follow the arguments of the writer.

It’s well known that your memory improves with use as new memories are created and connected to older ones, making them stronger and easier to recall. Scientists have even found that the other parts of the brain activated by reading can continue to improve days after you’ve stopped reading, meaning even just a little bit of reading can go a long way.

It improves your focus

From Insta stories to tweets to TikTok videos, information is being packaged into ever smaller chunks and researchers believe our attention spans are getting shorter. However, being able to concentrate on one thing for long periods and ignore distractions is essential for school and for work. Reading is an excellent way to improve your concentration skills and the more you read, the better you’ll be able to focus. 🔍

It expands your vocabulary

Reading expands your vocabulary more than any other activity. A rich vocabulary allows you to understand the world in a more sophisticated way. Reading is also great for your grammar skills and lets you communicate your thoughts and ideas more accurately in all areas of your life.

It’s an education

Reading is the key to knowledge. Reading non-fiction books means you can learn about any subject you choose in as much detail as you want. Fiction allows you to learn about how other people all over the world live their lives and to put yourself in their shoes. This is a great way to improve your empathy and learn to approach other people with an open mind.

It helps your problem-solving skills

Reading fiction is also fantastic preparation to learn how to solve various types of problems you may not yet have encountered in your own life. You get the chance to follow the characters through all kinds of situations and find out how they deal with challenges big and small.

Maybe they make the right choices or maybe they don’t, either way, the writer has put a lot of thought and consideration into their story and you can always learn something from a character’s experiences. 🧩

It’s good therapy

Reading about difficult situations characters or real people experience can be hugely beneficial as well. It can be useful to read both fiction and non-fiction books about something you’re going through. Books can act as a type of therapy and help you to feel less alone in your situation.

This bibliotherapy has proven effective in helping people deal with issues such as depression or other mood disorders. The NHS even prescribes books to help people through its Reading Well programme!

Books offer the best value-for-money entertainment anywhere! There’s no expensive equipment to buy, no tickets to pay for and no monthly subscription fee. All you need is a library card for your local branch and you’re good to go!

Your nearest library probably has tens of thousands of different books available, so you’re sure to find a title to hook you. If they don’t have something in particular you're looking for, you can even ask the librarian to order it from another library.

Some libraries even offer ebooks on loan which you can add to your ereader or tablet 🏛️

It’ll inspire your child

If your children regularly see you reading you’ll be setting a good example. Children tend to copy what they see their parents do and they’ll soon be joining you storybook in hand for some quiet time you can enjoy together.

It’s great for stress

It’s not most people’s first idea of a relaxation technique, but reading does an awesome job of helping you manage stress. According to research, reading can lead to a lower heart rate and blood pressure and a calmer mind and just six minutes of reading can bring your stress levels down by more than 66%.

It helps you live longer!

If you still need another reason to commit yourself to read more, how about this: reading can actually help you live longer! Researchers discovered that those who read for half an hour a day had a 23% chance of living longer than people who didn’t read very much. In fact, readers lived around two years longer than non-readers! 🌳

So, if we’ve convinced you that you and your family need more reading in your lives, when is the best time to do it? Well, reading at bedtime allows you to kill two birds with one stone.

It helps you get a good night’s sleep

Despite its importance, many of us don’t follow good sleep hygiene and spend the hours before bedtime staring at screens big and small, leading to difficulty falling asleep and affecting the quality of our slumber. The NHS found that one in three of us experience poor sleep.

Choose to read an actual book before bedtime instead of checking your social media or watching Netflix and you can look forward to a better night’s rest. Reading fiction is a good way of relaxing the body and calming your mind and preparing for bed and has been shown to be as relaxing as meditation. 💤

It calms your child

If you treat your child to story time and read to them just before they go to bed you’ll discover that it’s perfect for calming them down and getting them in the right mood for sleep. As a bonus, they’ll get used to sitting still and concentrating on one thing for a long time.

Benefits of reading to children

Children can eventually enjoy all the benefits of reading mentioned above but whether they are too small to read much themselves or they just enjoy listening to you tell them a story, they can get some extra value out of the experience if you read to them regularly yourself.

It gives them a love of learning

If you start by reading to your child you can get them hooked on books and start a habit that will last them throughout their lives and repay your investment over and over again. Children who learn to read for pleasure will go on to enjoy greater academic success throughout their education according to research. 👩🏽‍🎓

It gives them a head-start

Even if your little one is a toddler who isn’t ready to start reading storybooks by themselves, you can give their literacy skills an early boost and teach them to read by reading to them yourself. They might not understand everything but they’ll pick up enough to get the idea. Let them see the words on the page as you read and encourage them to turn the page when you get to the last word.

By reading to them you’ll be helping them follow the natural rhythms of language, practise their listening skills and expose them to vocabulary they might not get to hear in their day-to-day lives.

It brings you together

Time spent reading to your child is a wonderful chance to create some beautiful, cosy, loving memories together and strengthen your bond. It will become something like a regular adventure you and your child can look forward to doing together and will remember all your lives. 👩‍👦

It also gives you lots to talk about later and you can have enjoyable discussions about the characters, plots, dilemmas and mysteries you discover during your reading time.

Even when your child starts to read for themselves, you don’t need to stop your shared storytime. You can swap it up, with them taking on the role of the reader as you listen or you can take turns reading to each other.

You’ve probably been taught that the best method of reading is in silence. However, research has found that quiet reading isn’t actually always the better option and that there are in fact some benefits of reading out loud. 📢

It helps you understand

It turns out that speaking as you read can help you understand texts better. You probably read aloud more than you realise. If you’ve ever received a slightly convoluted message or email or you’ve tried to read confusing legal jargon, you’ve probably found yourself repeating the words out loud to more clearly understand what was meant. ✅

It helps you remember

Or perhaps you’ve tried to memorise a phone number or the lines of a speech and you automatically started to say the information aloud to help you remember.

Psychologists call this the “production effect” and have discovered that these tactics do actually help people remember things more easily, especially children. 📚

Research from Australia showed that children who were told to read out loud recognized 17% more words compared to children who were asked to read silently. In another study, adults were able to identify 20% more words they had read aloud.

The theory is that because reading aloud is an active process it makes words more distinctive, and so easier to remember. 🧠

Why read?

Reading is the most effective way to get information about almost everything and is the key ingredient in learning for school, work and pleasure. On top of this, reading boosts imagination, communication, memory, concentration, and empathy. It also lowers stress levels and leads to a longer life.

Does listening to audiobooks have the same benefits as reading books?

It can be hard to concentrate for a long time and the experience of reading. With a real book you can quickly scan your eyes back over the page to reread what you’ve missed, this isn’t so easy with an audiobook. A psychology study showed that students who read material did 28% better on a test than those who heard the same material as a podcast.

Reading fiction is a useful way to develop your empathy, social skills and emotional intelligence. Fictional stories allow you to put yourself in other people's shoes and see things from various perspectives. In fact, brain scans show that many of the parts of the brain you use to interact with other people are also activated when you’re reading fiction.

Poetry is the home of the most creative, imaginative and beautiful examples of language and allows you to connect those powerful lines to real emotions all of us feel. Poetry is also efficient and a good poet can reveal deep ideas with a simple phrase. Reading poetry can also inspire your creativity and write some expressive verse of your own!

Reading is something most of us have been doing all our lives and as a result, we can easily take it for granted, but it’s a great all-around experience for your mind and spirit. So, it's really worth digging out your library card and finding books you and your child can read together.

If your child is having problems with reading, here at GoStudent we have education experts on standby to give you and them a helping hand in improving their literacy skills or any other learning challenges they need support with. Schedule a free trial lesson with GoStudent today!

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📖Essay on Importance of Reading: Samples in 100, 150, and 250 Words

Updated on
Apr 26, 2024

Language learning requires four skills i.e. Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. It is an important part that eventually builds up the communication skills of a person. Reading will help in attaining knowledge of variable fields. It enhances the intellect of a person. Reading helps students to enhance their language fluency. Students must adopt the habit of reading good books. Reading books can also improve the writing skills. If you are a school student and searching for a good sample essay on the importance of reading then, you landed at the right place. Here in this blog, we have covered some sample essays on the importance of reading!

Table of Contents

1 Essay on the Importance of Reading in 100 Words
2 Essay on Importance of Reading 150 Words
3 Essay on Importance of Reading 250 Words
4 Short Essay on Importance of Reading

Essay on the Importance of Reading in 100 Words

The English language is considered the global language because it is the most widely spoken language worldwide. Reading is one of the important parts of acquiring complete knowledge of any language. Reading helps in maintaining a good vocabulary that is helpful for every field, whether in school, interviews , competitive exams , or jobs.

Students must inculcate the habit of reading from a young age. Making a habit of reading good books will eventually convert into an addiction over time and you will surely explore a whole new world of information.

Being exposed to different topics through reading can help you look at the wider perspective of life. You will eventually discover a creative side of yours while developing the habit of reading.

Essay on Importance of Reading 150 Words

Reading is considered an important aspect that contributes to the development of the overall personality of any person. If a person wants to do good at a professional level then he/she must practice reading.

There are various advantages of reading. It is not only a source of entertainment but also opens up the creative ability of any person. Reading helps in self-improvement, enhances communication skills, and reduces stress. It is one of the sources of pleasure and also enhances the analytical skills.

Here are some of the best books to study that may help you enhance your reading skills:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling .
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee .
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri .
Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby

A person with good reading skills would be able to communicate with more confidence and shine brighter at the professional level. Reading is a mental exercise, as it can provide you with the best experience because while reading fiction, or non-fiction you use your imagination without any restrictions thereby exploring a whole new world on your own. So, Just Enjoy Reading!

Also Read: Communication Skills to Succeed at Work

Essay on Importance of Reading 250 Words

Reading is a language skill necessary to present yourself in front of others because without being a good reader, it’s difficult to be a good communicator. Reading books should be practised regularly. Books are considered a human’s best friend.

It is right to say that knowledge can’t be stolen. Reading enhances the knowledge of a person. There are numerous benefits of reading.

I love reading books and one of my all-time favorite authors is William Shakespeare. His work “As You Like It” is my favourite book. By reading that book I came across many new words. It enabled me to add many words to my vocabulary that I can use in my life.

Apart from this, there are many other benefits of reading books such as reading can help you write in a certain way that can impress the reader. It also enhances communication skills and serves as a source of entertainment .

Schools conduct various competitions which directly or indirectly involve reading. Some such competitions include debate, essay writing competitions, elocution, new reading in assembly, etc. All such activities require active reading because without reading a person might not be able to speak on a specific topic.

All such activities are conducted to polish the language skills of students from the very beginning so that they can do good at a professional level.

In conclusion, in a world of technological advancement, you are more likely to get easy access to online reading material available on the internet. So, you must not miss this opportunity and devote some time to reading different kinds of books.

Short Essay on Importance of Reading

Find a sample of a short essay on importance of reading below:

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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Reading is Good Habit for Students and Children

500+ words essay on reading is good habit.

Reading is a very good habit that one needs to develop in life. Good books can inform you, enlighten you and lead you in the right direction. There is no better companion than a good book. Reading is important because it is good for your overall well-being. Once you start reading, you experience a whole new world. When you start loving the habit of reading you eventually get addicted to it. Reading develops language skills and vocabulary. Reading books is also a way to relax and reduce stress. It is important to read a good book at least for a few minutes each day to stretch the brain muscles for healthy functioning.

Benefits of Reading

Books really are your best friends as you can rely on them when you are bored, upset, depressed, lonely or annoyed. They will accompany you anytime you want them and enhance your mood. They share with you information and knowledge any time you need. Good books always guide you to the correct path in life. Following are the benefits of reading –

Self Improvement: Reading helps you develop positive thinking. Reading is important because it develops your mind and gives you excessive knowledge and lessons of life. It helps you understand the world around you better. It keeps your mind active and enhances your creative ability.

Communication Skills: Reading improves your vocabulary and develops your communication skills. It helps you learn how to use your language creatively. Not only does it improve your communication but it also makes you a better writer. Good communication is important in every aspect of life.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Increases Knowledge: Books enable you to have a glimpse into cultures, traditions, arts, history, geography, health, psychology and several other subjects and aspects of life. You get an amazing amount of knowledge and information from books.

Reduces Stress: Reading a good book takes you in a new world and helps you relieve your day to day stress. It has several positive effects on your mind, body, and soul. It stimulates your brain muscles and keeps your brain healthy and strong.

Great Pleasure: When I read a book, I read it for pleasure. I just indulge myself in reading and experience a whole new world. Once I start reading a book I get so captivated I never want to leave it until I finish. It always gives a lot of pleasure to read a good book and cherish it for a lifetime.

Boosts your Imagination and Creativity: Reading takes you to the world of imagination and enhances your creativity. Reading helps you explore life from different perspectives. While you read books you are building new and creative thoughts, images and opinions in your mind. It makes you think creatively, fantasize and use your imagination.

Develops your Analytical Skills: By active reading, you explore several aspects of life. It involves questioning what you read. It helps you develop your thoughts and express your opinions. New ideas and thoughts pop up in your mind by active reading. It stimulates and develops your brain and gives you a new perspective.

Reduces Boredom: Journeys for long hours or a long vacation from work can be pretty boring in spite of all the social sites. Books come in handy and release you from boredom.

Read Different Stages of Reading here.

The habit of reading is one of the best qualities that a person can possess. Books are known to be your best friend for a reason. So it is very important to develop a good reading habit. We must all read on a daily basis for at least 30 minutes to enjoy the sweet fruits of reading. It is a great pleasure to sit in a quiet place and enjoy reading. Reading a good book is the most enjoyable experience one can have.

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Why reading books is good for society, wellbeing and your career

Senior Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing and Behavioural Business Lab Member, RMIT University

Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne

Professor of Economics (Health Economist), RMIT University

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TikTok allows video up to 10 minutes, but says surveys show almost half its users are stressed by anything longer than a minute . An Instagram video can be up to 90 seconds, but experts reckon the ideal time to maximise engagement is less than 15 seconds . Twitter doubled the length of tweets in 2017 to 280 characters , but the typical length is more like 33 characters .

It’s easy to get sucked into short and sensational content. But if you’re worried this may be harming your attention span, you should be . There’s solid evidence that so many demands on our attention make us more stressed , and that the endless social comparison makes us feel worse about ourselves.

For better mental health, read a book.

Studies show a range of psychological benefits from book-reading. Reading fiction can increase your capacity for empathy , through the process of seeing the world through a relatable character. Reading has been found to reduce stress as effectively as yoga . It is being prescribed for depression – a treatment known as bibliotherapy .

Book-reading is also a strong marker of curiosity – a quality prized by employers such as Google. Our research shows reading is as strongly associated with curiosity as interest in science, and more strongly than mathematical ability.

And it’s not just that curious minds are more likely to read because of a thirst for knowledge and understanding. That happens too, but our research has specifically been to investigate the role of reading in the development of curious minds.

Read more: Too many digital distractions are eroding our ability to read deeply, and here's how we can become aware of what's happening — podcast

Tracking reading and curiosity

Our findings come from analysing data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth , which tracks the progress of young Australians from the age of 15 till 25.

Longitudinal surveys provide valuable insights by surveying the same people – in this case a group of about 10,000 young people. Every year for ten years they are asked about their achievements, aspirations, education, employment and life satisfaction.

There have been five survey cohorts since 1998, the most recent starting in 2016. We analysed three of them – those beginning in 2003, 2006 and 2009, looking at the data up to age 20, at which age most have a job or are looking for one.

The survey data is rich enough to develop proxy measures of reading and curiosity levels. It includes participants’ scores in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment tests for reading, mathematics and science ability. There are survey questions about time spent reading for pleasure, time reading newspapers or magazines, and library use.

To measure curiosity, we used respondents’ answers to questions about their interest in the following:

learning new things
thinking about why the world is in the state it is
finding out more about things you don’t understand
finding out about a new idea
finding out how something works.

We used statistical modelling to control for environmental and demographic variables and distinguish the effect of reading activity as a teenager on greater curiosity as a young adult. This modelling gives us confidence that reading is not just correlated with curiosity. Reading books helps build curiosity.

Book reading helps teenagers grow into more curious adults.

Gloom and doom-scrolling

Does this mean if you’re older that it’s too late to start reading? No. Our results relate to young people because the data was available. No matter what your age, deep reading has benefits over social-media scrolling.

The short-term dopamine rush of scrolling on a device is an elusive promise. It depletes rather than uplifts us. Our limbic brain – the part of the brain associated with our emotional and behavioural responses – remains trapped in a spiral of pleasure-seeking.

Studies show a high correlation between media multitasking and attention problems due to cognitive overload . The effect is most evident among young people, who have grown up with social media overexposure .

US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is among the researchers warning that high social media use is a major contributor to declining mental health for teenage girls:

Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller.

Why this “giant, obvious, international, and gendered cause”? Haidt writes:

Instagram was founded in 2010. The iPhone 4 was released then too — the first smartphone with a front-facing camera. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram, and that’s the year that its user base exploded. By 2015, it was becoming normal for 12-year-old girls to spend hours each day taking selfies, editing selfies, and posting them for friends, enemies, and strangers to comment on, while also spending hours each day scrolling through photos of other girls and fabulously wealthy female celebrities with (seemingly) vastly superior bodies and lives.

In 2020 Haidt published research showing girls are more vulnerable to “fear of missing out” and the aggression that social media tends to amplify. Since then he’s become even more convinced of the correlation.

Social media, by design, is addictive.

With TikTok, for example, videos start automatically, based on what the algorithm already knows about you. But it doesn’t just validate your preferences and feed you opinions that confirm your biases. It also varies the content so you don’t know what is coming next. This is the same trick that keeps gamblers addicted.

Tips to get back into books

If you are having difficulty choosing between your phone and a book, here’s a simple tip proven by behavioural science . To change behaviour it also helps to change your environment.

Try the following:

Carry a book at all times, or leave books around the house in convenient places.

Schedule reading time into your day. 20 minutes is enough . This reinforces the habit and ensures regular immersion in the book world.

If you’re not enjoying a book, try another. Don’t force yourself.

You’ll feel better for it – and be prepared for a future employer asking you what books you’re reading.

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Reading empowers: the importance of reading for students

Peter Lucantoni

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Research shows that students who are reading for pleasure and are reading widely, are more likely to achieve academic success at school and in examinations.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader Margaret Fuller, 19th century American journalist

Teaching students why reading empowers

The problem nowadays of course is that there seems to be less of a desire to read than in the past. Teachers often complain that ‘our students don’t read!’ and that ‘reading is not part of our culture’. What’s more, most teachers believe that trying to encourage students to read is an enormous, and often time-wasting, challenge. We know that reading is a source of knowledge and language, but it should also be a source of entertainment, and I think that here lies part of the answer to the problem of our students not reading.

We need to ask ourselves when we last gave our students the chance to read something just for the pleasure of reading it, just for the pure enjoyment of reading it. The fact that reading is so often linked to eight comprehension questions, a test, or another form of ‘checking that my students have understood’, it isn’t really so surprising that there is little enjoyment for students. Therefore, we need to show our students the benefits of reading for fun, by allowing them to have the time to do so during the day.

Witnessing students reading for fun

On a recent visit to the UK I was genuinely surprised by two things I saw. The first was in a bookshop. I went inside because it had started to rain and it seemed a good opportunity to have a coffee and browse some books in the dry. I searched around for somewhere to sit but all the comfortable, easy chairs were occupied – by teenagers with their heads buried in books.

The second surprise was a little later the same day as I sat on the top deck of a double-decker bus. The front three rows were occupied by youngsters, again with their heads buried in books, and all of them oblivious to anything and everyone else around them. In both cases, the readers were not reading school textbooks, but stories written for their specific age group. It was obvious to me that those young people were highly motivated by what they were reading, most likely because they themselves had chosen to read the text because it was of interest to them.

How to get students reading for pleasure

The dilemma we face is how to get our students to behave in this way in the classroom. First and foremost, we need to remove their fear of always being formally questioned during or after reading. Secondly, students have to be given opportunities to read simply for the pleasure of reading, and part of this approach is to give students a choice in what they read.

Teachers may argue that there isn’t enough time to allow this to happen, but I believe that even five minutes of reading for pleasure every day or every lesson will soon increase students’ motivation to want to read through their own choice. Of course, in reality, students cannot choose what to read in a coursebook unit, and it may often be the case that due to lack of resources or funds a school may not be able to supply students with choices in terms of what they read. But a start has to be made somewhere.

Remember, reading empowers! If parents are not encouraging their children to read independently, then this encouragement has to take place in the classroom.

Oscar Wilde said: “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”

The importance of reading for students is no secret. Try and implement these strategies in the classroom and you could find some amazing results. For more information, view our English resources online.

Peter Lucantoni has had a long career in English language teaching and teacher training in Europe, the Middle East, and, since 1993, in Cyprus. He is the author and co-author of several popular coursebooks for students, including Cambridge IGCSE English as a Second Language .

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Essay on Reading Books

The habit of Reading Books is considered to be one of the most elite habits of all. Books are the means to store precious information either in a textual or pictorial manner. A book is such a wonderful and magnificent object that it takes a whole different amount of passion and discipline to construct a book and the same passion to study and sink that knowledge within. Here are a few sample essays on reading books.

100 Words Essay on Reading Books

200 words essay on reading books, 500 words essay on reading books.

Reading books is an incredible experience that can transport you to different worlds, introduce you to new ideas and cultures, and broaden your understanding of the world. It's a form of escape from the daily routine, and a way to engage with characters, stories and events that would not be possible in real life. Whether you prefer fiction or nonfiction, books have the power to challenge, inspire, and entertain. With the turn of each page, you gain new knowledge, develop empathy, and engage in introspection. Reading books is a lifelong journey of discovery and growth that can enrich your life in countless ways.

Reading books is an activity that has been enjoyed by people of all ages and cultures for centuries. This pastime offers numerous benefits, both for individuals and society as a whole.

One of the most significant benefits of reading books is the improvement of one's cognitive skills . By reading, we engage our brains, and the more we read, the more we exercise our cognitive abilities, including our ability to concentrate, comprehend, and retain information. This leads to enhanced problem-solving skills, better memory and a greater ability to understand complex concepts.

Another benefit of reading books is the expansion of one's knowledge and understanding of the world. Through reading, we have the opportunity to gain insights into different cultures, time periods, and ways of life. This can broaden our perspectives and help us become more informed and understanding citizens of the world. In addition, books can challenge our beliefs and assumptions, providing opportunities for personal growth and intellectual development.

Reading books is also a great form of entertainment . Whether we are reading a mystery, a romance, or a science-fiction novel, books can provide hours of escape and enjoyment. They allow us to immerse ourselves in different worlds, meet new characters, and experience new emotions. This form of entertainment provides a welcome break from the stresses of daily life and can help reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.

The habit of reading books is not just a hobby but a complete lifestyle . The way it brings development in one’s character and personality from within is just magical. The importance of reading is to give people the ability to self-study but has numerous other benefits. When you read, you explore your true prospect of thinking. You get the venture of how the same lines could deliver a brand new set of thoughts and pictures in your mind just with a little change in the emotions. This is the kind of self-exploration reading provides.

Having a diverse set of knowledge can be of great help as it removes the bar of limited knowledge . Every social group has a different set of interests and by consuming all of that in yourself, you allow yourself to become a part of any group easily. A person who consumes more knowledge is considered the wisest. Your ideas are what draws people to you, wanting them to listen more and makes you one of the interesting people they interact with.

Reading is the most important means of human-to-human communication and getting to know different cultures, leading to the development and maturation of human language abilities, and is the source of development and mature human personality. Reading is very important to increase self-confidence, develop and strengthen character by acquiring a wealth of information and experience that a person needs in all areas of life, and to become an educated person. Not everyone in their lives gets the gift of knowledge and the ability to comprehend what they are looking at. Not everyone is privileged enough to be able to widen their knowledge without the help of someone else.

Reading is an art, and to have this art is equal to having the greatest weapon in your hand. No one can steal your ability to read once you learn it. You become free to consume knowledge about any topic you like.

Significance of Reading

Reading leads to the expansion of human thinking and intellectual capacities and strengthens your spirit. Every genre teaches something whether it is fictional or non-fictional. When fiction teaches you to imagine, self-help teaches you how to live life to the fullest. Reading is not limited to books only, you can read wherever you want, whatever you want and whenever you want and it all will be worth it. Knowledge is never known to be a curse and what is not a curse, is always beneficial.

My Reading Experience

The kind of books that got me into reading are self-help books. They inspired me in a way no other genre could. The writer Mark Manson is the greatest of all time to me. If you'll just search for self-help books over the internet then among the best sellers, two of the books would be his. The kind of discipline they brought into my life transformed me into a completely different person. These kinds of books give us an opportunity to dive deep into ourselves and learn about our true potential which is what happened to me and brought me into writing.

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The Lifelong Benefits of Reading: How Books Can Transform Your Life

Discover the transformative power of books and unlock a world of lifelong benefits through reading.

In today’s fast-paced digital age, where information is readily available at our fingertips, it’s easy to overlook the profound impact that reading can have on our lives. But beneath the surface lies a treasure trove of wisdom, knowledge, and personal growth waiting to be unraveled.

From broadening our horizons and enhancing our empathy to improving our cognitive abilities and reducing stress, books have the remarkable ability to shape and transform us. In this article, we will delve into the countless ways in which reading can enrich our lives, offering a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

So, grab a cup of tea, find a cozy nook, and embark on a journey that will leave you with a newfound appreciation for the power of the written word. Whether you’re a devoted bookworm or someone who has yet to discover the joys of reading, prepare to be inspired by the lifelong benefits that await you on this literary adventure.

The Power of Reading

Reading is more than just a pleasurable pastime; it is a gateway to personal growth and transformation. When we dive into a compelling story or immerse ourselves in a thought-provoking non-fiction book, we open ourselves up to new ideas and perspectives. Books have the power to challenge our preconceived notions and expand our understanding of the world.

Reading also enhances our cognitive abilities. It improves our vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking skills. As we engage with the written word, our brains are stimulated, creating new neural connections and improving our overall mental agility.

But reading is not just about intellectual growth. It has a profound impact on our emotional well-being as well. Whether it’s losing ourselves in a fictional world or finding solace in a self-help book, reading provides an escape from the pressures of everyday life. It allows us to explore our own emotions and connect with the experiences of others, fostering empathy and compassion.

Mental Benefits of Reading

The mental benefits of reading are manifold. Research has shown that reading regularly can improve our memory and concentration. When we read, we are required to focus our attention and retain information, exercising our brain in the process. This mental workout not only improves our ability to recall information but also enhances our concentration and attention span in other areas of life.

Furthermore, reading has been linked to a reduced risk of cognitive decline and dementia. By regularly engaging our brains through reading, we can help keep our minds sharp and agile as we age. It’s like a workout for the brain, keeping it in top shape and staving off the effects of aging.

In addition to improving memory and cognitive function, reading can also enhance our problem-solving skills. As we encounter different scenarios and challenges in books, we are exposed to various ways of thinking and problem-solving. This exposure broadens our mental toolkit, allowing us to approach real-life problems with a fresh perspective and a wider range of strategies.

Emotional Benefits of Reading

Reading has a profound impact on our emotional well-being. It provides an escape from the stresses of everyday life, allowing us to immerse ourselves in different worlds and experiences. Whether we’re laughing out loud at a humorous novel or shedding tears over a heart-wrenching story, books evoke a wide range of emotions that allow us to connect with our own feelings.

Moreover, reading can increase our empathy and understanding of others. When we read about characters from different backgrounds or with different perspectives, we gain insight into their lives and experiences. This exposure to diverse narratives helps us develop a broader worldview and fosters empathy towards others, ultimately making us more compassionate individuals.

Reading can also be therapeutic. It can provide solace during difficult times and offer a sense of comfort and understanding when we feel alone. Books have the power to validate our emotions and provide us with the tools to navigate challenging situations. They can serve as a form of self-help, guiding us towards personal growth and healing.

Physical Benefits of Reading

While reading is often associated with mental and emotional benefits, it also has positive effects on our physical well-being. One of the most notable physical benefits is stress reduction. Reading has been shown to lower heart rate and reduce stress levels, promoting a sense of calm and relaxation. By immersing ourselves in a good book, we can escape from the demands of daily life and find respite from the pressures that weigh us down.

Furthermore, reading can improve sleep quality. Engaging in a quiet activity like reading before bed can help signal to our bodies that it’s time to wind down and prepare for sleep. By creating a bedtime routine that includes reading, we can promote better sleep hygiene and ensure a more restful night’s sleep.

Additionally, reading can have a positive impact on our overall brain health. Studies have shown that reading can improve brain connectivity and increase neural activity. This stimulation of the brain can help ward off cognitive decline and improve cognitive function, leading to better overall brain health.

Social Benefits of Reading

Reading is often seen as a solitary activity, but it can also have social benefits. When we read a book, it opens up opportunities for conversation and connection with others. Book clubs, discussion groups, and literary events provide spaces for like-minded individuals to come together and share their thoughts and experiences.

Reading can also foster a sense of community. When we engage with a popular book or series, we become part of a larger cultural conversation. We can connect with others who have shared similar reading experiences and engage in discussions about the themes and ideas presented in the books. This shared connection can create a sense of belonging and camaraderie.

Furthermore, reading can improve our communication skills. As we encounter different writing styles and perspectives in books, we develop a greater appreciation for language and storytelling. This exposure to diverse narratives can enhance our own writing and communication abilities, allowing us to express ourselves more effectively and connect with others on a deeper level.

The Impact of Reading on Personal Growth and Development

Reading is a powerful tool for personal growth and development. It provides us with a wealth of knowledge and insights that can help us navigate the complexities of life. Whether we’re seeking advice on relationships , career guidance, or personal development, books offer a vast array of resources and perspectives to draw from.

One of the key ways in which reading promotes personal growth is by expanding our knowledge and perspective. By exposing ourselves to different ideas, cultures, and experiences through books, we broaden our understanding of the world and challenge our own beliefs and assumptions. This expansion of knowledge can lead to personal transformation and a greater sense of empathy and understanding towards others.

Furthermore, reading enhances our creativity and imagination. When we read, we are transported to different worlds and introduced to unique characters and situations. This exposure to new ideas and perspectives stimulates our own creativity and imagination, allowing us to think outside the box and approach problems with a fresh perspective.

Reading also offers us the opportunity for introspection and self-reflection. Through the experiences of characters in books, we can gain insight into our own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. This self-awareness can lead to personal growth and self-improvement as we identify areas for development and work towards becoming the best version of ourselves.

How Reading Can Improve Creativity and Imagination

Reading is a wellspring of inspiration for creativity and imagination. When we engage with books, we are exposed to different writing styles, storytelling techniques, and imaginative worlds. This exposure helps us think creatively and generate new ideas in various aspects of our lives.

By immersing ourselves in the worlds created by authors, we can expand our own imagination. Books allow us to visualize characters, settings, and events, fostering our ability to create vivid mental images. This enhanced imagination can be beneficial in many areas, such as problem-solving, brainstorming, and artistic endeavors.

Moreover, reading exposes us to different perspectives and ways of thinking, which can fuel our creative thinking. By encountering diverse narratives and exploring different points of view, we challenge our own assumptions and expand our thinking beyond conventional boundaries. This exposure to new ideas can inspire us to approach problems and projects in innovative ways.

Reading can also help us develop our own writing and storytelling skills. As we engage with well-crafted narratives, we subconsciously absorb writing techniques and storytelling structures. This exposure to quality writing can enhance our own writing abilities, allowing us to communicate more effectively and captivate our audience.

Reading as a Form of Relaxation and Stress Relief

In our fast-paced and digitally connected world, finding moments of relaxation and calm can be challenging. Reading offers a respite from the demands of daily life and provides a much-needed escape from the constant stream of information and stimuli.

When we immerse ourselves in a good book, our minds are transported to a different world. The act of reading requires focus and concentration, allowing us to temporarily disconnect from our worries and concerns. This focused immersion in a captivating story or subject matter helps us relax and unwind, promoting a sense of calm and tranquility.

Moreover, reading has been shown to lower heart rate and reduce stress levels. The rhythmic nature of reading, combined with the engagement of the mind, creates a soothing effect on the body. As we become absorbed in a book, our breathing slows, and our heart rate decreases, promoting a state of relaxation and stress relief.

Additionally, reading before bed can improve sleep quality. Engaging in a quiet and calming activity like reading helps signal to our bodies that it’s time to wind down and prepare for sleep. By incorporating reading into our bedtime routine, we can promote better sleep hygiene and ensure a more restful night’s sleep.

How to Develop a Reading Habit

Developing a reading habit is a journey that requires commitment and intention. Here are some tips to help you cultivate a love for reading and make it a regular part of your life:

Set aside dedicated time for reading: Carve out specific time slots in your day for reading. It could be a few minutes in the morning, during your lunch break, or before bed. Consistency is key, so aim to read at the same time each day.
Create a cozy reading environment: Find a comfortable spot in your home where you can relax and focus on your reading. Set the mood with soft lighting, a cozy blanket, and a cup of tea or coffee.
Start with books that interest you: Choose books that align with your interests and passions. If you’re not sure where to start, ask for recommendations from friends, join a book club, or explore different genres to discover what resonates with you.
Set realistic reading goals: Set achievable reading goals for yourself, such as reading a certain number of pages or chapters each day. This will help you stay motivated and track your progress.
Limit distractions: Minimize distractions during your reading time by turning off your phone or putting it on silent mode. Create a quiet and focused environment that allows you to fully immerse yourself in the book.
Join a reading community: Engage with others who share your love for reading by joining online book clubs or discussion groups. This will provide opportunities for meaningful conversations and recommendations for new books to explore.
Keep a reading journal: Record your thoughts, reflections, and favorite quotes in a reading journal. This can enhance your reading experience and serve as a valuable resource for future reference. Remember, developing a reading habit takes time and patience. Be gentle with yourself and enjoy the process of discovering new worlds and ideas through books.

Choosing the Right Books for Personal Growth and Transformation

Choosing the right books for personal growth and transformation requires thoughtful consideration. Here are some factors to consider when selecting books that will enrich your life:

Reflect on your goals and interests: Consider what areas of personal growth you would like to focus on and choose books that align with those goals. Whether it’s self-help, spirituality, or professional development, there are books available to support your journey.
Read reviews and recommendations: Research books that have received positive reviews and recommendations from trusted sources. Look for books that have resonated with others and have a track record of inspiring personal growth and transformation.
Explore different genres and perspectives: Step out of your comfort zone and explore genres and perspectives that are new to you. By exposing yourself to diverse narratives, you expand your understanding of the world and gain fresh insights.
Consider the author’s credentials and expertise: Look into the author’s background and expertise to ensure they have the necessary knowledge and experience to guide you on your personal growth journey. Check for credentials, reviews, and recommendations before committing to a book.
Trust your intuition: Pay attention to your gut instinct when choosing books. If a particular title or synopsis resonates with you, trust that it may hold valuable insights and lessons for your personal growth.

Remember that personal growth is a lifelong journey, and the books you choose to read are a reflection of that journey. Be open to exploring new ideas and perspectives, and allow yourself to be transformed by the power of the written word.

Related: Reading These 9 Books Will Change Your Life

Incorporating Reading into Your Daily Routine

Incorporating reading into your daily routine is a surefire way to make it a regular habit. Here are some practical tips to help you make reading a part of your everyday life:

Set a reading goal: Determine how much time you want to dedicate to reading each day. It could be as little as 10 minutes or as much as an hour. Set a realistic goal that you can commit to consistently.
Create a reading schedule: Find a time in your daily schedule that works best for you. It could be in the morning, during your lunch break, or before bed. Establish a routine by consistently reading at the same time each day.
Keep a book with you at all times: Carry a book with you wherever you go, whether it’s a physical book or an e-reader. This way, you can take advantage of any free moments throughout the day, such as waiting in line or during your commute.
Make reading a priority: Treat reading as a non-negotiable part of your day. Prioritize it over other activities that may be less fulfilling or productive. By giving reading the importance it deserves, you’ll make it a priority in your life.
Create a cozy reading environment: Designate a specific reading spot in your home where you can relax and focus on your book. Make it cozy and inviting with cushions, blankets, and soft lighting.
Minimize distractions: Create a distraction-free environment by turning off your phone or putting it on silent mode. This will help you stay focused and fully immerse yourself in the book.
Keep a reading log: Keep track of the books you’ve read, along with any thoughts, reflections, or favorite quotes. This will not only serve as a record of your reading journey but also provide valuable insights for future reference.

Remember, consistency is key when it comes to developing a reading habit. By incorporating reading into your daily routine, you’ll be able to enjoy the lifelong benefits that books have to offer.

Ever read 4 books in a day?

Although reading is one of the most beneficial things that you can do for your mind, most people just can’t find the time in their days.

It can be difficult to read 500 pages a day like Warren Buffet or read 50 books a year like Bill Gates and with our daily routines and demanding day jobs, this may just not be possible.

We are here to bridge the gap!

With the Snapreads app, you get the key insights from the best nonfiction books in minutes, not hours or days. Our experts transform these books into quick, memorable, easy-to-understand insights that you can read on your time or listen on the go.

What Is Snapreads?

With the Snapreads app, you get the key insights from the best nonfiction books in minutes, not hours or days. Our experts transform these books into quick, memorable, easy-to-understand insights you can read when you have the time or listen to them on the go.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How Reading Fiction Can Shape Our Real Lives

I started college in the fall of 2003, when I was seventeen years old. I’d spent the last year dissecting news articles with my AP Government class on the U.S.’s escalating tensions with Iraq. War had moved beyond theory and into inevitability—yet I didn’t know how to express my horror and had even less of an idea of what to do with it. Then, six months after the first time the U.S. invaded Fallujah, I read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried .

In this award-winning novelization of his experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War, O’Brien tells the story of Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon. Rat and Curt are best friends—inseparable—until the moment when, during a game of catch, Curt steps on a hidden landmine and dies instantaneously. The abruptness of the incident and its placement in the middle of a scene of languor tells one kind of truth about the arbitrariness of war. But what struck me most—what motivated me to find out what I could do instead of merely understand—is the scene that comes after.

The narrator, who is also a soldier in Curt and Rat’s unit, tells the reader that shortly after Curt’s death, they stumble upon a baby water buffalo. Rat strokes its nose—and then shoots it in its right front knee, its back, twice in its flanks. Piece by piece, he tears the buffalo apart. The narrator tells us:

Advertisement X Keep Up with the GGSC Happiness Calendar Think outside the box this month Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it… That as a rule she hates war stories… but this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad… What I should do, she’ll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell. I won’t say it but I’ll think it… You dumb [expletive] . Because she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story.

The story of Rat and Curt didn’t just illuminate to me that the human costs of war extend far beyond death—it allowed me to feel the anguish of it, albeit a tiny fraction of it. From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to 1984 , novels have been used for generations as a way to urge readers to confront real-world sociopolitical issues. And it works—I know because I’m proof.

There’s scientific evidence to back me up, too.

In a recent article entitled “ Sitting Still and Reading: Rethinking the Role of Literary Fiction in Civics Education ,” literary scholar Annie Schultz argues for the importance of teaching literature alongside simulations of civic practices. She claims engaging students in civic activities, like community organizing or Model United Nations, should be paired with “literary representations of existential journeys to political consciousness.” That, through doing so, “reading and thinking can become emancipatory activities.” Indeed, an ever-growing body of research shows fiction has the proven capacity to make readers more open-minded, empathetic, and compassionate —capacities critical to ensuring we come out the other side of a global pandemic and a culture of militarized white supremacy with greater societal equity.

Why? Perhaps because a reader sits with a novel for hours, days, weeks—far longer than when consuming any other art form. This concentrated time gives a reader an embodied experience of the other, increasing their awareness and appreciation for differing perspectives.

Canadian cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley, who has been researching the effects of fiction on psychology for decades, found that the neural mechanisms the brain triggers to process narratives are similar to some of their real-life counterparts. For example, when reading the word “kick” or about someone pulling a cord, the same areas of the brain related to physically kicking or grasping are activated. One study found that one of the most important features of whether or not reading a passage of fiction simulated the default network of the brain—the network believed to support the human capacity to engage in rumination and simulate hypothetical scenes, spaces, and states of mind—was “whether or not they described a person or a person’s mental content.” In other words, being exposed to a character’s thought processes encouraged a deeper level of reflection than when reading abstract or “non-social passages.” The intimacy of a reader’s relationship with a fictional narrator’s interior dialogue is perhaps one of its most singular characteristics—a process Schultz describes as turning “the inner lives of oppressed characters outward.”

Fourteen years after first reading O’Brien’s book, I found myself back at my undergrad alma mater. I was teaching a writing class and used that same chapter of The Things They Carried —the one with the story about Rat and Curt. In the book, the narrator never self-identifies themselves by either name or gender, but a young cis male student claimed he knew the narrator was male because the narrator didn’t wax poetic about their emotions. When I asked him what character he felt expressed the most emotion in the piece, he paused and said, “Huh—Rat. A man.” It seems likely that this insight opened a door in the student’s mind—and perhaps he was able to let go of his idea that men couldn’t express a lot of emotion. One group of researchers argue that in “reading the written work of others, you enter their minds. In coming to terms with the mind of another, you can come to better discover your own.” In doing so, we can discover new perspectives through which to understand ourselves and others. Schultz concludes her article: “We do not ask students to limit their thinking to that which is acceptable within the languages and systems in place but, rather, to narrate their own histories and selves as a way to create themselves and society by extension.”

Greater Good Chronicles

Years ago, I stumbled upon Plato’s Apology —his account of Socrates’ defense while on trial for “corrupting the youth of Athens”—in a used bookstore. Socrates explained he was trying to disprove the Oracle of Delphi’s proclamation that he was the wisest of all men—yet, after every interaction he had with men he was told were wise, he determined they were not. It was this exposure of false wisdom (and, I imagine, hubris) that earned him the admiration of the Athenian youth.

One of the groups Socrates discounts is the poets. In his disputation, he says, “Not by wisdom do poets write poetry but by a sort of genius and inspiration.” His claim was that poets couldn’t be wise because their work was rooted in imagination, but I—and maybe the jury who found him guilty and sentenced him to death—believe the opposite to be true. The invented, fictive space is where truth can be found precisely because it doesn’t claim to hold it. Rather, fictional narratives provide the reader with an experience on which to reflect and discern meaning.

When readers read fiction, they know they are encountering human-constructed characters, settings, and situations. This necessary suspension of disbelief—of having to entertain the possibility of other realities—means readers of fiction aren’t merely learning to understand the world as it is, but, also, how to imagine a different one. And it is this act of imagining that makes alternative futures possible—a future without endless, violent conflict, for example.

A white paper published in 2017 by the National Academies of Science goes so far as to make the argument that narratology—“the study of narrative, narrative structure, and narrative discourse”—and narrative psychology—an understanding of “how narrative influences cognitive processes”—should be an interest of national security. The paper was published in response to a policy brief distributed by the Department of Defense which focuses “on a critical and enduring challenge in warfare—the need to understand relevant actors’ motivations and the underpinnings of their will .” The authors of the white paper write:

If there is doubt about the value of narrative… to national security, it only takes one look beneath the events displayed in the daily news…: somewhere prior to the action garnering international attention, communication happened that resonated with an audience, who found more reasons to act than not.

That is a point that becomes only more salient with every passing day, in 2020.

I am not trying to claim that O’Brien’s book single-handedly transformed me into an anti-war activist, but it did force me to sit with the unspeakable brutality of one war and reflect on its implications for a new one. It inspired me to continue seeking out news on the ongoing occupation of Iraq, to start writing political commentary for my college newspaper, to take a class on the Vietnam War, to visit Vietnam with a remarkable professor who is himself a Vietnam vet, to join anti-war marches in Philadelphia, to organize my first demonstration on the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Fallujah with an Iraq War vet in the spring of my senior year.

My first job after college was as the National Media Coordinator for Iraq Veterans Against the War (now called About Face: Veterans Against the War ), a national nonprofit made up of post-9/11 service members fighting against American militarism. Since then, I’ve exclusively worked in the fields of communications and community organizing for mission-driven nonprofits and organized labor for more than twelve years. When a friend recently told me he only reads nonfiction because he (like Socrates!) prefers to read something “real,” I couldn’t help but think he got it wrong. Fiction isn’t the antithesis to reality—it helps shape it. In her new book of essays, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction , Arundhati Roy opens by recalling a conversation with her editor. When he asked her what she thought of when she thought of the word “Azadi” (Urdu for “freedom”), she said, “[W]ithout a moment’s hesitation, ‘A novel.’”

Roy continues, “A novel, to me, is freedom with responsibility.” And that, I think, is what makes fiction a revolutionary tool—it doesn’t just provide readers with the capacity to imagine different futures, but, crucially, the very real people in them.

About the Author

Francesca Lo Basso

Francesca Lo Basso is a narrative strategist, writer, and community organizer with more than twelve years of experience working for mission-driven nonprofits and organized labor. Most recently, her creative nonfiction pieces have been published in Toho magazine and in an anthology of micro-essays entitled Conversations with Men . She currently works for education justice nonprofit Big Picture Philadelphia , which provides holistic, student-centered learning at two Philadelphia area high schools. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University in London and a BA in English and Philosophy from La Salle University.

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What are the benefits of reading books? A lot, actually

Love to curl up on the couch with a good book ? You aren’t alone.

According to a Gallup poll published in 2022, in 2021 Americans read roughly 12 books a year, amounting to around one a month. That number is the lowest it's been since Gallup began tracking Americans' reading habits back in 1990.

Whether the decline in reading books is the result of busy lifestyles or the lure of binge-watching the latest series on TV, the time has come to get back on the book bandwagon.

If the latest bestseller is collecting dust on your nightstand, knowing the benefits of reading might be just the motivation you need to pick it back up.

Of course, you can also join TODAY's own book club band leader, Jenna Bush Hager, in the new initiative " Streaking With Jenna " to get back on track because as readers already know, there's nothing quite like settling in a with a great book. Designed to build or bolster a reading habit, Streaking With Jenna encourages people to keep track of their reading streak in 2023.

Download a printable Streaking With Jenna calendar here .

"It's like a sanctuary," Maryanne Wolf, professor-in-residence at UCLA and director, Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, tells TODAY.com.

"I have 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening after Netflix or whatever I've done in between a thousand emails," Wolf explains of her reading habit.

"And that helps center me, it helps remind me of the priorities of the day before, of the next day, and of that very moment."

From increasing your vocabulary and conversation skills to sleeping better and living longer, here are 10 scientific and psychological benefits of reading to inspire you to get back into the habit.

1) Reading might lengthen your lifespan

Good news, bookworms: Reading books might be part of the key to a long life.

A 2016 study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine found reading books can reduce mortality by up to 20%.

According to the researchers, "any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage," particularly for adults 65 and older who "redirect leisure time" from watching TV into reading books.

The study also found that reading alone isn't enough — it's reading books that makes the difference. Books contributed to a "survival advantage that was significantly greater than that observed for reading newspapers or magazines," the authors noted.

2) Encourages empathy

Reading books can help us become more compassionate, empathetic people.

"We have more opportunity to deepen our insights, our epiphanies, our sense of our own best thoughts," explains Wolf. "It gives us more empathy, perspective — taking into other people's viewpoints, thoughts and feelings."

And there's science to back it up.

In a 2013 study published in "Science," researchers found that literary fiction, in particular, led to readers being better at understanding what other people were thinking and feeling, along with increasing their capacity for empathy.

Keep calm and read on!

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3) Helps lessen cognitive decline

Like the rest of your body, your brain needs exercise to help keep it working at its best. Reading books is one way to help keep your mind sharp.

"Various activities, including reading, that are seen as cognitively engaging are definitely associated with better brain health," Jonathan King, Ph.D., senior scientific advisor in the division of behavioral and social research at National Institute on Aging, tells TODAY.com.

While the jury is still out on if reading can prevent dementia, research suggests that older people who read more than those who don't appear to have a reduced risk of cognitive decline.

At the very least, King says that older adults who read more often generally have "larger vocabularies than younger adults because of all the reading experiences that they've done," which helps in obtaining "crystalized knowledge,"or things people have read about that they can put to use in their day-to-day lives.

4) Reduces stress

The American Psychological Association found in its 2022 annual survey on stress in America that a quarter of American adults feel that they're "too stressed to function."

High levels of stress are associated with a variety of physical and mental problems, making stress management essential to personal wellness.

Engaging in stress-relieving activities, like reading books, is an easy way to help keep cortisol levels down.

"Reading has been connected to meditation in terms of the way our brain processes our environment and our physiological state," Zoe Shaw , Psy.D., licensed psychotherapist and author of “A Year of Self-Care: Daily Practices and Inspiration for Caring for Yourself," tells TODAY.com.

"If you're sitting in a chair or laying in your bed and you're focusing on reading, your body can actually go into a type of meditative state," Shaw says. "So, you can get some of the benefits of meditating by reading."

Research backs this up, including a study that found 30 minutes of reading had the same ability to decrease stress as 30 minutes of yoga.

5) Improves critical thinking

Can reading make you smarter? In short, yes. Of course, it’s complicated and any number of things contribute to a person's overall knowledge and intelligence.

That said, a 1998 study concluded that reading "yields significant dividends for everyone."

In the study, those who were more "avid" readers, regardless of their overall abilities, were better able to answer various practical knowledge questions, like who their U.S. senators were and how many teaspoons equal one tablespoon, even if they weren't necessarily versed in those topics.

Reading can also improve critical thinking skills, Wolf tells TODAY.com.

"One of the great benefits is not just to the individual's insights; it's to the individual's ability to participate in democracy with a critical, empathic mind," she says.

6) Promotes self-care

If you've ever gotten lost in a book, then you can attest to this: Reading a book simply makes you feel good. Entertainment is as much of a perk of reading as all those positive psychological and scientific benefits.

Shaw says that, while they're engrossing in their own ways, TV, movies and scrolling through social media don't offer the same degree of escape and calm that reading a book provides.

"It's not as relaxing to our body to read on computers or devices," Shaw says, explaining that when you read a book, your brain comes up with images to accompany what you're reading about, engaging your creative mind while helping you relax at the same time.

"We're gaining knowledge and, to a certain extent, caring for ourselves because we are expanding our understanding of the world, of ourselves – and that is self-care," she continues.

7) Enhances conversation skills

According to a 2015 study , above-average readers had a much higher rate of vocabulary growth than average readers did.

"We know that the best way to help children learn to write, to help children with their vocabulary and increase their general academic performance is to read to them," Shaw says.

"It also works for us as adults. Our vocabulary is increased, our conversation skills are increased," she says. "More than that, we write better when we read more."

8) Improves sleep

Does your bedtime routine include a few minutes (or hours) of screen time?

If it does, chances are good that scrolling through Instagram or checking your email is negatively impacting your ability to sleep.

A 2020 study published in Nature and Science of Sleep found that using a mobile device for at least 30 minutes after turning off the lights resulted in poor sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and other sleep disturbances.

Reading a book before bed, however, has exactly the opposite effect.

"Reading can improve sleep," Shaw says. "It activates the frontal lobe, the limbic system, and it creates a relaxing cascade in our body."

In 2021, researchers studied reading and sleep patterns and found that, overall, reading a book in bed before sleeping led participants to feel their quality of sleep improved.

"It can help calm you and get you into that place much better than other types of activities," says Shaw.

9) Fosters connection

Divisiveness has been on the rise in recent years, leading to what many consider to be a disconnect between people and decline of community.

While every issue can't obviously be solved by reading a book, picking one up can be beneficial in helping close the gap.

"In this minute of our society in this tiny, strained, moment in human history, we need to have people have communication with each other," Wolf tells TODAY.com.

"Not just connects with friends and social media, but deeper forms of communication, so that we understand each other, even when we are by ourselves," she says.

"There is this amazing miracle that we can understand another if we give it time, without ever leaving our chair."

10) Provides time to recharge your batteries

Time with a book is also time for you .

"Reading forces you to spend time with yourself. It forces you to kind of isolate in a healthy way," she tells TODAY.com.

"There’s also this sense of self-comforting in the process of reading, which is different than on our devices," Shaw says and explains that when you use your phone or device as an escape, it's easy to be interrupted by notifications and other distractions.

"But usually when we choose to read a book, we’re taking specific space and time where we’re going to get more comfortable and just kind of hunker down with the book."

Sarah is a lifestyle and entertainment reporter for TODAY who covers holidays, celebrities and everything in between.

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The Benefits of Reading Books

This essay will discuss the numerous benefits of reading books, including mental stimulation, stress reduction, knowledge acquisition, and vocabulary expansion. It will explore how reading enhances empathy, improves memory, and contributes to overall mental health. The piece will also touch on the benefits of different genres and reading habits. PapersOwl offers a variety of free essay examples on the topic of Learning.

How it works

Keeping your mind clear requires brain training. Without a load, any organ is subject to degradation. The best brain trainer is reading. Reading is an intellectual meal for the brain, a vitamin that activates mental activity. Increasing your intellectual level is the key to a successful career and life in general.Useful reading (reading good books) broadens a person’s horizons, enriches his inner world, makes him smarter and has a positive effect on memory.

Reading books increases a person’s vocabulary, contributes to the development of clearer and clearer thinking, which allows you to formulate and express thoughts more clearly.

Everyone can be convinced of this by their own example. One has only to thoughtfully read some classical work. Anyone who previously “could not connect two words” will notice how it has become easier with the help of speech to express their own thoughts, to express themselves and choose the right words, will notice that parasitic words disappear from the vocabulary.

Reading serious works makes us constantly think about what kind of thought the author wanted to express, and this makes our convolutions move faster.

Reading books is also useful in that it develops logical thinking. Don’t believe me? And you read something from the classics of the detective genre, for example “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” – the well-known work of Arthur Conan Doyle. I assure you, after reading, in any situation you will think faster, your mind will become sharper, your observation will improve and you will understand that reading is useful and beneficial.

Why is reading books useful for people in a depressed mood? If you have dark thoughts or something worries you, the book will help to cheer you up and overcome sadness. The works, the authors of which have wit and subtle humor, will help you, albeit for a while, to forget about everything that worries you. Take, for example, one of O. Henry’s short stories, which are famous for their humor and unexpected outcomes.

It is also useful to read books because they have a significant impact on our moral guidelines and on our spiritual development. After reading this or that classic work, sometimes people begin to change for the better.

In addition, reading can slow down human aging. Scientist R. Wilson investigated the brain of deceased centenarians. People who loved to read and write reduced the risk of developing senile dementia by 32% compared to others. Reading can also be supported by the arguments of scientists who have found that reading helps the human body to stay young longer. Ursula Lenz of the Federal Association of Organizations for the Elderly (BAGSO) says, “For older people, reading books is beneficial for several reasons. First, the ability to translate words into mental forms and images has a positive effect on cognitive functions. Secondly, reading helps you concentrate. Therefore, reading books can be considered a universal way, to keep a lively mind even in old age.”

Many believe that it is useful for a student to read only scientific and educational literature. Far from it. Works of art have a tremendous impact on the development of the brain, it is not for nothing that schoolchildren necessarily study the classics.

Reading can improve the “theory of mind” – the ability to perceive their own and other people’s experiences. This allows you to determine the state of the psyche of other people in order to explain and predict their actions. The level of empathy rises. There is an expansion of executive functions, which is expressed in the ability to analyze several points of view at the same time and switch attention between them.

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Essay on Benefits of Reading

Students are often asked to write an essay on Benefits of Reading in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Benefits of Reading

The joy of reading.

Reading is a rewarding habit that can entertain, inform, and inspire. It allows us to explore different worlds, cultures, and ideas, broadening our perspectives.

Improving Language Skills

Boosting cognitive abilities.

Reading stimulates our brain, improving focus, memory, and analytical skills. It’s like a workout for the mind, keeping it healthy and sharp.

Nurturing Empathy

Through reading, we can experience diverse emotions and situations, fostering empathy and understanding towards others.

Promoting Mental Health

Also check:

250 Words Essay on Benefits of Reading

Introduction.

Reading, often perceived as a simple act of decoding words on a page, transcends beyond this basic perception, offering a myriad of benefits that enrich our lives. This essay explores the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of reading.

Cognitive Development

Reading is a powerful tool for cognitive development. It enhances our understanding of complex concepts and ideas, stimulating intellectual curiosity. It improves concentration, attention to detail, and analytical thinking, fostering problem-solving abilities. Furthermore, reading extends our vocabulary and comprehension skills, strengthening our communication abilities.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Reading literature, particularly fiction, allows us to experience diverse perspectives, fostering empathy. It provides a safe space to navigate complex emotions, enhancing our emotional intelligence. This understanding can be applied in real-life situations, improving interpersonal relationships.

Mental Health Benefits

Life-long learning.

In conclusion, reading is not merely a hobby, but a potent tool for personal and intellectual growth. It enhances cognitive abilities, fosters empathy, promotes mental health, and cultivates a culture of lifelong learning. As college students, embracing the habit of reading can significantly enrich our academic journey and beyond.

500 Words Essay on Benefits of Reading

Reading is a fundamental skill that transcends the boundary of age, culture, and profession. It is an activity that is often underrated, yet it holds immense potential to enhance our lives in countless ways. This essay explores the profound benefits of reading, particularly focusing on cognitive enhancement, emotional intelligence, and personal growth.

Cognitive Enhancement

Moreover, reading exposes us to new ideas, concepts, and knowledge. It broadens our understanding of diverse subjects, from science and technology to philosophy and art. This intellectual nourishment fosters critical thinking skills, enabling us to analyze situations from multiple perspectives and make informed decisions.

Emotional Intelligence

Personal growth.

Reading also contributes significantly to personal growth. It broadens our horizons, exposing us to different cultures, histories, and philosophies. This exposure fosters a global perspective, enabling us to appreciate diversity and understand our place in the world.

In conclusion, reading is a powerful tool for cognitive enhancement, emotional intelligence, and personal growth. It is an activity that enriches our lives, providing intellectual stimulation, emotional depth, and personal insight. As we navigate the information age, where knowledge is power, the ability to read critically and empathetically becomes increasingly important. Therefore, we should embrace reading not merely as a pastime but as a pathway to a more enlightened, empathetic, and empowered existence.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

The Benefits of Reading

The Importance of Reading Essay in 100, 150, 200 & 500 Words

By Vijay Gupta

Updated on: April 28, 2023

Today, I’m going to write the importance of reading essay in 100, 150, 200 & 500 words. That means if you’re looking for an essay on the importance of reading, you have come to the right place.

Firstly, I’ll write the essay with headings so that you can write it comprehensively. After that, you will get to see the essay in 100, 150, and 200 words.

Hence without wasting your valuable time, let’s start writing the importance of reading essay.

See the short essay on my ambition of life .

Table of Contents

The Importance of Reading Essay with Headings in 500 Words

1. introduction.

Reading is the best practice whether it’s about reading a book or anything else. You get benefits in both situations.

Reading not only improves your thoughts but also develops your perspectives.

By reading, people’s mind moves towards positivity and serious thoughts. It actually changes the way you see the world. Reading keeps your mind more active than others. It also gives you knowledge about many things.

Reading anything is helpful. When you start taking interest in reading, your creative ability starts developing.

It prompts you to focus on the right path instead of choosing the wrong path. Overall, you can’t get such pleasure as you get in reading.

That’s why reading is very important in people’s life.

See also the essay on newspaper .

2. The Importance of reading

The importance of reading is as much as eating for living, that’s why its importance cannot be neglected.

When a child goes to school, he starts learning things related to his life. There, he tries to learn all the things that can enhance his understanding. At the same time, he tries to be creative. That is, the mind of the child starts developing by reading.

Overall, reading not only instills self-confidence in a person but also benefits him in many ways such as increasing knowledge, developing communication skills, reducing stress, etc.

Whenever a person gets into the habit of reading, he brings concentration to his studies. Reading more about a particular subject makes you more considerate and wiser than others. As a result, you’re able to explain right and wrong to anyone.

3. Changes after you start reading

When you start reading more, it starts changing your behavior, body language, perspectives, etc. You try to go deeper into what you read and start questioning. Overall, your perspective begins to change compared to others.

Reading makes you very strong not only creatively but also imaginatively. Also, it makes you mentally strong.

The more active you are in reading, the quicker you will be able to think things.

By reading more, you are able to do even the most difficult tasks very easily and patiently. It gives you such strength and confidence that you cannot get from anywhere else.

Reading initiates a vertical change in you that you cannot imagine.

4. Conclusion

If you have the habit of reading, surely you will have better knowledge than others, so if you don’t have the habit of reading, you should include it in your daily routine whether it is about reading books or anything else.

Reading for 30 and 35 minutes a day can take you to a higher level. So, I suggest you read whatever you love to read on a daily basis. It will always give you the advantage whether it is a matter of success or a bright future.

Reading books or other things will make you more relaxed than spending your free time.

Also, read the essay on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan .

The Importance of Reading Essay 200 Words

Reading is such a habit that can make anyone socially and mentally strong. It not only gives knowledge but also inspires us to uncover good thoughts.

Not all but there are still some people who like to read. When you get used to reading, your mind becomes sharper and more active than others.

Good reading always benefits you. Whatever you read gets set in your mind and when you remember it, you get many more new ideas.

Reading is also a kind of brain exercise that strengthens your mind.

While studying, you forget your past and future and always remain in the present. Also, it makes your memory better than others.

When someone gets inclined towards reading, he starts thinking in a new direction with a new beginning. At the same time, self-confidence starts growing inside and creativity starts improving.

Reading books or anything else is such an investment the benefit of which you get to see in the future. That’s why you all should include the habit of reading in you so that you can build a good society by spreading positive thoughts.

Read also, essay on social media addiction .

The Importance of Reading Essay 150 Words

Reading is so important in one’s life that without it one cannot gain knowledge. It increases stability, intelligence, and positivity in people’s minds.

Reading has been considered a good practice not from today but from the olden times. Today’s educated and employed people are good examples of this.

All of them have reached this point by reading books and proved how important reading is in our life. By reading books, people can easily utilize their time, avoid negative thoughts, achieve the goals set by them, etc.

Additionally, reading can easily raise the status of living. Actually, it brings changes in your language, style, attitude, vocabulary, etc. So, whenever you feel stressed or bored, you can read whatever you like.

As reading good books enhances knowledge, similarly reading newspapers and novels open your mind. Additionally, you get a vivid view of the surroundings.

By reading, your mind becomes calm and in one direction, due to which your concentration increases and you become smarter than others.

The Importance of Reading Short Essay 100 Words

A few people have the habit of reading. Those who have, understand its importance very well. The habit of reading is considered one of the good habits because by reading well you not only get knowledge but also get new vocabulary.

There can be many reasons for reading, but the main reason is to fill yourself with knowledge. You cannot get deep knowledge from anywhere except books.

It’s believed that the people who are fond of reading, their working style, intellectual ability, and creative ability are completely different from common people.

That’s why reading is very important. It’s really a very good way to de-stress yourself.

Final words

Eventually, I hope that the article must have proved to be very helpful for you. Now, you will have no problem writing the importance of reading essay.

If you really liked this article, please share it with those who need it.

Vijay Gupta

Hello everyone, My name is Vijay Gupta and I belong to a very small town that is situated in district Hardoi, which is in Uttar Pradesh. 1. Education – I’ve completed my primary education from a private school that is situated in my hometown and upper primary, matric and higher secondary education have been completed from a government college. Well, I was an average student till class 5th, but I accelerated my preference towards studies from class six. Consequently, I passed out many classes with good positions. Even I passed out 12th with good marks ( 405/500 ) and topped my college. Due to getting good marks, I got a cheque of 500 rupees and was rewarded by the Principal of my college. After completing my 12th, I prepared twice for IIT ( Indian Institute of Technology ) from Aakash institute, but unfortunately, I failed to get selected into the best IIT colleges. But during the preparation, I was being graduated from CSJMU Kanpur. I completed my graduation in 2016 and now I’m pursuing an educational degree ( B.Ed. ). 2. Profession – Although I love teaching, but I also do blogging. Both are my favorite jobs.

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Advantages of Reading Books IELTS Essay: How to Write?

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Updated on 15 April, 2024

Mrinal Mandal

Study abroad expert.

Have you come across the topic- Advantages of reading books for the IELTS essay? This is not a difficult topic, provided you have a clear blueprint on what to write. Structure your essay logically, beginning with an introduction to reading and your perception of the same. Then mention the advantages of reading books before concluding with a crisp and succinct conclusion. This is how you should write your IELTS essay. Here are a couple of samples to help you practice the same.

Sample essay 1:.

Sample Essay 2:

Explore More Resources Related to IELTS Essays:

Advantages of reading books ielts essay: samples for reference .

Reading is one of the greatest pleasures of life. It not only refreshes the mind but enriches one’s social consciousness. As Garrison Keillor aptly said, “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” There are numerous benefits of reading books for individuals of almost all ages and life stages. Parents should inculcate the reading habit in their children from an early age. This helps in enhancing their powers of communication and confidence as a result.

Books provide an outlet for gathering knowledge and insights on the world, history, society, and various topics. They are indispensable for broadening one’s horizons and getting exposure to various characters, events, circumstances, philosophies, and more. This automatically enhances social skills while opening the mind to newer creative and imaginative possibilities. Most importantly, a regular reading habit enhances vocabulary and grammatical skills along with overall mastery over any language. It helps in developing suitable writing, analytical, and reading skills at the same time.

Reading is also a stress-buster, an escape from the humdrum of daily life. It enables supreme mental relaxation for most individuals. Reading books is the biggest foundation for becoming an erudite, knowledgeable, informed, creative, empathetic, and open-minded individual. At the same time, readers get exposure to varied cultural tastes and literary works. They get an opportunity to understand and appreciate the finest literary works of their age. To conclude, books are the biggest gifts of life; nowhere else can you find recreation and mental development taking place simultaneously.

Tentative Band Score: 6

Word Count: 249

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Sample Essay 2:

Vera Nazarian stated, “Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world, a door opens to allow in more light.” Indeed, reading books is a practice and habit that is laden with advantages. This is one addiction that is strongly encouraged at all ages and in every possible scenario. Reading books is the window to the world for most people, especially from an early age. Books are the gateway towards imbibing vital knowledge and insights on life, along with building up one’s literary appreciation skills.

Books also open up our vistas to diverse subjects, aspects, and events of life. They serve to enrich our intellect in multifarious and unfathomable ways. Reading books is also helpful for sharpening our reading, writing, and language skills. You can expect to build a strong vocabulary and word bank while enhancing your creativity and imagination. As they say, the more we read, the more we attune ourselves to being open to newer possibilities, experiences, and circumstances. In a way, reading books is one of the pillars of a liberal, tolerant, open-minded and knowledgeable society that learns how to ask questions and gather knowledge while respecting divergent beliefs simultaneously.

Books are food for the soul; just as rest relaxes and refreshes our bodies, books perform the same role for our minds. They keep us sharp, mentally agile, and curious at all ages. This has a direct impact on the quality of life and wellbeing. To conclude, it can be said that reading books comes with a truckload of benefits for every individual.

Tentative IELTS Score: 5.5

Word Count: 257

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Ielts exam overview.

IELTS is required to be taken by international students and workers who wish to study or work in a country where English is the primary language of communication. Know the complete details.

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In IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 starts with a diagram, a visual representation of information. It can be a table, map, graph, process, diagram, or picture.

IELTS Essay Samples

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Reading Books — The Benefits of Reading Books

The Benefits of Reading Books

Categories: Reading Books

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Published: Mar 1, 2019

Words: 1147 | Pages: 3 | 6 min read

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My Story of Domestic Violence Got Redacted, So I Wore It Instead

After parts of comedian and screenwriter Chelsea Devantez’s memoir, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, were blacked out, making a dress out of her old journal entries allowed her to speak.

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When I fell in love for the first time, I was sure we’d be together forever, but forever turned sour in just a few short months. I’d heard that my boyfriend cheated on me, so I angrily confronted him in a park. He looked off to the side and started shuffling backwards, as he weakly offered: Are you just gonna believe everything people tell you? The breakup happened fast. My heartache felt dramatically poetic, but it was actually quite cumbersome: I had to set my backpack down and wiggle my trembling arms free of his denim jacket one by one and hand it over. Then I had to reach behind my neck, pull at the leather knot of his shark tooth necklace, and struggle to loosen it until finally I could pull it over my head and toss it at him. With that, I had turned in all my girlfriend accoutrements.

A few days later he began begging for me back, doing wildly romantic gestures and apologizing in long monologues and handwritten letters. I happily fell back into his arms. Then something terrible would happen in the relationship and we’d break up again. His romantic gestures turned into menacing threats, and this break-up-and-get-back-together cycle continued until eventually he did three drive-by shootings of my house.

Anytime I used to tell someone this story, horror would flash across their face, and I would quickly follow it up with, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

When we picture domestic violence, we often conjure a muted color palette, shadows looming in the corners, as brutal images tumble about to a vicious soundtrack. But that’s not what it like felt to live it. Abuse occurs in the mundane: It happens as you’re grabbing Skittles from 7-Eleven, and when he’s telling you how beautiful you look that day. Abuse sometimes feels like just another moment when you can’t believe what a shithead your boyfriend is, because your brain learned to ignore the red flags way back when you were even entering into the relationship. During the worst of it, I was not a shattered woman hiding in a closet; I was still wondering if my butt looked okay in my jeans or if I had left my flat iron on.

chelsea devantez wearing the dress she made from her journal entries

I told the story of my relationship and those shootings in my upcoming memoir, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This , which is out on June 4. But when I turned in the manuscript, I was told to delete the story of domestic violence. They said something like, “It’s too dangerous to share.” I was enraged at the decision and I couldn’t get out of bed for days. I called in sick to work as I wrestled with the concept of deleting the entire story I’d worked my whole life to have the stamina to share.

I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: (But I'm Going to Anyway)

I am not someone you would ever expect to have been a victim of domestic violence. I’m a comedian and TV writer for a living, I love a bold lip, and sadly, I used to quote Lean In back when I made other terrible decisions, like wearing peplum tops and Santa-sized belts out to the club. You would never expect me to have been in a violent relationship, but that’s because you never expect anyone you know to be a victim of domestic violence. But statistically, it’s one in four—it’s happening to the woman next to you at the grocery store, or it could be your best friend, your mom, your sister, your girlbossing annoying manager. No one looks or acts like your typical domestic violence victim, because our stories have lived in the shadows, so much so that most people don’t know what to look for, including the ones going through it.

.css-1aear8u:before{margin:0 auto 0.9375rem;width:34px;height:25px;content:'';display:block;background-repeat:no-repeat;}.loaded .css-1aear8u:before{background-image:url(/_assets/design-tokens/elle/static/images/quote.fddce92.svg);} .css-1bvxk2j{font-family:SaolDisplay,SaolDisplay-fallback,SaolDisplay-roboto,SaolDisplay-local,Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:1.625rem;font-weight:normal;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;margin-bottom:0.3125rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1bvxk2j{font-size:2.125rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-1bvxk2j{font-size:2.125rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1bvxk2j{font-size:2.25rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-1bvxk2j{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-1bvxk2j b,.css-1bvxk2j strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-1bvxk2j em,.css-1bvxk2j i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-1bvxk2j i,.css-1bvxk2j em{font-style:italic;} They might tell me that I can’t tell my story, but it doesn’t matter, because I already did, years ago in the pages of my journals that now rest on my skirt.”

We relegate these stories to thrillers and Lifetime movies and murder podcasts. But the more intimate partner violence stories are kept in the dark and deleted from books, the harder it is to have examples in culture of how to say something, fight back, or survive. I had wanted to tell the story of my relationship in a way that could help someone inside one recognize themselves. I even wanted to make it funny, just to be able to tell one of these stories in a genre it’s not usually allowed into. (Now, you are probably wondering how in the hell I planned to make my story funny, but what if I told you that he and his friends called themselves “The Big Dawgs” and would bark in harmony along to 2Pac songs. I mean, c’mon, that’s at least kind of funny.)

So I refused to delete it. Instead, I redacted just enough words so that technically they couldn’t tell me no. Instead of telling my story, I used the black bars in my book to tell a new one, perhaps a more important one: the story of how our systems are set up to silence victims in the name of protection. And now, my comedy gal memoir is more blacked out than a bachelor party.

Before turning in my final draft, I fact checked everything in the book with the dozens of journals I had kept when I was younger. When I began to read through them, I found that a younger me had written pages and pages of details that would put Brett Kavanaugh’s so-called calendars to shame. As my fingers paged through each diary, I realized that despite thinking that “maybe it wasn’t that bad,” it was, in fact, far worse than I had ever remembered. That’s when I decided to do what any traumatized debut author slash comedian might: I scanned 900 pages of my journals via an app on my phone and sent them to the designer Diego Montoya to make into a dress for me to wear on my book tour.

They might tell me that I can’t tell my story, but it doesn’t matter, because I already did, years ago in the pages of my journals that now rest on my skirt.

a person in a dress holding a large bag of trash on a street

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AI firms mustn’t govern themselves, say ex-members of OpenAI’s board

For humanity’s sake, regulation is needed to tame market forces, argue Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley

C AN PRIVATE companies pushing forward the frontier of a revolutionary new technology be expected to operate in the interests of both their shareholders and the wider world? When we were recruited to the board of OpenAI—Tasha in 2018 and Helen in 2021—we were cautiously optimistic that the company’s innovative approach to self-governance could offer a blueprint for responsible AI development. But based on our experience, we believe that self-governance cannot reliably withstand the pressure of profit incentives. With AI ’s enormous potential for both positive and negative impact, it’s not sufficient to assume that such incentives will always be aligned with the public good. For the rise of AI to benefit everyone, governments must begin building effective regulatory frameworks now.

If any company could have successfully governed itself while safely and ethically developing advanced AI systems, it would have been OpenAI . The organisation was originally established as a non-profit with a laudable mission: to ensure that AGI , or artificial general intelligence— AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—would benefit “all of humanity”. Later, a for-profit subsidiary was created to raise the necessary capital, but the non-profit stayed in charge. The stated purpose of this unusual structure was to protect the company’s ability to stick to its original mission, and the board’s mandate was to uphold that mission. It was unprecedented, but it seemed worth trying. Unfortunately it didn’t work.

Last November, in an effort to salvage this self-regulatory structure, the OpenAI board dismissed its CEO , Sam Altman. The board’s ability to uphold the company’s mission had become increasingly constrained due to long-standing patterns of behaviour exhibited by Mr Altman, which, among other things, we believe undermined the board’s oversight of key decisions and internal safety protocols. Multiple senior leaders had privately shared grave concerns with the board, saying they believed that Mr Altman cultivated “a toxic culture of lying” and engaged in “behaviour [that] can be characterised as psychological abuse”. According to OpenAI, an internal investigation found that the board had “acted within its broad discretion” to dismiss Mr Altman, but also concluded that his conduct did not “mandate removal”. OpenAI relayed few specifics justifying this conclusion, and it did not make the investigation report available to employees, the press or the public.

The question of whether such behaviour should generally “mandate removal” of a CEO is a discussion for another time. But in OpenAI’s specific case, given the board’s duty to provide independent oversight and protect the company’s public-interest mission, we stand by the board’s action to dismiss Mr Altman. We also feel that developments since he returned to the company—including his reinstatement to the board and the departure of senior safety-focused talent—bode ill for the OpenAI experiment in self-governance.

Our particular story offers the broader lesson that society must not let the roll-out of AI be controlled solely by private tech companies. Certainly, there are numerous genuine efforts in the private sector to guide the development of this technology responsibly, and we applaud those efforts. But even with the best of intentions, without external oversight, this kind of self-regulation will end up unenforceable, especially under the pressure of immense profit incentives. Governments must play an active role.

And yet, in recent months, a rising chorus of voices—from Washington lawmakers to Silicon Valley investors—has advocated minimal government regulation of AI . Often, they draw parallels with the laissez-faire approach to the internet in the 1990s and the economic growth it spurred. However, this analogy is misleading.

Inside AI companies, and throughout the larger community of researchers and engineers in the field, the high stakes—and large risks—of developing increasingly advanced AI are widely acknowledged. In Mr Altman’s own words, “Successfully transitioning to a world with superintelligence is perhaps the most important—and hopeful, and scary—project in human history.” The level of concern expressed by many top AI scientists about the technology they themselves are building is well documented and very different from the optimistic attitudes of the programmers and network engineers who developed the early internet.

It is also far from clear that light-touch regulation of the internet has been an unalloyed good for society. Certainly, many successful tech businesses—and their investors—have benefited enormously from the lack of constraints on commerce online. It is less obvious that societies have struck the right balance when it comes to regulating to curb misinformation and disinformation on social media, child exploitation and human trafficking, and a growing youth mental-health crisis.

Goods, infrastructure and society are improved by regulation. It’s because of regulation that cars have seat belts and airbags, that we don’t worry about contaminated milk and that buildings are constructed to be accessible to all. Judicious regulation could ensure the benefits of AI are realised responsibly and more broadly. A good place to start would be policies that give governments more visibility into how the cutting edge of AI is progressing, such as transparency requirements and incident-tracking.

Of course, there are pitfalls to regulation, and these must be managed. Poorly designed regulation can place a disproportionate burden on smaller companies, stifling competition and innovation. It is crucial that policymakers act independently of leading AI companies when developing new rules. They must be vigilant against loopholes, regulatory “moats” that shield early movers from competition, and the potential for regulatory capture. Indeed, Mr Altman’s own calls for AI regulation must be understood in the context of these pitfalls as having potentially self-serving ends. An appropriate regulatory framework will require agile adjustments, keeping pace with the world’s expanding grasp of AI ’s capabilities.

Ultimately, we believe in AI ’s potential to boost human productivity and well-being in ways never before seen. But the path to that better future is not without peril. OpenAI was founded as a bold experiment to develop increasingly capable AI while prioritising the public good over profits. Our experience is that even with every advantage, self-governance mechanisms like those employed by OpenAI will not suffice. It is, therefore, essential that the public sector be closely involved in the development of the technology. Now is the time for governmental bodies around the world to assert themselves. Only through a healthy balance of market forces and prudent regulation can we reliably ensure that AI ’s evolution truly benefits all of humanity. ■

Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley were on OpenAI’s board from 2021 to 2023 and from 2018 to 2023, respectively.

Read a response to this article by Bret Taylor, the chair of Open AI’ s board, and Larry Summers, a board member.

Explore more

By invitation june 1st 2024.

OpenAI board members respond to a warning by former members

From the June 1st 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

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Guest Essay

A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing

A tall stack of paper, with many red pens and markers sticking out from the sheets.

By James Kirchick

Mr. Kirchick is a contributing writer to Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail and the author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.”

This month, an account on X with the handle @moyurireads and 360 followers published a link to a color-coded spreadsheet classifying nearly 200 writers according to their views on the “genocide” in Gaza. Titled “Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?,” it reads like a cross between Tiger Beat and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The novelist Emily St. John Mandel, the author of “Station Eleven” and “Sea of Tranquility,” earned a red “pro-Israel/Zionist” classification because, according to the list’s creator, she “travels to Israel frequently talks favorably about it.” Simply for posting a link to the Israeli chapter of the Red Cross, the novelist Kristin Hannah was deemed a “Zionist,” as was the author Gabrielle Zevin for delivering a book talk to Hadassah, a Jewish women’s organization. Needless to say, the creator of the list — whose post on X announcing it garnered over a million views within a few days — encourages readers to boycott any works produced by “Zionists.”

The spreadsheet is but the crudest example of the virulently anti-Israel — and increasingly antisemitic — sentiment that has been coursing through the literary world since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. Much of it revolves around the charge of genocide and seeks to punish Zionists and anyone else who refuses to explicitly denounce the Jewish state for allegedly committing said crime. Since a large majority of American Jews (80 percent of whom, according to a 2020 poll , said that caring about Israel is an important or essential part of their Judaism) are Zionists, to accuse all Zionists of complicity in genocide is to anathematize a core component of Jewish identity.

Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming.

As is always and everywhere the case, this growing antisemitism is concomitant with a rising illiberalism. Rarely, if ever, do writers express unanimity on a contentious political issue. We’re a naturally argumentative bunch who — at least in theory — answer only to our own consciences.

To compel them to express support or disapproval for a cause is one of the cruelest things a society can do to writers, whose role is to tell society what they believe, regardless of how popular the message may be. The drawing up of lists, in particular, is a tactic with a long and ignominious history, employed by the enemies of literature — and liberty — on both the left and the right. But the problem goes much deeper than a tyro blacklist targeting “Zionists.”

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Essay on Benefits of Reading

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