What you lose by not reading

"I asked a room full of M.A. English students about the reading they were doing outside the curriculum. At least a third did not do any, which makes them functional aliterates. Aliterates are people that can read but do not. They read just enough to get by. If a language and literature department can have so many of them, then what about students in other disciplines?

What do you lose by becoming an aliterate? Quite a lot, actually. According to Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in the United States, while reading “we are forced to construct, to produce narrative, to imagine. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language — when you watch a film or listen to a tape — you don't press pause.” Hence, the mind receives a far more vigorous workout whilst reading than consuming any other form of media. It is not surprising that avid readers tend to possess better memories and minds more equipped to resist the exigencies of ageing than those who do not read. Their capacity for learning also tends to be far more advanced. In addition, since reading requires more concentration than other media, an avid reader's mind tends to be more focused which allows him or her to make good decisions."

More: http://www.thehindu.com/education/issues/article3232453.ece

A world in a book

"Ever since I was a small child, I never felt anything but pure love for reading books of all shapes and sizes. It was not until later that I realized that reading books was not just a form of entertainment but also a powerful tool that humans have used to communicate and gain knowledge as early as people could write.

A good book can open up minds to new ideas that seemed impossible before. Doctors, teachers, psychologists, mothers, cooks, students and every occupation imaginable requires proficient reading skills to succeed at what they do not only in their jobs but in their lives as well

This is because reading is the basis for all the other communication skills, such as writing, speaking, and even listening. Books are the key to the hearts of thousands of people. They record who we essentially are as humans. Books have the power to create riots, to calm stressful days, or to inspire new movements in the world. A world can be contained within a book’s pages."

More: http://my.hsj.org/DesktopModules/ASNE/ASNE.Newspapers/Mobile.aspx?newspaperid=48&editionid=0&categoryid=0&articleid=508090&userid=0



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Literature vs Social Networking. And the winner is...

"There can be no doubt that books are losing ground to other pastimes, especially electronic ones.

Educators see this as a problem because as social media becomes popular, young people are missing out on the many benefits of reading, including increased vocabulary, improved cognitive skills and improved concentration.

Good literature communicates with its readers on a personal level and gives them insights into the world around them in a way that news reports and twitter updates simply can’t. se of the time than we could get from reading about the major events in a history book. We connect with the story and the characters and in doing so, we come to understand that period in history. 

And that’s not the only thing we understand. We develop sympathy for some of the characters. We make value judgements about the actions of other ones. We make a mental picture of the events in the novel. We engage our intellects and our imaginations when we read. Books broaden our horizons and inspire us. Furthermore, the impact lasts much longer than the shelf life of the average Internet sensation."

More: http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=editorial&NewsID=22718



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What is Life without Reading

"without reading, there can be no learning; without learning, there can be no sense of a larger world; without the sense of a larger world, there can be no ardor to find it; without ardor, where is joy?

Without reading, there can be no learning. The humanities are essentially a reading practice. It is no accident that we say we “read” music, or that we “read” visual import. The arts (music, art, literature, theater), because they offer themselves to be “read,” generate many of the humanities—musicology, art history, literary commentary, dramatic interpretation. Through language, spoken or written, we investigate, describe, and interpret the world. The arts are, in their own realm, silent with respect to language; amply showing forth their being, they are nonetheless not self-descriptive or self-interpreting. There can be no future for the humanities—and I include philosophy and history—if there are no human beings acquainted with reading in its emotionally deepest and intellectually most extensive forms. And learning depends on reading as a practice of immersion in thought and feeling."

Source: http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/09/reading-is-elemental