Deb­bie Ja­cob

It is easy to write about the im­por­tance of read­ing. Every­one talks about it, every­one knows it, but most peo­ple don't re­alise that the ef­fects of read­ing on aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance have been well doc­u­ment­ed in stud­ies that date back to the 1950s. Grant­ed, that re­search has tak­en place most­ly in Eng­land, Aus­tralia and the US. Still, there is much that we can learn from those stud­ies.

First and fore­most is the un­de­ni­able fact that chil­dren who do not en­gage in in­de­pen­dent read­ing over the "sum­mer" va­ca­tion pe­ri­od re­turn to school any­where from four to nine months be­hind their peers. (Most stud­ies claim about a four-month deficit. An ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Ber­nice E Cul­li­nan of New York Uni­ver­si­ty claims that deficit to be six months to a year.)

This does not mean that stu­dents who don't read lose four to nine months of aca­d­e­m­ic growth over the long hol­i­day. What it does mean is that they lose some ground while their in­de­pen­dent read­ing peers gain ground and surge ahead of non-read­ers. Chil­dren who read re­turn to school with an au­to­mat­ic head start.

Cul­li­nan de­fines in­de­pen­dent read­ing "as the read­ing stu­dents choose to do on their own. It re­flects the read­er's per­son­al choice of the ma­te­r­i­al to be read as well as the time and place to read it. In­de­pen­dent read­ing is done for in­for­ma­tion or for plea­sure. No one as­signs it; no one re­quires a re­port; no one checks on com­pre­hen­sion. In­de­pen­dent read­ing is al­so called vol­un­tary read­ing."

The trick is to nudge chil­dren to­wards in­de­pen­dent read­ing. Cul­li­nan, a renowned spe­cial­ist in chil­dren's read­ing, says re­search proves that stu­dents who choose a book in school are more like­ly to car­ry it home to read. This is why it is im­por­tant for schools to en­cour­age chil­dren to read as a habit, not to be giv­en up at the end of the school year.

All stud­ies on read­ing in­di­cate that stu­dents who en­gage in in­de­pen­dent read­ing-even for as lit­tle as 20 min­utes a day-de­vel­op a more ex­ten­sive vo­cab­u­lary, im­prove read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, de­vel­op ver­bal flu­en­cy, and gain valu­able gen­er­al in­for­ma­tion.

Cul­li­nan refers to a study of el­e­men­tary stu­dents and their read­ing habits to high­light this point. "The more stu­dents read out­side of school the high­er they scored on read­ing achieve­ment tests. Stu­dents who scored at the 90th per­centile on a read­ing test spent five times as many min­utes as chil­dren at the 50th per­centile, and more than 200 times as many min­utes per day read­ing books as the child at the 10th per­centile."

Aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess and read­ing be­gins at the very ba­sic lev­el: build­ing vo­cab­u­lary. "Read­ers with a rich vo­cab­u­lary un­der­stand con­tent and ap­pre­ci­ate the lan­guage used in well-writ­ten texts... Stu­dents ac­quire knowl­edge of some vo­cab­u­lary words as the re­sult of di­rect in­struc­tion, but that could on­ly ac­count for a mod­est pro­por­tion of the to­tal. To learn 3,000 words a year would re­quire learn­ing about 15 words every school day–more than even the most en­thu­si­as­tic teacher would at­tempt to teach. Vo­cab­u­lary is learned from read­ing," says Cul­li­nan.

She us­es five stud­ies to back up this claim. It is no sur­prise that sev­er­al stud­ies show a de­cline in read­ing af­ter the age of 12. Some stud­ies in­di­cate that those who kept read­ing were at­tract­ed ini­tial­ly by light read­ing in­clud­ing comics. As far back as 1986, stud­ies showed that stu­dents 12 to 14 pre­ferred to read se­ries.

"Stu­dents who read books in se­ries (sev­er­al books writ­ten about the same char­ac­ters) de­vel­oped read­ing flu­en­cy and the lin­guis­tic com­pe­tence nec­es­sary to read high­er qual­i­ty ma­te­r­i­al. "They gained knowl­edge of the world, learned sto­ry struc­tures, and be­came aware of lit­er­ary de­vices by read­ing se­ries books. Light read­ing be­came a step­ping stone to fur­ther read­ing. In­creased read­ing pro­fi­cien­cy and flu­en­cy makes it pos­si­ble for stu­dents to read more com­plex ma­te­r­i­al," says Cul­li­nan.

Re­search al­so shows that girls from 12 to 14 read to dis­cov­er in­for­ma­tion about them­selves and their re­la­tion­ships with their peers. Girls delv­ing in­to lit­er­a­ture might seem to like su­per­fi­cial or cat­ty lit­er­a­ture like Mean Girls. It is no sur­prise that the bet­ter read­ers ap­pre­ci­ate more com­plex lit­er­a­ture.

For his­tor­i­cal pur­pos­es, it is in­ter­est­ing to note that a study in 1973 re­ferred to in Cul­li­nan's ar­ti­cle found that "in a large-scale study in 15 coun­tries, the read­ing in­ter­ests of 14-year-olds were rat­ed as fol­lowed: (1) hu­mour, (2) his­to­ry and bi­og­ra­phy, sci­ence fic­tion, myths, and leg­ends, and (3) ad­ven­ture and cur­rent events." To­day, stu­dents are more in­ter­est­ed in sci-fi and myths. An in­ter­est in his­to­ry has waned. All stu­dents ap­pre­ci­ate good hu­mour.

A good ed­u­ca­tion is about more than read­ing. It's about de­vel­op­ing val­ues and so­cial skills that we all need to func­tion in so­ci­ety. There are many ar­ti­cles about this as well, but one that caught my eye was a re­cent US study that claims read­ing fic­tion helps chil­dren-and peo­ple in gen­er­al-to im­prove em­pa­thy.

There is just no way to con­vey how im­por­tant read­ing is. Make sure you work it in­to your chil­dren's hol­i­day. For more in­for­ma­tion check out the ar­ti­cles be­low:

• In­de­pen­dent Read­ing and School Achieve­ment (www.ala.org/.../slm­rb/slm­r­con­tents/vol­ume32000/in­de­pen­dent).

• Read­ing Fic­tion 'Im­proves Em­pa­thy', Study Finds (www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/07/read­ing-fic­tion-em­pa­thy-study).