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It has been well established that Reading is a very important skill for a person in order to first acquire and discover the grammar of his first language (and acquire at the same time new vocabulary) but more than that ,once you can read you can acquire information and with them new knowledge ,new abilities and new skills. We “readers” all know that, but even if we are convinced we still struggle to transfer our “love of reading” to our children. Why don't we succeed in creating a love or at least an interest for this activity? I think the first mistake we make is that us as adults are not giving a good example. What do I mean by that? We are not reading anymore or we are reading less than our parents were reading and by not showing our kids that reading can be interesting we reduce their chances to appreciate reading has an activity. I'm speaking here about reading a real book and not reading on a Tablet or laptop, even if it's legitimate reading , the example given is “to stay in front of a screen” and not “have fun opening a book” . The second mistake done is that most of the time the ability to read is taught in school and not really complemented by parents at home. Consequently reading is seen as homework and not as a fun activity. Moreover, many teachers give their students list of books to read during the year and few of those teachers explain the reason why the book has been chosen, the book once more appears as part of a due task and not as an element who can give you a good time and also make you better (or even open a door to a new activity). A second element add up to this remark, the books we have to read for school are (most of the time) part of a curriculum and are often classics, I am not discussing here the value of classics but more the lack of interest they have for young readers (classics have to be read usually by pupils or students around the age of 15 a period of our evolution has a person in which we don’t really are focused on learning from dead writers). The third mistake is one made through judgement. Novels have not really been my friends during my school years ( mainly because as i explained before i had to read classics ) and in order to keep me reading my parents started ( for me and my younger brother ) two collections (Tintin and Yakari) and this move worked perfectly ,I was eagerly waiting for the new book to come in our collection and was reading it as soon as it appeared .I was reading but as i heard several times “ you are only reading comics ” as if this kind of books was a lower quality … in my opinion reading is reading , and any text is a step towards reading ( more). The kind of judgement about how worthy is a type of support ( books, tabloids , comics ,etc. ) is bad if you try to get a child to read , a text read ( especially at the beginning ) is a victory for the (young) reader and it should not be diminished because of the type of document it is written on. There is no secret potion or perfect solution in order to make children like books and reading but a first step might be just helping them to find the text ( or support ) which will start the journey some will start with almost anything others ( like me ) will need more time and more tries.
