Teach English in QiAnjingou Zhen - Xilinguole Meng — Xilin Gol

Reading is important for a number of reasons. Books are said to be the best companion of a man in this world. “The pen is mightier than the sword”, the worth of this old saying cannot be denied. Success depends on knowledge, planning and hard work. There are number of ways to attain this knowledge. Reading is at the top. People read to learn and enjoy and it makes a person knowledgeable and confident. One utilizes this knowledge to manage day-to-day affairs as well as to face the toughest challenges of life. Teacher, doctors, engineers, IT experts, researchers, politicians and many others contribute through their services to benefit mankind just because of the knowledge they attain from reading. Reading opens the doors of opportunities in one’s life to learn from experiences of others and to enrich one’s own expertise. All the famous personalities had been in the habit of reading and it can be said ‘If you want to be a leader, you must be a reader’. Reading improves learning which is required in our routine life. It is the first thing taught in the school. Reading is, indeed, the most important skill in learning a language. The more we read, the better we write. It improves our vocabulary, spellings and sentence structure. It is believed reading cultivates the brain and gives the ability to understand other people. Moreover, it develops language. Reading is a tool to improve our imagination and creativity. Reading gives us new ideas. Reading also contributes in making a life better, for instance reading about influential personalities and learning from their experiences. Reading is a source for pleasure. It provides the reader an opportunity to reduce stress, mental stimulation, stronger analytical thinking as well as better writing skills. Fiction reading lessens the stress of routine life and disengages a person from his worldly worries. It makes the reader so much absorbed in what is being read that he finds himself in a new world, relax and afresh and sometime forget about the world around him. In the same way, autobiographies give an insight into the lives of people and fiction takes readers to the places of unseen, otherwise unfamiliar to world. Reading helps people at their work place. It enables them to understand and correspond with the clients a better way. It multiplies their knowledge and gives them confidence to discharge their duties. Parents and teachers play a vital role in order to instill reading habits in children. Children love listening stories. Reading books to children is like spending a quality time and great experience for both parents and children. Storybook reading helps children’s language growth, develops literacy and reading achievement. A child has a habit to imitate. Once he sees his mother holding him in his arm, reading for him, his inquisitive nature makes him hold the same book, sees the pictures and tries to repeat his mother’s words even if he does not know how to read. In short, if parents are in the habit of reading, the child gets inspired and develops the same habit. Parents should set a room or at least a corner in the room where books are kept. It is good if parents go on shopping, they buy a book appropriate for child’s age and interest if possible. Parent need to monitor the material being read by the children. It can be a good practice if twenty to thirty minutes given for reading daily. In schools, students should be encouraged to also read books besides the text book. It relieves their stress and enhance their knowledge which ultimately helps in their learning. The role of teacher is very important in this regard. She can guide the students to select the books. Reading in a group in the classroom also increases students’ interest in books. Particularly, when children learn to read at an early age, they can become more fluent readers because of their greater knowledge and learning capacity. At earlier level stage, students require basic reading skills that include phonemic awareness, sight word recognition, phonics, and word analysis. So the facilitator has to focus and inculcate essential skills of reading that consist of identification of sounds, associated with reproduced letters and decoding. Reading can be taught in a fun ways and it helps students love to read by making it fun. The few strategies will lead them to be independent readers for instance displaying letters and words, creating word families, decoding, words searching bingo games. Once a child develops a habit of reading, he is on the path which leads to the destination of success.