Many of you who are still in high school have been forced a curriculum in your English class. And many of the books you read in your class can be a little… how should I say this… dry. Boring. “The Classics,” as many like to call them, are a distant cousin to what people are writing nowadays, and so it is very easy to detach or distance yourself from the writing. I think it perfectly normal, in fact. However, if you are reading the right stuff, you will find value beyond what your English class purports to teach. I’ve talked about picking the right book for you in the past; if you are looking for what to read, check out the archives. But if you are trying to understand why you should be reading fiction, carry on!
Vocabulary
So, vocabulary, as I have written about before, is a temperamental beast. It is temperamental because it is something easily forgotten. And acquiring new vocabulary for good is a massive challenge. Reading fiction, however, exposes you to that vocabulary in a way you can understand and pick it up rather easily.
In addition to being exposed to new vocabulary, you get to practice something called ‘reading through context.’ Reading through context is a technique where you have to read around the word—i.e. the sentence/paragraph in which the vocabulary word is embedded—and guess its meaning. Doing so increases your reading comprehension immensely, and believe me when I tell you that this is a strategy you can use for practically every reading challenge you will encounter in your life. Just think about your English diplomas, for example. There is tough vocabulary, vocabulary designed to trip you up and confuse you, but if you can read and learn through context, you will have no issues whatsoever.
Even more, getting into the habit of learning vocabulary is like any other habit or talent. When you start doing something, it’s difficult to find the time to develop the skill. It’s hard to motivate yourself to do it. But if you push yourself and continue to learn new vocabulary on a regular basis, it’s like learning anything; it gets easier. And pretty soon, you will have an enormous repertoire of words to unleash upon the world!
Reading Comprehension
Have you ever found yourself reading… but not reading? Like, your eyes are moving, from left to right, focusing on every word, every piece of punctuation, but nothing is making its way into your head? There might as well be a wall in between your brain and the words on the page. It’s an incredibly common phenomenon, one that I experienced for the longest time, so don’t feel bad if it is a common occurrence (Sometimes, I would even read out loud to try and climb over that wall, but that didn’t work either. My brain was stubborn!)
So, the best way to get over this phenomenon is to stop. Stop reading. Put the book down for 5 minutes and think to yourself, what happened? Why did my brain suddenly stop interpreting the words? There could be a thousand different reasons. Maybe you were bored. Maybe the material was boring. But once you physically tear yourself away from the book, which was—let’s face it—boring you anyways, you can begin to develop a habit of it. The trick is to catch yourself in those moments when nothing is going into your brain. After a couple times, you will be able to recognize the sensation more quickly. And then, you will be able to shake the feeling almost immediately. You will be able to concentrate with more intensity and for longer periods. Trust me when I say that this will not happen immediately. It will take time and patience. It took me until my third year of university to fully adapt, and many hours had been lost to the wall before then.
So how does this relate to fiction? Well, fiction is an outlet where you can practice this tactic. You should time yourself and see how long you can maintain your concentration to see if your abilities grow. If you have a good enough book, you will find yourself interested and absorbed. Fiction—good fiction—is the mechanism which allows for this absorption to happen, and when it finally happens, you will find your reading comprehension will skyrocket.
Exposure
OK I need to be brief. So. Exposure. Think of exposure as social exposure, like you’d get at a dinner party or whatever, except in this case there is no pressure on you. You get to live vicariously through characters, and in doing so, acquire life experience. That’s right; you are the beneficiary of a social experiment, like a scientist watching rats in a maze. Similarly, fictional books place characters into challenging and often ridiculous situations. They have to make hard decisions, and you get to see their decision-making patterns in action. Basically, you get to see decisions that work well…and decisions that don’t. And you can apply them to your own life. Reading fiction is a consequence free zone where you can learn and develop with the character and apply life lessons that the character takes away to your own. What a blessing!
For some, fiction is boring. I fully realize this, but I challenge you to go to a book store and not find something that interests you. Voracious readers of fiction have reading comprehension that is simply above those who don’t. And reading is a skill which you can apply to every single facet of your professional life, regardless of your profession. Chefs need to write recipes and instructions. Construction workers need to be able to read blueprints. So read fiction. Read it for the vocabulary, read it for the comprehension skills, and read it for the exposure to life lessons.