All learning is important, but some areas are more important than others. Suppose that you needed to do a math problem or a science experiment. Both of those tasks would involve reading. Being able to read well is an essential skill in school and later in life.

Most people learn to read early in life, either before they start school or in the first year,

but not everyone reads much outside their classes. When they graduate and go to work, they might read even less as life gets busy for them. However, people need a lot of practice

in reading so they can continue to learn and to understand more about themselves and the people around them.

People read all the time, even if they do not think about it. Reading comes in many forms, including medicine bottle instructions, street signs, and cookie recipes. For some people, an ability to read well can make the difference between passing or failing a course, or possibly getting a job or not.

The need for reading in a career like teaching is obvious, but even many very physically active fields need a certain level of reading. Truck drivers, for example, need to read highway and street signs to know what road to take, and they need to be able to fill out government forms and other documents. Gardeners need to be able to read the labels of weed killers or fertilizers to avoid harming the plants.

People might think that the only important reading is whatever relates to their own fields, but that is a mistake. A wide range of reading, including fiction, can help build up people’s vocabulary and make it easier for them to learn what they need to know.

For example, suppose that you wanted to become a doctor. You would need to know technical terms like fibula and capillaries, but you would also need to know a lot of other words that join the technical terms together. If you become a historian, you will need to know many different words that might not be directly related to your field but which are important for understanding a text.

Still, not all reading is equally helpful. Reading a cereal box or a comic book is a good start, but people are unlikely to learn much vocabulary or to explore new ways of expressing themselves from them. Magazines can be good, but the length of books can often be helpful in teaching people to concentrate for longer periods of time. Most university students and many workers need to have this kind of ability to focus, and reading books can help.

Do you have a special interest like reptiles or trees or maybe spies and codebreaking? You can use these interests to practice your reading skills. If you come across new words, you can write them down and then look them up in a dictionary or ask someone about them later on. However you practice your reading skills, it will help you now and in the future.

Bibliography:

Cohen, Kat. “The Truth About Outside Reading: Why It’s Important and What to Read.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kat-cohen/the-truth-about-outside-r_b_5997698.html.

Green, Tim. “17 Reasons Why Reading is Important for Children and Adults.”
http://timgreensyracuse.org/17-reasons-why-reading-is-important-for-children-and-adults/

Mississippi College. “Importance of Reading for Elementary Students.”
https://online.mc.edu/articles/education/reading-for-elementary-students.aspx.

PBS.org. “The Importance of Reading.” http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/learning-disabilities/types/reading/the-importance-of-reading/.

Pearson.com. “Why Reading is Important.”
https://www.pearson.com/uk/learners/primary-parents/learn-at-home/help-your-child-to-enjoy-reading/why-is-reading-so-important.html