Free Reading

 Many people ask me why I free read. There are many reasons why free reading can be good for you, it just depends on when you are trying to do it. If you try free reading when you are distracted with other ideas you will find it very difficult to read and focus on your book. This is why most of my free reading is done during summer vacation, so I have nothing else to do or to distract me from trying to read.  If there is other things going on in the place that you are attempting to free read, you most likely won’t get any free reading done, and you would have just wasted lots of time trying to read because you want to not because you have to.

This brings me to my next point, if you are forcing yourself to free read, or someone else is making you read a certain number of pages, or chapters, it will be very hard to try and continue reading when you get distracted. I know from personal experience that when I am required to read a book for class, it is much harder to read, because I feel pressure to make sure I read the correct amount of pages, in the designated time frame. I feel like when students are forced to read, they feel like they don’t have any control over what they are doing, so they try to resist reading. This could be why a lot of students say that they don’t like reading, because they associate reading, with the painful pressure of reading. So in fact, students may enjoy reading if they were shown that they can read at their own pace, and still enjoy the book.

We need to teach children young that reading can be enjoyable, because it has so many positives that can come out of it, such as, it widens your vocabulary. Reading can help you learn new words, which can in return, help you in school, on standardized tests, and the ACT/SAT. Even if you don’t think you are learning, you really could be unconsciously, because your brain picks up new information everywhere you are, even if you don’t realize it happening.

One of the biggest reasons why people should free read is because it takes you out of this world and into another. If you are going through a rough time, you can always look to a book, to get your mind of what is going on in your life. It can be a great distraction from the real world, by letting you step into someone else’s shoes.

Overall more children would enjoy free reading if, so teachers and parents didn’t force it upon them so much, and just let the children enjoy figuring out what free reading has to offer by themselves.