Good Writers and The Essence of the English Language

With the increasing use of technology and social media, people’s priorities are changing drastically. It has been seen that people are spending more time online, playing games and chatting on social media apps rather than working on their reading and writing skills. The vocabulary and the grammar used has ruined the essence of the English language and as a result it is seen that students are not able to express themselves clearly. Students are now spending less time reading which has caused the writing standards to deteriorate.

Reading and writing are a two-way street and they both are interconnected. Research has shown that reading and writing are complimentary and growth in one skill inevitably leads to growth in the other. Reading offers a lot of advantages. Firstly, it helps to strengthen our vocabulary which indeed helps in improving our writing skills. Secondly, it helps in simulating our imagination. It takes us to unknown places, new cultures, information outside our textbooks which helps in broadening our horizon and strengthens our creativity. 

Not only this reading helps in improved focus and concentration. Lastly and the most important benefit is that it improves mental health and reduces stress. Research has shown that people who actively participate in reading have improved mental health which slows the rate of Alzheimer and according to another research by the University of Sussex that reading reduces stress up to sixty eight percent. All the advantages of reading discussed above are actually the foundation stone of good and effective writing.

A Good reader incorporates reading into writing by focusing on three things: accurate understanding of content, reacting to reading and evaluation of reading. Accurate understanding of the content means that the reader tries to understand what the author is trying to say and whether the author is trying to call some beliefs or just add some details to previously agreed views. This helps in a deeper understanding of the context which further helps the reader in writing his response.

Reacting to reading means that the reader formulates his own opinion against the written material. By doing so reader incorporates his belief set, experiences, ideology and thought process into a well-defined response. Evaluation of reading is about measuring what a book or article actually accomplishes compared to its apparent ambitions, compared to reality, and compared to other books. It also mentions that the reader needs to assess the claims of the book and whether certain arguments can be justified and used.

Active Reading is the foundation of good and effective writing. The more a person reads the more knowledgeable he becomes which in turn leads to clear and concise expressing ideas in coherent manner. To conclude I would like to quote Stephen King: “the real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one's papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor. “