Reading Habit

How to Develop Your Reading Habit

Edited by Kienforcefidele, Puddy, Flickety, Shakira and 12 others

There are some people who like reading as a habit, and there are some people who only read because they’re told to. There is another kind of person who wants to make reading a habit, but just can't do it. Well, here’s a way to start developing your reading habit and make you a true book lover!

1.Pick up a book. If you are nowhere near a book, how are you supposed to read? Try finding something to read. That can be anything, including newspapers, magazines, novels etc. The important thing is that the book you choose should be at your level. Don’t choose a book too high for your level because it will just waste your time.

2.Practice your reading habit. Now that you have found what you like to read, you can set a goal of 15 minutes a day of reading. During this time, you’re not supposed to care about anything except your reading. After 15 minutes, you can close your reading material and do something else. Practice this every day. Make it a habit. After you have gotten used to this habit, you can increase the time you need to read in a day to 20 or 30 minutes.  

3.Don’t give up. If you find that you cannot complete the task in the first place, don't be ashamed and hold your chin up! Remember, winners never quit! You just have to try again and again until you achieve it. 

4.Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. No kidding. If you find yourself being stressed while reading a book, don’t continue reading under pressure like that. Reading is for pleasure, not pressure, so don’t push yourself too hard until you might quit reading forever, or even if you can read, the outcome won’t be so good either.  

5. Before you start reading a book, browse the table of contents to form an idea of what the book is about. In storybooks or fictional books, there will usually be a short description at the back. You can look at the description to get a better idea of the book's contents. 

Read a review of the book before deciding whether to read it or not.

Tips

• Always remember this: a man who doesn't read books is no better than a man who can't read them.
• A bad habit is just like a comfortable bed. It is easy to get in, but hard to get out.
• Always be positive! Reading is fun if you think it is. Before you read a book, tell yourself, "I will enjoy reading this book!"
• A good book makes good reading.
• Never give up.
• Practice makes perfect.
• Know that: there is no alternative to reading.
• The ones who read bad books are no different from the ones who don’t read any books.

  Warnings

• Never cancel your reading schedule, even for a day.
• Don’t choose a book with too much difficult vocabulary.
• Don’t push yourself too hard.
• If you just starting to develop your reading habit, don’t try to jump to 30 or 60 minutes of reading a day, for it might spoil your pleasure of reading and it can also make you want to give up.

The Effect of the Internet on Reading Habits

  Some experts say that people are reading less than ever. In one sense that's true, at least for certain forms of writing. However, you might be reading a lot more than you think. There are more and more pieces of writing to read than ever before. However, the medium that we use to read is evolving.

• Reading is a task that we've historically associated with printed materials. Novels, textbooks, reference manuals, magazines, newspapers, journals, articles, poems, short stories... all of these great documents were historically printed and distributed on pieces of paper, bound or loose, for centuries. The invention of the printing press rivals the impact of the steam engine on advancing our world and disseminating knowledge to the masses. Both of these inventions are hundreds of years old.
  New technologies have had an equally huge impact on our world in a much shorter time. Just think of life without television, radio, and telecommunications: it almost seems impossible to imagine our world without these conveniences. They've become a huge part of modern life and many people spend hours each day using these media. Computers have grabbed a large slice of our available time and energies. To top it all off, the Internet, the medium that allows us to access the information playground that is the World Wide Web, has provided a whole new medium for information exchange. Although printed media still commands significant sales, you can read many of the same materials on-line via the World Wide Web. Books, traditional magazines, and journals are now distributed electronically. Blogs and other information resources (e.g. Wikipedia) are easily accessible, and searchable, on-line. There's plenty of material out there to read on paper and on computer screens. Are we still reading as much as we used to?
  Reading habits are typically measured by the number of minutes per day spent reading printed materials. You can also measure these habits by numbers of pages, documents, or books over time as well as the subject matter which is being read. A 2005 Canadian study by the Department of Canadian Heritage, "Reading and Buying Books For Pleasure", compared the results of a similar 1991 study (prior to the massive use of the Internet and the World Wide Web) to more recent research. You might think that the proliferation of video games, new television channels, and on-line games, along with Web surfing, might have had a negative impact on reading. The Internet did have an impact on reading, but the results may be a bit of a surprise.
  
  The World Wide Web has had a negative impact but only on certain kinds of reading. Internet usage has had an impact on magazine and newspaper reading, as well as television watching. However, the time spent reading books for pleasure has stayed constant during between the two studies, although people are managing to read fewer books per year (from 24.4 books per year in 1991 to 16.6 books per year by 2005).
  
  Although I don't have a scientific explanation for these trends, I'll speculate on the reasons for the decline in certain types of reading while others increase or stay constant over time. I think the reason lies in the realms of cost and distribution. Put simply, shorter writing is more easily and more freely available over the Internet than longer documents like novels or non-fiction books.
  Look at any major magazine or periodical in North America and you'll find a common attribute: they all have an on-line presence. This is also true for many more specialized magazines with more limited readerships: many magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and other periodicals are now available on-line at any time for the cost of an Internet connection. In addition, many publications that were weekly or monthly in print form are updated much more frequently on the Web. You can get more up-to-date information via periodical Web sites than their printed versions. Blogs and on-line newsletters add to the availability of free information. The incentive to wait for, find, and purchase printed periodicals diminishes everyday.
  
  Contrast this with books. There's no doubt that more and more books are being made available on-line, but the volume and variety of on-line books is relatively small and limited compared to their physical versions. Book publishers are not adopting on-line versions of their books with the same speed and gusto as the periodical publishers. And, unless the books are already in the public domain, publishers generally do not give away copies of new books for free. Just look at Scholastic and J. K. Rowling as an example of how book publishers are not only pursuing printed books, they are actively shunning on-line versions of their books. The Internet was abuzz with rumors and "leaks" of the text of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" prior to its publication, with the author asking the world-at-large to refrain from posting plot spoilers on the Internet.
  
  There's no doubt that the way we read Web pages, and our on-line content preferences, have a major impact on what we read, how long we read, and how attentively we read when on-line. However, when you consider that much of the Web's content is words, people are still doing a heck of a lot of reading. The biggest change is the media which we read, whereby computer screens are capturing an increasingly large slice of total reading time.
  
  Reading habits are changing. What we read and how we read is evolving over time. But are we reading less than we used to? I don't think so!