0:00 – Intro
0:12 – Reading As a Child
13:23 – Juber’s Relationship with Reading
14:07 – Prajay’s Relationship with Reading
14:26 – What Prajay’s Reading
17:14 – Gender Differences in Reading
22:00 – Jon’s Relationship with Reading
26:00 – Books vs. Ebooks vs. Audiobooks
36:46 – Reading in School
45:50 – The Benefits of Reading
54:50 – What’s Gone Wrong?
1:02:16 – Fiction Vs. Non-Fiction
1:05:34 – Tips for Learning Vocabulary
1:10:08 – Conclusion

Intro

[Music] The Education Lounge podcast one thing I wanted to talk about well to ask both of you is what your

Reading As a Child

relationship with reading was like as a child I think I know yours yeahyeah maybe you can you can tell us I grew up in a house of books made of madeof books so what happens when it rains uh well it’s got a good coverso it’s got a good jacket um so I feel from a young age I had avery good relationship with books um started reading quite quite young Idon’t even really know how young but I could read pretty much anything bythe time I was 11. like quiet with relative ease would you sayanything what do you like I think I would have had no trouble readingJordan Peterson by that age or really yeah like I I’ve never had trouble or TheGreat Gatsby I read some I I was reading adult books by the time I was like nineso oh yeah no I wasn’t doing that I couldn’t imagine John reading books yeah then my first Idol book that I read wasJurassic Park like the the actual book um by Michael Crichtonand yeah um that sort of kick-started sort of reading more difficult books butI’d also say like there were some children’s classic books like um Narniait’s my favorite the Narnia series because I think they’re interestingly placed and Ialways recommend it to people who there’s a lot of parents who who say okay how do I get my child to readmore difficult books um I think this is a good Gateway Series in a sense because it takes them likeit’s it’s not ridiculously difficult but it’s slightly more challenging than whatthey might have read before and they’re not very intimidating they’re not very uh like the whole series is quite thickbut you take a single book so the Magician’s Nephew um it’s quite thin I think it’s a goodGateway Series to more difficult books so I had a good relationship with books I’d actually saywhen I went to Secondary School my reading was curtailedI I think that is a issue with the school system to some extent because Ido think I was onto a good thing with all the reading and stuff like that and I imagine that I would have read a lotmore if I’d had more time by the same time it sort ofum I guess technology as well um when we were younger it wasn’t somuch of a thing because like the internet was kind of if anything a luxury like when when I was like uh 10 11 andthen it started to kick off well when we went to Secondary School basically yeah and I do think that probably affectedmy reading negatively like you’ve got to think like reading is entertainmentand it’s competing against other forms of entertainment and thusit’s much first of all it’s much more difficult to get into a book than to just watch a video so a lot takes a lotmore commitment um and I think a lack of commitment sort ofappeals to a teenager a lot um and a young man mind a lot so bookshave it difficult they’re going to compete with a wide Arena of things this was one of my uh one of my issuesbecause I was always more interested in like taking things apart or buildingthings or or watching TV because it’s just it’s competed with time with othersmore it’s much more stimulating whereas if I was to sit down to read Iwouldn’t I wouldn’t enjoy it by then your your relationship with books has sort of got better yeah well when I wasyounger I wasn’t no I didn’t really enjoy reading the only book I’ve beenactually addicted to was um the Harry Potter books specificallythe third one that had their Harry Potter yeah so there’s my yeah my original copy that’s the original yeah that came out when wewere in year three where the exact age of Harry like ohyeah is the exactly interesting um so yeah on the third bookI was I was hoped then the film started to come out hmmand after the fourth book I didn’t read anymore but I suppose likeElise you read something that’s really really important yeah I mean when I was young Iread like Roald Dahl books and that sort of thing what year was you by the time the fourth book come out wellthe first book came out when we went to secondary school so when they went to Hogwarts we went to our first first yearso I’m going to assume it’s the fourth year of school so what’s that seven eight nine year tenyeah I suppose I suppose my reading was slightly different than most people in Los Angeles because Ium a lot of people want to read something that’s related to them and I suppose like Harry Potter fitsinto that well and other series like children’s writers are usually they likewrite about the life of a child or something like that but then I was I think I was hooked on I think I was moreinterested in the adult life and lifestyle and that kind of thing so I tended to gravitate thus tomore difficult books earlier on but I think that’s you’re quite unique in that wayfor most people that’s not really the case yeah well um what was your grown-upreading was I used to love reading as well um this changed a lot since then I mean nine year was one of my favorites hisseries of books to read like we didn’t have internet when I was younger which is funny you say that so Iforget how old I am but we used to spend the summer holidays cooped up in our rooms me and my siblings just readingbooks that was our thing we used to love reading and I think as we got a second was called you’re right there’ssomething wrong with the educating system because by secondary school there was not normally time to read andactually the love for reading was kind of sucked out of you by the symposed reading reading materialyeah it’s changed since then you know I can’t is that because it’s sort of the specific books are forced onto yeahI think that’s it I think where we used to read for pleasure choose whatever books you want um kids series adult series but by thetime of second we actually you have to read this and you have to look at this time of that um I think there’s a similar a similarthing with music because when I wanted to learn my first instrument well I saw somebody in myclass in year year two play the violin for us and I was like completelymesmerized by and I thought this is incredible I want to do this and I started to learn the instrument and as time went onthe fun got sucked out of it yeah it’s like oh you go do Theory oh you’ve got to do this particular piece for thisgrade and if you don’t get this grade you can’t continue it’s like not too much oh I just want to play the instrument I want to enjoy like and itjust it’s a similar sort of should I read a book yeah don’t get me wrong likethere’s been in times like for instance I didn’t read Othello untilfairly recently it’s like Shakespeare tax because one of my students was doingOthello for an a level English exam thus I needed to knowthe play um I’ve got to say like when I was reading that playI I think I feel things in the written form more than most peopleum probably because I’m kind of into reading um and I think it is very visual for melike it might seem a bit strange because you think okay well like why not justwatch the TV or something like that but I think there’s something emotional about visualizingthe the event and I’ve noticed this as well with like people who like childrenwho struggle with um understanding and comprehension theythey don’t necessarily see books the same way so they don’t see the written word in the same way that I do and theymight not be as visual in their understanding of it because it I think thethe art of being able to visualize us was just declined like you said there’sso many other things to compete with you’ve got your games Internet TV films yeahvisualization is an imagination yeah it’s sort of dying of death yeah it’slike I can read while I was reading Othello and there’s the Monon their interaction together in theirdialogue and I could feel like the emotion behind it and I think like forsome people who read it especially students who are studying that text they probably don’t feel itthe same way they don’t feel it as deeply as I do but it’s hard for me toand I mean the only way I can sort of I’ve got to put that passioninto how I teach it yeah um so they understand and also likerelate it to things that they understand that’s the key yeah yeah I think theyread it and then they don’t understand and they think like it’s just the meaning of the words that that matters but it’s it’s more theatmospheric crates and that kind of thing and I think some some children on students justgenerally they they have a poor grasp of of tone and atmosphere and how that’screated in literature and they probably just feel it less intenselyum like in school I think we’re obsessed with analyzing yeah and I think that’scome at the detriment of feeling the literature rightyou it’s all very well like you’re saying okay well this this word has this effect and it linksto this theme I think your writes very very technical even in terms of writing would be used to back a few years ago weused to look for the writer’s tone in the in the story of the text is that is that can you see the writer’s time whereas now you’re looking atpunctuation and grammar and it’s almost systemic that children are no longer writing they’re not floating around notflying anymore they’ve got their colon and semicolon in the parentheses that’s actually too rigid it’s too rigid yeahI’ve seen I’ve definitely seen that like the style of Esso that people write nowI think teachers are obsessed with get this grade like pass I want a majorityof my class to pass this um how am I going to get them to do that and they tend to have a very hackneyedand formal formula a way of expressing themselves andto be honest the only way to develop your style your your writing is a product of whatyou’ve read and what you’ve been exposed to so that’s why reading is important becausethere’s something ineffable and something that you can’t grasp in inexplaining how to write something like I can look at some studentsum I can pick out all the floors in a student sentence or something like but to actually teach them how to writea better sentence is difficult and it it’s kind of boringto be honest to learn it that way because you can break it down into little bits and you can say and that’sthat’s where it gets technical because then they then they get that idea that it has to be like this this and this and that’s how they start writing like thisthis and this but that natural flow The Writer’s tone The Writer’s author’s voice is so lost well it’s something youcan’t really explain isn’t it you sound your kind of screen because that’s it you can explain can you explain like punctuation or whatever absolutely soyou can explain it you can explain it and you can explain why certain things it’s like explaining the mechanics of ajoke you can do it but there’s if somebody uses thatmechanic to do every single joke yeah technically it’s funny technically itworks but you can feel that there’s yeah it’s a bit forced there is obviouslysomething technical going on in language and and can’t I constantly look at that because I’m teaching a level of GCSE orwhatever so you see those aspects but then to actually be a good writer and tounderstand how it works and to get that full emotion out when you write ityou need to read like there’s nothing else to it so

Juber’s Relationship with Reading

what’s your relationship like with reading now I didn’t realize that you were such agood reader when you were as a massive video when I was younger I didn’t realize now now it’s just it’s prettymuch non-existent I read what I have to read in terms of Articles and um research papers but I don’t read forfor pleasure the last book I read this is going back like properly enjoyed reading would have been The Alchemistand that was good four years ago I think that I read from beginning to end umjust because of time to be honest um there’s no time to read it there’s no time to enjoy it and even that book wasa struggle to realize to read late night in my purchase reading but I don’t get the time to enjoy books anymoreso it’s just a really bad relationship at the moment it’s interesting because my mind’s the other way around

Prajay’s Relationship with Reading

see when I was younger I read what I was forced to read and nowI I don’t read as much as I should but it’s still reading for pleasure but I I want every book in my head I just want Iwant all of it to just be just be there I mean nowadays I read I

What Prajay’s Reading

don’t really read fiction you don’t read fiction not really I read the odd odd perfect General animal far morelike bravely world that sort of stuff because I can it resonates with me I Iget it otherwise I’m just reading business books so I mean I can go throughsome stuff not me at the moment or have finished reading so Atomic habits and psychology of moneyare finished um and then I’m reading a book about thegut just yeah yeah your second brainand then I want to get onto this book systemology so for everything that we’redoing here like so this is the same thing you said for everything that we do here so is it for fun or is it for research purpose isit for both for knowledge like it’s for a normal age the more the more I know the morethings like this this podcast or website or just the businesses in generalum systemizing all of it getting all the processes sorted I want to get on to that so yeah is iswork related I don’t have to read it I could not but how do you choose to yep and enjoyit yeah I enjoy optimizing things and ultimately it’s gonna help everything yeah everything growI was also looking at Stephen Hawking book just a bit of scienceI also have uh these are some interesting books is is there a God howdid it all begin yeah be he used all the science behind you have you read it about halfway through good it’sinteresting yeah it’s interesting There’s A Brief History of Time yeah that’s the one to go to this yep alittle Red Bridge bookmark in there yes you canbut I cannot find the time well even if you read one page a night yesthis is why when I was doing that for a bit I’ve fallen out the Habit the last couple of weeks but I was reading like achapter of this a night or you know like a section per night yeah and I’m you know a couple hundred pagesin which to me is a lot so the same same with that so yeah myrelation and relationship with reading is a bit different now well that’s good and thenI’m also doing audio books as well the moment I’m on 48 Laws of Power Robert Greenefor anything else there’s a few but they’re mostly self-helpand business really that’s my interest I

Gender Differences in Reading

think that’s quite a something else I want to talk about it’s about a male thing guys seem to prefer non-fiction they do well it’s young young boys aswell to be fair yeah non-fiction yes it’s beautiful isn’t it boys are moreinterested in things girls are more interested in people whichI was definitely like that my sister would read Non-Stop and I’ll be there taking a radio apartbecause why not just that’s what it was yeah well they you teach you different thingsthat’s so low but it’s down to your interest at all isn’t it it’s not just yes I mean I like books that sort ofmarry your interests with you’ll never be non-fiction with so likethe the example that I talked about earlier Jurassic Park there’s a lot I I likedI think it appealed to me as a boy because I like dinosaurs like every Everythinga dinosaur dinosaur stage I like dinosaursthis is back top boy yeah it had the scientificEdge to it so so there there was talk about um that these Jurassic Park dinosaursthey were they were combined with the DNA of a bullfrog that allowed them to crosssex so so even though the original binus wasall female some male dinosaurs could well some of thesefemale dinosaurs became Mel um in the same way that some bullfrogs umyeah so so like yeah I just remember like even I think I was like nine orsomething like that and and I just find that really interesting so it’s like boys are interested inthose little little facts um um not to say that girls aren’t likethey’re less less but but I’d say like yeah is definitely something I’ve noticed and and when you have like a bitof fiction blended with that non-fiction um I I find that an ideal mixso something that you can learn something from a deeper level like there’s other thingsthat like I said like the nature of of romance or love I think I understand that a lot betteras a result of my fiction reading um see I I understand it better becauseof my non-fiction reading I don’t understand it guysI like how to talk to people in a sensitive manner like you like you canthere’s two ways you can approach it you can you can be given rules to follow or you could actually experience some ofthose conversations and I find that fictionum but then what about books like uh How to Win Friends and Influence People well then yeah yeah I mean they they’retotally valuable they can give you the rules but they they I don’t think they help as much incrystallizing what it actually means and does it go back to that does it go back to that talk about that systemicsystemic mode of thinking and writing and reading we’re just following the rules but there’s no naturalyeah well I mean it depends if you implement it right so if you have the rules and you takethat out into the world then you but even if you create your own stories even if you implement it you just be following the rules rigidly whereas ifyou had someone seen that in mix mixture during conversation or dialogue you might see it applied yeah well I don’tthink you’d follow it rigidly but you you can take it but I see what you’re saying I feel like withwhen you when you follow rules two widgetly umit kind of becomes a little dull like a lot like the same thing earlier yeahum but then that lasted that’s what I think fiction brings and I mean boysshould should try and read um some fiction books um they’re stillthey’re still value in them it’s just that it’s a different type of value it’s not it’s notnecessarily as measurable see with how often I sit down now to read I would rather use that time tothree this old stuff yeah because I could implemented it’s useful so we’ve spoken about ourour relationship thank you relationship to reading currently what’s

Jon’s Relationship with Reading

what’s yours well I do need to read a lot because ofstudents essentially um but I tried to make the best of it so like I saidOthello wasn’t necessarily something I was gonna like reallyaiming to read this year but I’ve read it I enjoyed itum I try to approach things I like like another book that I’ve read recentlyit was The Great Gatsby I’ve read this before but I needed to remind myself umto teach it essentially and it did umyou know it when when you read it again and you read it with teaching in mind itis a bit different yeah and you kind of enjoy it on a different level I think I might have to borrow some books off youI’ve got so many books really like a library just plaster books this wayevery possible to me next next we should do that though likethe same thing like a book club type thing I don’t have enough books start a book club on thechannel hmm but yeah like sometimes I I look back and I think well I itdidn’t really affect me perceivably at the time necessarily but um I’ll give you an example likethis book so I must have read this quite quite young um Mr Legendsand it’s just got um they’d listen Icarus like those uh classic Greek storiesand I ended up doing like an ancient history and Classics degree and a philosophy to go combinedum I know it must have stemmed from something like and it was like this early childhoodreading so actually I used to read a little bit of this sort of stuff I don’tthink I went anywhere near in depth as you have and I’m I’m shocked that people don’t know more like I said when I talk to childrennow it’s like they they don’t know any of these stories and I’m just like aren’t they I didn’t know a lot of them evennow if I haven’t said that that happens a lot across cultures like yeah like whydon’t we know more about like Indian culture stories andBlack Culture stories and things like that like I think you can read anything and it gives aa new dimension on life and they all have a similar message really a lot of the timeum yeah it’s interesting how how it permeates across cultures and you learn how to you like they give you morallessons sometimes books [Music] um I think you you end up being a moremoral person a result of the reading that you do um it teaches you moralityum because it teaches you about like someone else’s perspectivewhen you read a book you gain access into someone else’s brains and thoughtsand feelings I think that that that’s a just a pricelessasset well it’s not even just that I said if if you’re trying to figure something outthere’s almost 100 chance that somebody else has been through this problem beforethey figured out how to solve it and they’ve written it down somewhere yeah like you don’t have you don’t have to gothrough all of the error errors yourself it’s been done before there’s something comforting in the fact that you look ata library and you you can say to yourself if I have any problems in the next few yearsor if I’m trying to solve a problem the answer probably summoning the lies within it yeahand I think that’s quite a comforting thought what’s your opinion on physical books

Books vs. Ebooks vs. Audiobooks

versus e-readers or iPad Kindles whatever elseand audiobooks initially I thought well with e-readersinitially I thought it was a good idea yeah looks like battery is dead well myfirst my first instinct was that it was a great idea right but thenwhen I use when I when I use it I don’t enjoy it as much I found this I found this too initiallywas that the best thing you could read anywhere with my phone actually I was like this is incredible andrevolutionary and it doesn’t even give you like this screen fatigue like that a reading off atablet could give and that kind of thing but it’s just not it’s the same satisfaction that there is it like myKindle was always on my on my iPad I tried I tried reading on my phone but it’s just you just can’t get into itit’s it’s entirely different I think it’s good for short bursts say you’re like on the train or for an onlinearticle or a report or something is fine but to read an actual book an actualget your me book the one good thing that I can think of in uh in Kindle inparticular is you can see where other people have highlighted yeah that’s good how do youmean so you could go into your reading through you’ll have an underlying section so you can highlight whateveryou want you can export your highlights into document or whatever else but you canalso see where where the majority of other people have highlighted specific quotesso you could go through your Kindle book and see like this many thousand peoplehighlighted this bit this bit this bit this bit which kind of gives you an idea what the key key points are it’s likeit’s like having thousands of the same copy of uh of one same book uh several differentpeople that have yeah made notes yeah I remember those uh it’s quite clever it is good there was like a report that Iwas doing for school and like it was um it was a paper on the Vikings some ofthe Vikings and Anglo-Saxons and I bought a book on and it was a pre-owned copy of a book that was on the Vikingsand this person had annotated it and I actually it was really helpful theannotations because they they pointed out like the important parts that I needed to that I could I could use and I mean thatwas completely different that was really physical book but I was like sometimes it’s it can be helpful on a physical book aswell to have notes don’t see my mom and my sister both really love second-hand books they’ve been annotatedin did you do this is the thing that I really like for me I don’t I don’t likewriting in my books you don’t I don’t I know I totally under I totally understand that like like when you wanta clean copy of a book but I always want to clean copy even even if I’ve got a clean copy I wouldn’t want to write onit I can’t even open it to to him now you know when you fold it back youknow to break the spine okay yeah like this but some people just open go straight inyeah I hate when I’ve when I’ve just got a book like oh look at this book I’ve just got yeah you’ve broken this plan you know ifanyone’s gonna do that it’s me but now physical books I think there’s a lot to be said about physical books justtelling the page to turn the pages yeah it’s just yeah very very tactile you need that I thinkthat’s part of the joy isn’t it I just see it to see if it’ll get thinner how much you’ve read as you can see you’veread you’ve read apart and when you come to the end you can see that it makes a difference to see it visually hole in your hands like I’m almost there I’mnearly at the end kind of thing whereas with it online thing you never see that do so not just just watching like all 20something but it’s just another page so where do you stand on audiobooks because I have I have my opinions on it spacesaving it was a very well well these are both yeah audiobooks so saving but thething with an an audiobook and this is something I always say to parents as well like they’re they’re brilliant way forchildren and adults who maybe don’t read as much ordon’t have time it’s actually at least enter a book um I did say there was a bit of a limitwith this because there’s certain things that matter with an audio book so thenarrator um I said uhlike for instance um 12 rules for life nowI’d listen I start I started listening to the audiobook I’m trying to get him to draw the person I’ve been watching alot of these things okay finally I need to read his book can I buy that please yeah actually I’ve got it on Audible Istarted listening to it but I find his voice he’s very very serious his voice I findthat that’s not the best way to approach reading so I’m I much preferreading yourself myself um yeah but then when you have a really good reader so the classicexample is Martin Jarvis like really famous narrator no I don’t know either I don’t knowum just just the voices and the emotion behind the voice and stuff like thatgets you into it um sometimes books that are narrated by authors are good if they’ve got theright voice for it but I I don’t I wish that he had someone else reading hisbooks um he it’s not he doesn’t have a bad voice or anything like that I just findhe he doesn’t have the best voice um I’d rather and if you’re you’repaying for an audiobook you you’re gonna hear a good voice you want a good experience I know a lot of the reviewspeople are quite happy to hear him speak they find it close calming and soothing no I didn’t I don’t know for me it kindof slices it’s a personal thing I get what you’re saying I’ve never actually listened to a fullaudible book oh really never I like listening tothe story of different business owners they’re like shoe dog for example thatwas the other thing the Netflix one uh or the other one Netflix one shoe dogRichard Branson yeah um yeah no no there’s I think there is adistinction between the different types of books and the media bestrepresent them so like I’ve got some really technical Financial books and stuff like that Ican’t I just I couldn’t listen to that on audiobook and then started readingout the tables and stuff like that exactly what I was going to say yeah like how would you put that into an audio but they do that that’s the thinglike they they do and um some of them have these like helpful like pop out PDF things but yes yeahyeah they do um they go along with the book but I find that in the majority of cases ifyou’ve got a very very technical book especially with loads of figures it’s better to have a physical copy yeahas soon as you can audible that graph for me this is I mean I I seem to saythe same thing yeah there’s yeah I meancan I see how would you even audible this well they like John said they would theywould narrate most of it and then I’ll give you a labor force participation rate for menon the bottom you have the years 1880 bar one 75 it’s a high cost no via PDF they alwaysread the figure number and and it I don’t know for me it just sounds lame like just yeah referred referred to Isuppose that’s the point of biographs and trust is the visual element you can’t really listen to that yeah a lot of business books like uh self-helpbooks if it’s like about money or or habits orsystems and that sort of thing I would not use Audible but if it’s likehow did the founder of Nike start his business and get it to where it is nowand here’s the Journey of him going to Japan and drinking whiskey with these people and making shoes in this Factory and tell his storylineis written by him there’s no graph it’s just a really interesting story yeah that you could also take business tipsfrom also find like really difficult books quite hardum so like for instance um there’s a philosophy book so I would have I read this atUniversity um and honestly if that this were read out Iwouldn’t have time to understand it um but if if I read it then I can put it togetherso like for instance um so this is from an essay what is it like to be a batokay it’s about qualia or the subjective fields of experience Krishna is possibleevery day so it’s like like if you just read it you’ll see why it I don’t thinkit takes well to an audio book consciousness is what makes the Mind Body problem really intractable perhapsthat is why current discussions of the problem give it give it little attention or get it obviously wrong the recentwave of reduction is Euphoria has produced several analysis of mental phenomena and mental Concepts designedto explain the possibility of some variety of materialism psychophysical identification or reductionso like well that was an audiobook for us but to be honest that would just lose melike I just feel like what after listening to that I I don’t think I’d I could truly processand that’s another reason why I think books are specialum because they they get used to pause on things umwhere is like most media they encourage they encourage you to to view on right and and obviously likecreators want you to view on it’s not just that because you can also you can also skip back and say oh whatdid they say a couple chapters ago about that because they referenced it now but I forgot what it was before you could just go oh yeah both on Audible no itwasn’t that bad no I wasn’t that bad like you know with a difficult book I’dsometimes need to I might want to look something up well if I don’t know what like reductionism is yeah soum you need I think the riot um medium for whatever you’re trying toput out is is hugely important I’d agree I wanted to ask you something as well yeah

Reading in School

reading in schools yeah is it obviously it’s a courage but is it is it nurturedhow is it encouraged what do they ask you to it’s strongly strongly encouraged and nurtured um it’s one of the basicthings they have is a reading corner and I’ve I’ve been to a few schools and reading Corners are very prominent in all schoolsum you’ve gone as well and the reading Corner not just not just just have books but to actually decorate and display ina sense that is appealing to children and create a little space for them to sit and read and make a link to theirtheme or their topic or their classroom environment so that they can so it appears to them and draws to them something that will attract them in getthem in there choosing a book sit down maybe a cushion and a pillow I’ve seen some key stage one one place has gotreally really nice like I want to sit there and read That’s how nice it is then on top of that wealso have a selection of books that are put into them so age appropriate obviouslyum easier and harder chapter books non-fiction fiction books but um leveled books as well so they can seewhich one they can read and we always encourage two books one that is appropriate for their level and they can read and enjoy and one that is justforeign yeah slightly harder just a bit just to top bit harder or or even ifthey want something easier you know that second book is their choice their preference whatever they want to enjoy whereas the first book Is leveled at theat the correct level um it’s quite a good word and my current score we’ve got Library visitsum once every Fortnight so that they can choose two books and bring that back with them plus the library in the schooland I found out this interesting fact that every time a child goes to the library it’s like a new experience with themwhich I never knew that before they all they seem to they forget that they bring to the library apparently which makes sense about how excited they becomeevery time we go but that was interesting to know um we also have online platforms we’vegot something called Reading Plus where they can read a range of text and it’s pitched at their level and the algorithmknows what books they’re into so it presents those kinds of books at that kind of levelum basically Netflix basically essentially speaking of this have you if you guys own a Goodreads I have nothere’s an app uh owned by Amazon of course of course yeah you can you can keep track of allyour reading so all the books you’ve got you have in your reading list you can type in what page you already told youthe percentage uh you can look at other people’s reviews and you can put books on yourshelf tree later because you’ve read yours they have a different shelf is that is that is that free yeah nice butthere’s lots of things that so we’ve got reading plus there’s also a bug club they’re the same sort of things um other schools have reading journalswhich they have to complete at home and we don’t do that personally but I’ll ask peopleum book Corners have got book reviews recommended books and teachers teachers get their own on um flare into as wellwhatever they want to do to multifixion to read but reading is definitely pushed and encouragedand I think that’s the difference between primary and secondary a secondary I don’t think that’s pushed as strongly I think maybe the first fewcouple of years will be is it I’m not sure I mean I’m just going by my own experience I remember like going to thelibrary near seven and suffer as a class and things but but I I remember it’stapered off especially yeah but but like just to bring on to that ishugely important that I think children keep reading well into secondary school becauseif you I had this class once I just remember it sticking out quite a lotbecause the these weren’t they they were very intelligent students on we were looking at uh I just wanted tosee how good their understanding was so I gottaI just took their first two pages of War of the Worlds by H.G Wellsand then we read it together as a class and it became very very clear these werelike 15 16 year olds and they had no idea what he was going on about like their comprehension of the actualbook was like what it was like words and what what he was saying so they can readthey can read the words they can hear the words individually but not yes understand what’s going onthey they just had such a a weak grasp of it’s fun it’s funny yousay that because even in primary going as early as key stage one that they’ve got synthetic phonics and pure Phoenixand all this stuff but nowadays they no longer care about word meaning so at the early stages they just teach them how toread the word so these children will be reading books and pronouncing words thatthey have no idea what it means and um I see that as a big problem coming up to even as even as early as year six comingup to those cases you can read these books but very little understanding or comprehension of what’s going on whatthe words actually mean um even um we do assessment some benchmarking with texts and they’re ableto read it just like I said they’re able to read the words that are printed but they’ve got no comprehension about what’s going on what the words meanum and they’re pushed forward to the next level it’s like how can they go to the next level yeah they could they could totally read it like as in like notrouble with like you might have had the odd word where they didn’t quite know how to say about even like a word like you knowmy new and it looks like yeah um like they get tripped up by that thatsort of thing um but I was like okay that’s that’s fine like as long as we can explain thatbut like they they just couldn’t untangle it it was so it was really difficult trying tosort of convey exactly what what he meant so I had to explain like each each part and just uh and I’ve had thissimilar problems at high level as well like people not understanding what the hell was going on they’re just readingwords well it’s like like how does this text fit together and stuff like that it’s like they just get lostum whilst they can read something it obviously doesn’t indicate how much they understand it not at all umbut I also it kind of shows how holistic reading is because I think I didn’t havethose kind of problems and I think one of the reasons why is because I was exposed to veryI guess intellectual media early on so like listen whether it be listening to the radioor um just watching period dramas or somethinglike that yeah um I never did any of thatbut but you get used to like for instance there’s a certain type of humor that’s evident in like PG Woodhouse orsomething like that so some word player um I can understand that or I couldunderstand that as a child and probably one of the reasons is is I used to watch like the Jews and rooster series orwhatever so as a child I’d be exposed to a variety of media at that leveland I think about like young people these days what are they watching were they exposing themselves to and a bunchof nonsense YouTube all day they go from that to reading yeah if they go fromthat to reading War of the World there’s no it’s no it’s obvious why they wouldn’t understand it even though we’re likeminute you were sent that comes down to context doesn’t it the reason they didn’t know what they were saying because they didn’t they went theyweren’t at all in the context of that of the text well they couldn’t comprehend what comes after what comes before so if you were reading it along you should beable to comprehend what’s going on you realize that it’s minute not good readers they read They’re reading the sentence they’re on but their eyessubconsciously scanning a few lines ahead so you’re generating context the whole time but if you’re not a good reader you’re reading it you’re justreading that word as it is you know this is why I like um brought up earlier that someI’ve noticed with with a lot of kids especially because we teach 11 plus right they’ve got trouble visualizingwhat’s actually going on and they don’t like for them it doesn’t connect to their imagination yeah I might I don’t Idon’t understand that like because for me it does like I I can I for me it’s sovivid when I read something yeah but you’ve grown up at a different time right now there’s way more stuffcompeting for people’s attention and everything has become way more stimulating think about a video gamewhen we were younger compared to the video game now yeah you’ve got to use yoursort of imagination I guess more or you did you need to yeahvery low imagination they have very little it’s been killed it has been they can’t think when they sit this I’mtelling my classes like trying to write something and I’ve given them so much yeah I can’t I don’t know Football chatoh he went to the football game and then this happened then and then this bomb exploded basically that’s it that’severy story but they can’t think of anything else because they don’t they don’t know if they haven’t been exposed to anything else they don’t have thecapacity um that they they only know what they’re presented on on online on social media they don’t know anythingbeyond that yeah well this uh

The Benefits of Reading

yeah well I thought there was a little journey through like supporting I’mexcited just a few statistics reading in children ready because that all well the benefitsand drawbacks uh well I’ve already done a couple that stood out to me do you want to sear it what what stood out toyou in that there’s a lot of these I can relate to so um there was this there’s one which washaving books in the home is associated with both readingenjoyment and confidence of children who report having fewer than10 books in their homes 42 percent say they don’t do not like readingand 32 percent say they are confident readers for children who report over having over200 books are home only 12 say they do not like readingand 73 considered themselves very confident readers I think that’spretty obvious if you if you like I I grew up in a household of booksfor me not to like books would be quiet difficult I wouldn’t then I wouldn’t like the home environment I’m in and Ithink it’s shocking that anyone would only have but I mean it does happen like especially in lower like books are notnecessarily that cheap obviously you can get them I think charity shops brilliantresource for books I got got most of my books from party shops especially like philosophy books andthings like that and they’re expensive sometimes um and you’ve gotsort of a massive gap between lower income families and higher income families in terms ofhow many books are in their household I find that interesting of why do you go from 10 to 200less than 10 books and more than 200 books that’s a huge jump it might be because 200 is a fairly significantamount yes yeah I mean you’ve gotta you’ve got to think about this this is also like some facts compiled by acharity yeah of course the the something that stood out to me wasthe cognitive development [Music] there’s a fact on them about cognitive development he’s lost itit’s definitely not in the first really for pleasure is more important for children’s cognitive developmentthan their parents level of Education and it’s a more powerful factor in life achievementto the socioeconomic background 16 year olds who choose to read books of pleasure outside of school are morelikely to secure managerial or professional jobs later in life oh well you’re not surprised like notnone of this is surprising to me no it’s not surprising but it’s still shockingbut not surprising it’s more more shocking like how the more and more I do this this job thethe more surprised I’m about how little children read and especially especially those whothey’re having obviously they’ve got like umsay learning difficulties and stuff like that and they’re reading less yeah well they’re more prominent now as wellactually children are less able to learn other curricular if they don’t develop skillsby middle of primary the middle of primary school so if they haven’t got a decent level of reading by middle ofprimary school they’re going to struggle with everything else chemistry biology everything else later I can see that definitely yeah later on even then therewas Starstruck yeah I think you’ve serve everyone who who definitely bring up um like worded problems in mathschildren who read Often by age 10 and over once a week at age 16 getting higher results in maths vocab andspelling tests not none of it’s surprising Santa Fe is surprising it’s just it’s just interesting how how muchof an impact it actually has and I wonder if parents knew this would they keep more books in their homes and Iknow it’s expensive but you’ve got the libraries free and they’re desperate for I don’t think you can keep those youdon’t have to keep those you just need to buy them you should deploy them and read them right and she brought two books three books or just spent that inthe library well then there’s been a bit of an assault on libraries like less and lessfunding available for all libraries because use less and less isn’t it who’s when you go to the library compared toothers before I don’t think they’re that expensive because if you look on everything on Amazon butfirstly they outcompete the price generally but if you look underneath themain price it shows you the used price and you can usually pick up these books for a couple of quid the only the onlything with that is I would say because in my school I work in in Hackney we’ve got some very underprivileged familiesif you’ve got people that single parents that are struggling for food and electricity so when it comes down to that kind of yeah if you’re at thatlevel like yeah because they’re not they’re not necessarily um because they’re working class as well they’ve got a single parents who are working butit’s just not making ends meet and especially now to spend five pounds or six pounds in a book because you don’tget any rubbish books you know generate interests but the libraries are there the libraries are there libraries arefree you can still get a book you can spend an hour in the library there’s nothing wrong with every Saturday spending an hour in the library withyour child um yeah I used to do that actually yeah that that that’s generally interestingI’ll do my homework in there yeah yeah something that stood out to me when I was like working for the literacy Pirates now or the heightening Piratesyeah uh was that some parents couldn’t help their children readso in the first place so so yeah the child was and what also something I noticed was the children who couldn’tread were more likely to be aggressive they’re more likely toum first of all have a really bad relationship with with just reading in the first place because they’veobviously got no confidence in Reading thus you’re trying to get them to read and they can’t read and it just getsthem really frustrated so not even that they can’t verbalize how they’re feeling communicate can the communication skillsin the vocabulary exactly are limited to express themselves I’ve got kids that um when it comes to reading they’ll shutdown they might like boys especially they love the maths because quite the concrete right and wrong are really whenit comes to reading lesson they will do anything they can to get removed from that class and it’s like well I knowwhat you want you’re not going anywhere you will read there’s always like oh we finished like when we’re doing it here they’re like maths 10 minute break foreveryone to go to the bathroom whatever else come back start English and most of the boys likeyeah you just had 10 minutes but it is just that and I think it comesdown to reading more you can’t I say to the children you can’t there’s certain things you can’t teach you can’t teachthem how to you can teach them how to read but they have to read to build that comprehension the confidenceum start writing it back the more you write about the better you become at it the this is why I think you know primaryschools they’ve kind of gone down this route of I’ve noticed this in teaching SATs for instance yeah the children arerequired to have such a technical understanding of spelling punctuation grammar especially grammar I honestly think like they’retotally missing the point because reallythey need to get to this stage where it’s like the language it doesn’t it sort of floods over themrather than is it is the difference between sitting and reading a dictionaryor sitting and reading several different types of things because you’re not goingto know every single rule you’re not going to memorize every single and most of the rules there’s more exceptionsthan there are yeah you know the best way to learn you all of thegrammar and stuff is to be exposed to a variety of different yeah things like like you you need to let it inhabit yourather than it make reading a habit and makelike I said when you when you read something it becomes part of you andit will have a usually a good effect on what youend up writing absolutely absolutely well the benefits of reading as an adultas an adult um there’s a few on there who’s on there on thereI mean for me the benefits are oh wow yeah not gone for me the benefits are just from what I’m reading it helps meto be better at communicating with other people it helps me to grow the business it helps me to grow myself as a personum you experience great so life satisfaction I’m reading and hire aself-esteem and confidence if you read more I mean like you feel a sense ofachievement in in reading something I think it also gives you experience of things that you wouldn’t otherwise haveexperienced um it makes you more knowledgeable in certain areas but the benefits spanacross age groups and also um just to sort of give you an illustration

What’s Gone Wrong?

of um what I think has sort of gone a bitwrong is because we’re focusing on all these technical issues andwhen you learn a language most people don’t enjoy the grandma andthe drilling and stuff like that um the thing that made my my Chinese learningtakeoff was actually going reading reading reading a book and going there and talking to peopleum it wasn’t tables of things and it wasn’t likeexercises they they have their purpose but I Ifind that with any language it’s a lot more holistic and yeah we seem to be making Englishmore and more like a foreign language I I suppose it is because I don’t know about youyou do in in schools they they take obviously they they’ve got to change thecurriculum they get development in in how the and the curriculum changes butthen I think it takes something away when you when you add these layers of technical complexity to it when itshould just be a simple pleasure going over there and talking to people I’m glad you put that because actuallythat’s where a lot of the languages of development comes from um the books develop the language onceyou have some Foundation or premise to build on and a lot of children are notcommunicating with their parents they’re not having conversation with parents they’re not engaging in just everydaytalk you know life experiences building up vocabulary build up comprehension build up understanding which then relates to a book and the language andvocabulary becomes a lot more accessible to those children you can’t expect them to read a book and just know what itmeans where is that language and vocabulary coming from it’s from everyday experiences it’s from interaction it’s from talking to eachother and parents there’s a lot of children in less affluent communities especially are missing out on thatlanguage for example we had a child lots of these examples but they’re reading abook they didn’t know what a gutter was yeah and it’s like the last podcast this was protects in my head because actuallyit’s everywhere in this country so how can a child being near Six and not know what that word means and have noum exposure to exposure to that you literally can’t walk across the street without seeing it yeah it’s on everybuilding everybody so this comes down to communication so he’s reading this text not understood any of itbut where is the language and where is the build up from the parent well I think it depends on the family it depends on how often they are but a lotof parents will just say right you’re going to school or you go to tuition don’t don’t teach you everything youneed to know yeah they don’t actually communicate seriously responsibilityif you covered a statistic once and don’t don’t limit this but I was talking about how churning affluent familieshave got over 9000 more vocabulary Banks than children in less African families less a huge huge Campnine thousand extra words in the bank I did a white collar worker and that’s even without a book that’s before theyread a book that’s just from introduction with their parents it’s like wow then it depends how educated the parents are okay yeah what are theyeducated here whether they even speak English in in their homesome in some cases it’s a catch-22 like I definitely in my charity work I definitelyencountered situations where I was like okay well it’s quite difficult like no one canread in the family you’ve got a cycle essentially perpetuates itself and thenthen it becomes it has to become the school’s responsibility in that case which can be very difficult I obviouslylike the school can only provide so much support regardless answer like how actuallyschools need a lot more support um and teachers need a lot moreclick here to the previous well I think I think about it this way like when you get an imagineit’s hypothetical child um can’t read struggles with literacystruggles in school falls into backgrounds in the end becomes likeas problem in society and it all stems from this thing that is so basicand they fall through the cracks so that’s like that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go into education thefirst place I I met I’ve met a few like year sixes and I can’t read and it’s quite shockingand it does feel really good to teach them that stuff but then and actually helpchildren reach that level where they can communicate well and and read well andthat kind of thing and you see it like I’ve seen it other key said one kid whocouldn’t really read at all when he started and now he he’s also he’s ableto read like we’ve it’s taken a lot of persistence a lot of like telling the parent how todo it and that kind of thing and sort of forcing him to some extent butto be honest as long as he feels in a good mood he’s he’s quite happy to read now as inhe actually fills in with a bit of confidence so there’s so many children in that situation whereum you you’ve got to do the the easy work first so essentially though you’ve got a lot of kids that that could veryeasily with just some simple changes but then you’ve also got those edgecases that are very very difficult to deal with where the parent can’t speak Englishchallenging challenge situations out there yeah those are those are really really difficult and I think the onlysitu the only possible way to help those kids is you’ve got Charities and also schoolsstepping in so they need to bring it back to the school again um what I find interesting is thataccountability for teachers um in year six they’ve got the end of year assessment so it’s so much pressurethat the child that’s when it’s picked up that this child can’t read it I’m thinking how do they get through primary education and they come to es6 and nowyou’re telling me it goes what were the other teachers doing since year three since key stage one whathappened where did it go wrong because how can they get that far in education without being picked up earlier by notjust a class teacher but sot now how to come and get through school it’s like before was it before six years old orsomething like that like if you if you can’t read sort of a basic book by thetime you’re like mid level of primary we said it earlier mid-level so like yeah yeahfour so what are the year four teachers doingno but I mean like like she’s great because she she emphasizes literacy like I like you can in the way yeah you getsome really you get some really good teachers don’t you that really go out their way to make sure they pick up every chat but then you get these otherteachers that don’t do that and you’re like foreign fiction versus fiction does it matter

Fiction Vs. Non-Fiction

what you read as a first year as a child secondly as an adult do you think it matters do you think you need I think as a child it hasto be a balance of both especially when you’re aiming towards the end of key stage two that’s the sets you have tohave a balance of fiction and non-fiction I guess to save that I don’t know they’ve got a one fiction text oneand one non-fiction the other one could be approach just whatever it is but um the non-fiction is where you get your and we do we do tragedy to balancesupport because they’re not efficient where you get your background knowledge your because a lot of these things that come up in the test are noteveryday exposures and they’re not everyday life situations so they need to get that experience from them likegeneral knowledge time yeah yeah I say general knowledge and only three non-fiction can you build that up and the fiction is therefor vocabulary language um author strong storytelling it’s also holistic yeah I mean I can get the pointthat um sometimes say say you’ve got a reluctant boy readerwe’re one who’s who’s autistic and the tutor concentrated on non-fictioncomprehension specifically non-fiction before moving on to fiction and am I that totally totally makes sensebut he’s he’s even more interested in thingsum and I think that way appealed to him umso sometimes like non-fiction is Gateway into fiction and and to be honest as long as I think if they’re readinganything it’s this is yeah as long as they’re reading um it’s the first thing I used to read them all kinds of thingsbut um I mean it is important as well it depends on on the aims like for instanceif you’ve got a child going for 11 plus getting them to read at least one classic bookI think is quiet um important it will have a massive impact onuh the result and they’re usually the things that actually yeah come up in the paper anyway yeah I mean probablywas probably very unfair length the the fact that they Sourcetexts from they they tend to Source quite old texts um for these uh selection testssometimes I I just think who’s your your target market isessentially the the ones who are you know obviously more affluentlike most children wouldn’t go near those kind of texts or something likethat like and yet they can come up in in an exam and to be honest it shows nothing about the intelligence of thechild capability it it does however show a certain environment that the child hasgrown up in so if if their aim is to increase social Mobility then with their selection andthey say that it is yeah I’m not not too sure about thatum anything that sources for like a level vocabulary for instance wouldn’tlike but that’s highly dependent on the affluence of your parents and andthe demographic that you’re aiming at obviously you can cram a child full of vocabulary

Tips for Learning Vocabulary

but I find that children hate that um the vocabulary doesn’t stick when youCrown them full of vocabulary sticks in context Switzerland children who have a real sense of like if you canmake it competitive you can make it like like I have to bring those elements in sometimes like we’ve got a limited timeand you’ve got a it’s not just that I I usually use it as a as like a joke so somebody’s misbehavingif we’ve learned some some words like I don’t know say we learn the word Miss Korean for exampleeveryone’s on my screen that day yeah I say you’re you’re being a mystery and you’ve done this this and this and thosethree words I would use would be words from the list yeah and they all laughand they understand the context of it and they remember it there’s a just behind you there’s thecards there oh yeah when you’re talking about the competitive the Whisk cardsyeah the where’s the worst guards yeah and like those cards sorry I even do this with some key stage three kidsthey’re quite difficult words some of them but I mean it’s not the ideal way to learn these words I mean it’s reallyhard when a child has no connection so what they like they haven’t even seen it before so umthat one looks relatively yep yeah like um so many children that haven’t actuallyheard that word by year six or whatever or they’ve heard it in a very loose contextso books give you the opportunity to experience a word in a contextum even if the child doesn’t know exactly what it means at the time they may work it out they may either be ableto work it out or they might be tempted to look it up when I was when I was young I used to just look up words withmy dad I’d be like Dad what does this mean and then you go okay just go check the dictionary and then I’d see theythey ate it when I when I do that we’ve done it what I do now is I’ve made up again I made up another game calleddictionary Wars dictionary or so because when I say look it up they’re like ohand then I say go get two dictionaries if you can find it quicker than me I’ll go next door and buy your chocolate andthen they’re like and now they all want to look up words all the time we’ve been doing a lot of work on them spelling andvocabulary because last year we didn’t do very well for our grandma so we’ve done a lot of research-based things andum one of the couple of things I didn’t do they need to see it visually so now when I’m teaching that we teachvocabulary every reading lesson I love three different pictures for the same word that’s the first and second thing is incontext I have three different three or four different sentences with the same word and then they have to make up put it into the context themselves andthere’s some things like something say that they have to use it 14 times or something something like that I can’t remember the exact but they’re quitelike I was surprised but how many times they have to use it before it becomes a part of their vocabulary and so we dojust like I said dictionary games word searches match the pictures sentences that there’s so many different thingsyou do but they have to be using all the time all the time before it becomes part of the vocabulary and it’s reallyreally challenging because actually we can teach these words we can use it for that day but we won’t use it enoughtimes in that day yeah the repetition like memory is highly linked to emotionsyeah definitely and and I I think if the child doesn’tthis is why audiobooks I I think a brilliant Gateway for children who arereluctant to read because they put on the voices they yeah they can say thingswith the certain emphasis and then it’s actually easier to work out what something means I’ve learned a lot ofwords through audio if you can do that alongside actually following along that’s good I I do if I want to learnlike a text really well this is always a tip that I give to students because you you’ve got to learn like Shakespeareplays and a lot of depth I always say follow it along and listen to an audiobook at the sametime of of the thing and there’s usually one somewhere on YouTube whatever yeah Ibelieve he’ll be there somewhere yeah they’ll have it um find a good version that you enjoyedto listen to and then follow along and the the word hit you that much moreimpactfully and you’re able to remember them yeah so yeah yeah a little tip

Conclusion

there anything else you guys want to add before we wrap up read read get reading we’ll uh we’llleave a few links to some of the books we have here what we’re reading at the moment Goodreads as well which is free Goodreads there’salso a book list on the website which we’ll we’ll link down below as well hmm thanks for watching this episode andhope you enjoyed it it will be coming up again soon like comment subscribe please and share with your family and friendsforeign[Music]