REFLECT OF READING HABITS

For me reading is one of the best pleasures one can enjoy in life, and the people in all the pictures seem to be enjoying this pleasure. Libraries and bookshops are one of the best places where one can spend a lot of time. That's why I feel really identified with the first photo (that of a library) because it reminds me of the time that I used to spend in a library when I was younger, both in Spain and in the UK or the USA where I spent some years of my life.  However, there was a time when I somehow lost this habbit because of a lack of time, but then I took it back when I started going to the library with my children (a 14-year-old son and a 10-year- old daughter now) so that they could choose their own book to read or I could read to them when they weren't old enough to read on their own. How many hours have we spent in libraries! And how relaxing it is reading to your children in a place where silence is everywhere...

Trying to make my students and my own children love reading the way I do has been and is one of my main goals in life. I think I have managed to do it with my children because my son is an eager reader (in fact I'm pretty sure some day I could find him reading like the person in the last picture) and my daughter is on her way too. And a way to achieve it has been spending lots of hours reading to them (as we can see in the picture where the woman is reading to the girl). In fact, my 10-year-old daughter still wants me or her father to read to her outloud from time to time and we still buy two types of books, those for younger readers, which we read to her and those for older readers, which she reads on her own. Reading to my children has given me lots of happiness and I know I will miss it when my daughter doesn't want me to go on reading to her. 

Nevertheless, making my students love reading is a more difficult task. I keep on trying it, but I think that if their parents don't sail in the same direction, it is very hard to achieve this goal. And the truth is that most students' homes are almost empty of books and since I'm teaching them a foreign language, if they don't have the habit to read in their own language, it is even harder to make them enjoy reading in a foreign language. I don't feel identified with the photo of the concentrated students reading in class, which could happen in a Spanish lesson but not in an English one, as in an English lesson the teacher must guide the reading process, so it would be almost impossible to have students reading on their own taking all the different levels in the foreign language into account.

Talking about me, I would like to comment that I read the same type of books in both Spanish and English, although it is also true that lately I read more in Spanish than in English. I basically read novels and drama and I never read in a digital format (when I read on a screen I feel I'm losing some part of the story) and I usually read at the end of the day when I've finished with all the tasks of the day and my children are already sleeping (or at least in their room).