Reflecting on reading habits

 In this new post, we’re going to deal with reading habits in our own life and also in the school context.

Firstly, here we have some images of people reading:

They are reading at different places such as a library, streets, home... Also, they are reading a variety of reading like books, newspapers or eBooks. As we can notice, these photos are taken along the years since some of them show us ways of reading that nowadays are difficult to find.

Perhaps, people at the library or at home have chosen the texts they’re reading but, probably, students are reading a book chosen by the teacher. In that way, I think that these students might be less interested in this reading than the others. At school, readings are often selected by teachers or editorials and, as consequence, children couldn't be excited with the kind of book, the story line or drawings, among others. Therefore, I think that teachers have to take into account students' linguistic level, needs, interests or backgrounds in order to select the appropriate lecture for them.

Regarding my own experience and focusing on these photos, I identify my children hood with two of the pictures. First, the photo of the old woman telling the story to the girl reminds me when my mum told us stories in my bed. At that time I was growing up, I continued reading at home. However, when I started higher studies, I focused myself on the subjects and my reading habits were related to them. That’s why I also identify my reading process with the picture taken at the school.

Nowadays, due to the fact that we’re working at schools and studying at the same time it’s difficult for me to find moments for reading. I hope I can change this stressful everyday life and continue with my reading habits. I think that they are a way of feeling free,  helping us with our problems of real life and getting  into new stories or facts that are interesting for us . I don’t care about reading on my mother tongue (Spanish) or English because I think that both bring us opportunities to develop our minds. However,  sometimes, when I want to take a break I prefer reading in Spanish because as an English teacher, I’m always dealing with English and my brain needs to disconnect. About the format, I always prefer to read physical texts than digital ones because of their sense of touch, smell and beauty.

Finally, it is interesting to reflect on how reading habits have changed along the history. I believe that Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are an essential part of this change since children are growing up under a technological society, where they get bored so quickly and this fact difficults our teaching role within developing reading habits.