At Studio Education, many of our courses are built around reading great works of fiction. Starting at three years old, children in the Junior English program begin to engage with stories in picture books. Reading chapter books and novels is fundamental to the Kids Canon and Teens Canon programs, and classic plays are integral to the Literature and Drama program. But why fiction? Why do we put so much emphasis on actually reading real books at Studio? Reading fiction is a truly magical experience. Fiction transports us to another time, another place, another body, another soul. By reading works of fiction we can inhabit the minds of not only great characters but great authors.

When reading a novel, we become immersed in the world presented to us, transported to new places with new people. We project ourselves into those situations. In these narrative worlds we experience a simulated reality and feel real emotions in response to the conflicts and relationships of story characters. Stories thus appear to offer us a deeply-felt simulation of social experience that may hold real consequences for our actual social world. Specifically, engaging with narrative fiction and mentally simulating the social experiences represented may improve or maintain social skills, especially skills of empathy and social understanding. Indeed, research suggests that frequent readers of fiction are more empathetic, score higher on tests for emotional intelligence and are more likely to exhibit pro-social behavioural character traits than non-readers or non-fiction readers. People who read more fiction are generally more adept at understanding what other people are thinking and what they intend to do, a function psychologists term ‘theory of mind’. This may seem counter-intuitive to the perception of the reclusive ‘book-worm’, but psychologists suggest that readers of fiction are likely to have larger social networks, be less lonely and are less susceptible to depression. Regular fiction readers have been found to sleep better, have lower stress levels and higher self-esteem than non-readers. Research has shown that these phenomena not only occur in children and adult readers, but also pre-school children who are read to.

 

Reading fiction is an exercise in creative imagination. Unlike watching a movie, where everyone sees the same thing, the world we envision when we read fiction is completely unique to ourselves. It is precisely this ability to imagine which allows us to create. Fiction allows us to conceive of worlds and ideas, we had not only not thought of, but not thought possible. The immersive experience that reading fiction offers us is the most valuable antidote to the age of iPads and decreasing attention spans. Reading is a process that requires thinking.

For children, reading fiction is not only important for developing social competence, but also linguistic competence. Literary fiction exposes children to vocabulary, grammatical structures, and styles of language which they are unlikely to find anywhere else. Unlike learning language from textbooks, which use a factual style with the primary purpose of conveying information, literary fiction uses language in a way designed to captivate and engage the reader. A large body of research shows that children who read and listen to fiction have improved listening skills, are better oral communicators, have better phonological awareness, are better spellers, and score higher on tests measuring comprehension, language complexity and vocabulary.

The benefits of reading have also been researched from a neurolinguistics perspective. As we read words, areas of brain reserved for language, such as the Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are activated. Interestingly though, as we read words which are semantically linked to our senses, which occur predominantly in descriptive fictional writing, other areas of our brain usually reserved for feelings and processing sensory information are activated. For example, a study found that when exposed to words such as ‘coffee’ and ‘lavender’ the primary olfactory cortex region of the brain becomes activated in a way which it didn’t for ‘neutral’ words such as ‘key’ and ‘chair’. Similarly, metaphors such as “The singer had a velvet voice” literally activate the same part of one’s brain as is activated when they see or touch velvet.

Novels and plays gives us access to cultures and societies that differ radically from our own. Despite being divided by time and space, we are united by human connections. When we read fiction, we see the breadth of the human experience. The far-flung or ancient characters are not ‘them’; they are ‘us, then’.

Reading great works of fiction helps the reader to interpret the world around them on a number of different levels and think about things in new ways. Fiction, particularly science fiction is a ‘thought experiment’ that allows us to look at our own lives and world through a different lens. Things we take for granted can all of a sudden seem strange. Fiction helps us to conceive of the world anew and perhaps even imagine a better world. If we want to progress as a society, we need creative thinkers and new ideas.

But perhaps most importantly, reading fiction doesn’t just help us understand the world around us and its people, it helps us to understand ourselves. Reading fiction enlarges us and improves us as human beings on so many levels.

Great as all of these benefits are though, they are not the reason for me to pick up a story and read it. The real reason we read, I believe is because we love to. Reading is entertaining, enjoyable, fun. The mental sensation of your mind fizzing, agape, delighted by remarkable prose is one of life’s great pleasures.

To receive notifications of new blog posts, please follow us.