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A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.

— George R.R. Martin

One of the things which is hardest to teach, but necessary for the most basic understanding of texts, is how to widen your vocabulary. This is even more of an issue now, since GCSE English language and literature papers require a very high level of comprehension, even before any of the more complex skills can be displayed.

So, what do you do? What do you recommend your students do? The answer is both easy and incredibly difficult. Read. To improve your understanding of how texts work, to increase your vocabulary, to improve your ability to write well yourself, you must read. Not just the texts set in class. Not just text books. No, you must read a whole variety of things, from the nineteenth century extracts that you will encounter in the exam, to newspaper articles, letters, instructions, reports, poems, jokes, and so on and so on.

The real question, which I do not have an immediate answer to, is how to encourage someone else to read – from the ordinary teenage student to the adult who has never felt at home with the written word. I have worked in school libraries, taught in classrooms and privately one-to-one, and, though I have ideas to share, I have not found an easy solution to the problem.

Step one, though, is to acknowledge that the problem is there. Reading is often not seen as ‘proper’ homework, or as ‘proper’ work in a classroom (at least outside the primary school). Schools are not funded adequately to provide the books required, nor, more importantly, the librarians to teach, inspire and encourage reading.

I often teach students who do not understand the texts in front of them, partly as a result of a narrow vocabulary, partly as a result of a general lack of experience of reading. Once they are in Year 11 it is hard (though not impossible) to reverse the trend. How can we tackle the issue earlier? Once someone has had a life time of lack of success in reading, how can we change it from a chore to a pleasure?

If I truly had the answer to that, I would not be sitting at home writing this blog, but would be hired by every school and teaching institution in the land. I do have some thoughts which might help, though. So, some of my subsequent blog posts will hopefully give some ideas to individuals, to teachers, to schools, to parents about how to find reading a pleasure and encourage it in others. The rest of the time, I will simply share my thoughts about the things we teach at GCSE and A level, in the hope that it may help someone somewhere understand more and achieve more.

As C.S. Lewis wrote, “We read to know we are not alone”. Whatever our struggles, we can all agree that it is easier to struggle together! What have we got to lose?