Reading to improve language skills? Focus on fiction

Leisure reading is important for developing language skills

We all know that reading is good for children and for adults, and that we should all be reading more often.

But, does it matter what we read?

In four separate studies, based on data from almost 1,000 young adults, behavioural scientist Marina Rain and I examined how reading fiction and non-fiction predicts verbal abilities.

We found that reading fiction was the stronger and more consistent predictor of language skills compared to reading non-fiction.

Importantly, after accounting for fiction reading, reading non-fiction did not predict language skills much at all.

To measure verbal abilities in three of these studies, we relied on items from the verbal section of the SAT, the standardized test used by many U.S. universities when judging applicants. Thus, the measure of language skills employed in these studies is rather obviously tied to an important real-world outcome: admission to university.

Although it was somewhat surprising to discover that reading fictional stories predicts valuable language skills better than reading non-fiction, the repeated replication of this result across several studies increased our confidence in this finding.

In a follow-up study, a collaboration between my psychology lab at York University and a lab at Concordia University led by education professor Sandra Martin-Chang, we asked 200 people about their various motivations for engaging in leisure reading.

Those who reported that they read for their own enjoyment tended to have better language skills. Related to our previous finding, this association was partially explained by how much fiction they had read.

In fact, motivations linked to reading fiction rather than non-fiction were invariably associated with better verbal abilities.

Based on these five studies, the picture is quite clear: it is reading stories, not essays, that predicts valuable language skills in young adults.

This means that there must be something special about reading fiction that helps promote language skills. Perhaps the emotions evoked by stories help us to remember new

words, or maybe our intrinsic interest in stories results in a stronger focus on the text.

Regardless of the reasons, the fact that it is narrative fiction and not expository non-fiction that helps us develop strong language skills has important implications for education and policy.

When it comes to reading, it really is a case in which the rich get richer: A great deal of past research has established that those who read more tend to get better at reading, find it easier and more enjoyable and read more as a result. This results in a causal loop in which leisure reading reaps increasingly larger benefits for readers in terms of language skills.

In fact, one study of over 11,000 people found that children who were better readers at age seven had a greater degree of socio-economic success 35 years later! This held true even after accounting for important factors like their socio-economic status at birth, intelligence and academic motivation.

Work from our lab, based on young adults, is beginning to clarify the association between reading and language abilities, pointing to the importance of reading fiction and not just non-fiction.

This means that it is important to foster a love for fiction in children, to promote the healthy habit of reading stories for pleasure as early as possible.

The current trend of governments prioritizing the sciences over the humanities in education runs directly counter to the evidence available. Given the benefits that verbal abilities provide in terms of success in school and in one’s career, fostering a love for stories in children should be a high priority for governments and educators.