Do you ever listen to two teenagers talking about their favorite book or their speech on a certain subject nowadays? I hope the ‘Yes” answer.
The Quality of verbal communication among teenagers, or between teenagers and teachers or parents becomes less and less. This also occurs on their ability in writing. They cannot express what is in their mind fluently and appropriately. What is worse is that even they cannot understand a simple command or announcement. These may be due to their lack of vocabularies, creativity, and knowledge. How about their capability in facing hardships? Their egocentricity and narrow perception of the world make them to easily get stressed. What causes these? One of the answers is literature illiteracy. There are quite a few of benefits of literature literacy, but most of all is that it will help develop young people develop academically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. Considering this, here are some reasons why we should encourage students / teenagers to embrace reading literature.
The first reason is Cognitive Benefit. Reading literature develops reasoning skills. As teenager’s understanding of the world around them is developing, they need to be trained how to grasp complex social dilemmas having multiple controversy. When reading literature, they are learning characters having conflicts and how they reached the solutions. Owing to this, it will train their mind to be flexible in comprehending other points of view. They will set aside their personal perspective and see life from others.
Secondly, it’s for academic benefit. Books of literature which are surely written by professional authors are able to not only teach teenagers on new vocabularies which are useful for understanding texts or people’s speech but also encourage them to think logically as they have to interpret sentences expressed in figurative languages that are frequently used by the author to both express the mood or the atmosphere and beautify the language. Without realizing it, these ease them in understanding school subjects. In addition, reading literature can also train them to have superior focus. This concentration is important to make them not easily get distracted by negativity, useless texting and social media. At the end, the impact is the high academic potential.
The next reason is for social and emotional benefits. Because the character of stories, mostly, is man with his action, thought, emotion and belief that is actually our own reflection, it will help teenagers know themselves. The nature and condition of the human heart found in the stories such as rage, heartache and loss that they may not have experienced before will open their mind to cope with them with broader perspective and without feeling overwhelmed by such emotions. Furthermore, various background of each character can encourage them to learn how to have good interaction with peers, family and society. It is hoped that social perception and empathy may begin to form within themselves. These, belatedly, will support them to be brave to make positive changes in society.
In short, literature written in beautiful language and having a complexity of cultural problems teaches teenagers social values and increases their academic potential. For this reason, it is highly recommended for teachers and parents to motivate them to love reading literature.
(Written by Hedwig)
Sources
https://www.lifehack.org/307436/7-benefits-reading-literary-fiction-you-may-not-know-2#:~:text=The%20best%20part%20is%20that,of%20depression%20than%20non%2Dreaders.
https://www.verywellfamily.com/how-logical-reasoning-changes-with-age-3288332https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/why-read-literature/https://www.aop.com/blog/five-reasons-to-study-literature