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First of all, I should once again admit that I have no teaching experience at all, therefore, everything written further is produced exclusively from my teaching perception perspective and learning experience, thus, it could well be pure theory having nothing common with the reality. But I strongly believe that it has though. So, I'd like to emphasize three aspects that reading provides: - motivation which I consider the most essential component of the successful learning; - great variety of styles, language constructions and thought formation approaches, which improves both ability to express yourself and increases overall linguistic intelligence; - convenient way to conceive complex language structures as text can be reread as many times as it is required; Let's get a bit deeper into each point. Motivation. This is the sorest subject to me. I have seen so many intelligent students of different subjects, who are actually friends of mine and who are actually pretty strong in their native language, which implies that it's definitely not the matter of linguistic intelligence lacking, failing learning English. How that comes? Well, they have never had enough motivation for learning English, it seems that there's no other explanation for this, given their abilities to learn quite a lot of pretty complex subjects including their own language! Now I should specify that I'm talking about broad definition of the motivation that implies both general interest in subject and any profit that could possibly come once the language have learnt. And if the latter point is out of teachers' reach, which is surely controversial but still, then the first one is exactly what we can and should use to motivate our students by picking interesting topics and materials. All the successful English learners who I know are readers that actually love what they read. It well could be written in English novel or classic RPG dialogues that you don't want to skip even a thing in, it could be materials of professional interest whatever they are. The point is it must be truly interesting to be really strong motivation to read. Lingual variety. This is huge. Reading gives students an opportunity to see how skilled and creative persons bend the language to express themselves, how they play with it, how elegant it can possibly be. And, hopefully for all of us, student absorbs it for further usage. It will surely be challenging which makes us as a teachers responsible for choosing appropriate difficulty level materials but that well worth it. From my personal experience as a learner it is the most influential and the most stimulating educational training that I've ever had and I'm quite sure that it's not just me alone. Reading challenging authentic authors expands the way of thinking about things, thus, increases overall linguistic intelligence and exposes tremendously to the language. Convenience to conceive complex language structures. It's quiet self-speaking point. Reading gives students unique opportunity to dissect and conceive challenging language construction which couldn't be conceived using the other receptive skill — listening. Therefore, reading is such a tool that allows one eventually to come to understanding of something quite challenging by rereading it. Also, there's one essential point about reading that should be mentioned. It is absolutely crucial, as it has been said during the course, to use English dictionary for unknown vocabulary to maximize all the benefits that reading brings to the table. Finally, we come to the main question of the task: how can reading influence language acquisition? Well, according to everything that has been written before, reading has huge influence on it in the greatest way possible. Given appropriate difficulty level to be challenging enough but not overwhelming at the same time and sufficient interest to the subject to motivate student to read the material, reading can dramatically improve overall understanding of the language, make students learn new vocabulary, stimulate linguistic intelligence, expose them to various, rich, sophisticated but still understandable language.
