The Benefits of Reading for Pleasure: Does It Beat Drills?

Reading for pleasure means reading because you want to, not because a teacher set it. Teachers and parents often hear that it raises attainment. This article looks at what large surveys and studies actually found, much of it about children reading in their first language. It explains how to tell correlation from cause, and why enjoyment matters so much for how much pupils read. Then it turns to English learners and the old question of pleasure reading versus drills.

What are the benefits of reading for pleasure?

Pupils who read for pleasure tend to read better, know more words and make more progress at school. That is the consistent finding of large surveys and long-term studies. Most of the evidence shows a link, not proof that pleasure reading causes the gains. The studies that measure progress over time suggest it does contribute.

Clark and Rumbold (2006), in a review for the National Literacy Trust, list benefits linked to reading for pleasure in children. They include reading attainment, writing ability, comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and positive attitudes to reading. They also note that most of these studies are correlational and would benefit from a more rigorous approach.

Reading for pleasure vs reading for school

Clark and Rumbold (2006) define reading for pleasure as reading we do of our own free will, expecting satisfaction from it. It also covers reading that someone else asked us to start, which we continue because we are interested. It usually involves material we chose, at a time and place that suits us.

Reading for school has a different purpose. The text is set, the pace is set, and questions or a test usually follow. Both have a place. Close study of a hard text teaches things that easy reading does not. But only reading for pleasure is something pupils choose to do when nobody is asking.

Krashen (2004) calls the pleasure version free voluntary reading: reading what you want, with no tests or book reports, and freedom to put a book down. He argues that it is one of the most powerful tools in language education. Treat that as the view of its best-known advocate, and weigh it against the studies below.

In practice, reading slides from pleasure towards school when:

• a test or worksheet follows every book;
• the teacher chooses every text;
• pupils may not stop a book they dislike;
• reading happens only in lessons.

What large surveys found

The largest survey is PISA. In 2009, the OECD tested the reading of 15-year-olds and asked how much they read for enjoyment. On average across OECD countries, 37% said they did not read for enjoyment at all (OECD, 2010).

Those students averaged 460 points on the reading scale. Students who read for enjoyment for up to 30 minutes a day averaged 504. Those reading 30 to 60 minutes averaged 527, and longer reading added little more. For scale, PISA treats a gap of about 39 points as roughly a year of schooling.

The OECD (2010) draws a practical lesson. The biggest difference lies between reading for enjoyment and not reading at all. Schools should therefore focus on getting students to read daily for enjoyment, rather than on how much time they spend.

Sullivan and Brown (2015) used a different design. They followed 3,583 members of the 1970 British Cohort Study and compared their test results at 10 and at 16. Reading for pleasure in childhood was linked to substantial progress between those ages. The link was strongest for vocabulary, and weaker but still substantial for maths.

Strikingly, reading for pleasure was more strongly linked to progress than parents' education was. Playing a musical instrument, which the authors tested as another sign of a cultured home, showed no such link.

Correlation or cause? How to read these findings

A survey can show that readers do better. It cannot show why. Good readers enjoy reading more, so they read more. The arrow could point either way, or both ways at once.

The OECD (2010) says this plainly: PISA cannot determine causal relationships between engagement in reading and reading achievement. Its figures describe how strongly the two are linked by the age of 15.

Mol and Bus (2011) pooled 99 studies of leisure reading. They argue for an upward spiral: children who read better read more, and reading more makes them better still. The share of oral language skill linked to print exposure rose from 12% in preschool to 34% at university. Poor readers also appeared to benefit from reading in their free time.

Sullivan and Brown (2015) come closer to cause, because they measured progress and allowed for family background. It is still not an experiment. Children who chose to read may have differed in other ways too.

When you meet a claim about reading for pleasure, ask three questions:

1. Did the study measure a link at one moment, or progress over time?
2. Did it allow for family background and earlier attainment?
3. Did anyone change how much pupils read, and compare them with pupils who did not change?

Why pleasure matters: it drives the amount read

The case for pleasure does not rest on enjoyment alone, welcome as it is. It rests on volume. Pupils read more of what they enjoy, and gains in reading come from the amount read.

Two findings support that chain. Mol and Bus (2011) describe a spiral in which reading builds skill and skill invites more reading. In Beglar, Hunt and Kite (2012), Japanese university students who did more pleasure reading gained more reading speed than those who did less.

In practice, pleasure is fragile. These habits help protect it:

• Let pupils choose. Clark and Rumbold (2006) give a whole section of their review to the importance of choice.
• Keep books easy. A book that needs a dictionary on every page is study, not pleasure.
• Allow pupils to stop. Dropping a dull book is part of reading for pleasure.
• Keep follow-up light. A one-line record or a short chat, not a worksheet after every book.
• Aim for daily, not long. In PISA, the biggest gap was between some daily reading for enjoyment and none.

Does reading for pleasure beat drills?

This is the question for language teachers, and only a few studies test it directly. The best known is Elley and Mangubhai (1983). In rural Fiji, Year 4 and Year 5 pupils read high-interest story books for about 30 minutes a day. The books replaced the structured drills of an audio-lingual English program, which four control schools kept.

After eight months, the book pupils had progressed in reading and listening comprehension at twice the rate of the drill pupils. By the second year, they were ahead on every language test. That included the grammar structures the drill program taught directly.

Beglar, Hunt and Kite (2012) made a similar comparison with Japanese university students. Pleasure reading groups gained more reading speed over a year than a group that studied short texts intensively, with no loss of comprehension.

So in these comparisons, pleasure reading won. That does not make focused practice useless. In practice, a short exercise on a word or a pattern after reading can still help. The point is proportion: most of the time goes to reading. Extensive vs. Intensive Reading: What's the Difference? explains how the two fit together.

What this means for English learners

The big surveys above concern reading in the language of schooling. PISA tested reading in the language of each school system, and the British cohort grew up in Britain. Neither tells you directly what happens when a 12-year-old reads for pleasure in a foreign language.

The Fiji study is the bridge. Those pupils were reading in English, a second language, and pleasure reading still worked. But it worked with simple, illustrated, high-interest books. For an English learner, pleasure depends on ease. A book that is hard work cannot be read for fun.

1. Start every pupil on books they can read with almost no help. How to Match Students to the Right Graded Readers explains how.
2. Offer choice within each level, across genres and topics.
3. Protect a short daily slot, in school or at home.
4. Talk about the stories rather than testing them.
5. Add focused language practice after the reading, and keep it short.

For what extensive reading in English does for pupils, see What Are the Benefits of Extensive Reading? For the research base and its limits, see Does Extensive Reading Actually Work? The Evidence.

How iRead handles this

In iRead, a school picks packs of stories by CEFR level, theme and values, from A1 to C2. Many stories have an audio read-along synced to the text, so a pupil can follow the words while listening. After reading, four word games are built from the story's vocabulary, with no teacher setup. Students earn trophies and keep a Reading Passport, one record of their reading.

Key takeaway

Treat survey findings as strong links, not proof, and lean on the studies that measured progress or compared methods. For English learners, pleasure starts with books easy enough to enjoy.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Clark, C., & Rumbold, K. (2006). Reading for pleasure: A research overview. National Literacy Trust. eric.ed.gov/?id=ED496343
2. OECD (2010). PISA 2009 Results: Learning to Learn. Student Engagement, Strategies and Practices (Volume III). OECD Publishing. doi.org/10.1787/9789264083943-en
3. Sullivan, A., & Brown, M. (2015). Reading for pleasure and progress in vocabulary and mathematics. British Educational Research Journal, 41(6), 971-991. doi.org/10.1002/berj.3180
4. Mol, S. E., & Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2), 267-296. doi.org/10.1037/a0021890
5. Elley, W. B., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). The impact of reading on second language learning. Reading Research Quarterly, 19(1), 53-67. doi.org/10.2307/747337
6. Beglar, D., Hunt, A., & Kite, Y. (2012). The effect of pleasure reading on Japanese university EFL learners' reading rates. Language Learning, 62(3), 665-703. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00651.x
7. Krashen, S. D. (2004). The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research (2nd ed.). Libraries Unlimited. www.abc-clio.com/products/F2619P/