Transcriber: Thảo Vương Phương Reviewer: Annet Johnson
I’m sure no one here is going to try and argue
that literature is of no value or benefit to our minds.
We all know that it is one of the most important things to be able to read
and that literature allows us to have a deep understanding of the world today.
Why then is literature not as popular nowadays?
Why are young people not reading as much?
My name is Emily Ross.
I’m a Sixth Form student at Saint Cecilia’s College
and this morning I want to talk about the importance of literature.
Research was done in February 2021 that 41% of people in the UK
spend less than one hour a week reading or listening to books.
That’s not very much, is it?
For me, reading literature widened my vocabulary
and improved my ability to structure arguments.
It made school a lot easier to succeed in and it made me into a deeper thinker.
But I did not always love reading.
It didn’t come natural to me.
I was even afraid of it at some point.
It did take years to get into reading,
but I was able to improve on the skills I genuinely thought I didn’t have.
In primary school, I hated reading.
I struggled to understand the words
and I got very confused when I was unable to process what I was reading,
which was very frustrating.
Little help was offered in primary school and when I entered secondary school,
I was intimidated by novels and booklets that are more than two pages,
and my spelling was awful and I just lacked concentration.
But over time, my mom saw my struggles
and she had loved studying English in school.
Eventually she got me to read short soap opera articles
and I’d just read them back to her.
Now, at first, it did not work.
I would get so frustrated and I had no confidence.
But over time, the articles I was reading got longer
and I was reading as if no one was watching.
Eventually she bought me the Kevin and Sadie book collection
and I read the first two books in three days,
and that cemented my love for reading.
By year nine, I was reading books of my own age group,
and in year 11, I was reading poetry by Seamus Heaney and Oscar Wilde.
I would sit with my English teacher and chatting about the books I’d read,
she’d tell me different facts and gossips about the authors.
This developed my passion
because I was bouncing ideas off of someone who promoted them,
because we shared the same love and passion for books.
Literacy classes with the same teacher were also incredibly beneficial.
It was a lesson where I could find new books from all different genres
and work my way up through the levels.
I began to set targets,
giving me the motivation to persist on improving my reading skills.
My spelling and vocabulary improved almost as dramatically
as the soap operas I was once reading.
I was also able to concentrate for longer in class
and my English and essay-based subject grades rose to B’s and A’s.
And that feeling of intimidation had just completely left.
Now, the only downside about having a love for books
is that you do develop the expensive habit of buying too many books,
like you’ll buy five books and then only read three
and then say you’re going to read those two but you won’t.
And the new Waterstone’s will actually be leaving a dent to my debit card,
I really do mean it.
Over lockdown, my appetite for novels increased once again,
and I fell absolutely in love with authors like Sally Rooney, Virginia Woolf,
and Sylvia Plath.
Instead of being glued to my phone or trying to get abs in 10 days,
I was widening my horizons harnessed in my imagination,
while I fried my brain with a phone screen.
My screen time during the first few weeks of lockdown
were longer than most school days.
That was until literature completely took over.
There are a range of ideas and thoughts as to why reading is not popular
amongst young people.
The most common reason is technology.
The invention of iPads, phones,
and social media have engulfed the valuable time of young people.
A study from April in 2021 stated that in the UK,
children between the age of 5 and 16
spend a total of 6.3 hours of screen time every day.
I mean, who needs to read famous literature
when you can watch a simplified video in five minutes
or listen to someone rant on TikTok?
(Laughter)
Some teenagers just find books too intimidating
and it takes too much time and concentration.
We tend to highlight the negatives before embracing the positives of literature.
While young people are losing their spirit to technology,
reading can spark creativity and imagination
which ignites that fire within them.
Thankfully, there was a surge in reading during lockdown in 2020.
It allowed people to take up new hobbies and one was reading.
We got bored of our phones and decided to open a book and read the words.
We had vast amounts of free time and reading literature for many
is like a way to pass that time without wasting it
and learning on their own terms.
People start to appreciate the value of literature
and how books from hundreds of years ago can still relate to modern society,
as well as explore other cultures from around the world
to the classics that came from different countries,
whether that be Korean, African, Russian, and many, many more.
People start to appreciate the benefits of literature,
which they've been blind to for so long.
I mean, even I when I was younger
just held reading at such a low tier of importance.
I didn’t see the value in it until I started to embrace it
and I saw how much it can offer you in the long run.
And you can compare reading to any hobby, like football.
You start off with baby steps,
like kicking a ball or passing to other players,
and over time you start to build up your technique and your skills.
Reading is the exact same, only we start at an earlier age,
and we usually just don’t care about developing that ability to analyze
and evaluate what you’ve read and what you can take away from it.
Some do just see literature as words on a page clustered together.
I've always been drawn towards the classics,
whether it be modern ones or the 1800 Gothic classics.
Books are photographs of a period of time,
being able to see into a completely separate way of life;
the social structure and the way that they lived.
But while books show a period of time, they can also be timeless.
As I said before, books from hundreds of years ago explore and tackle
topics like sexism, racism, the class system, and mental health,
which also affect today’s world.
You can see that directors are able to take a book and modernize it
while still staying true to its original text.
When books from hundreds of years ago still offer clarity to today’s world,
which to me is personally mind-blowing,
then shouldn’t we be taking advantage of those resources?
Now, I know from being a young person that we happen to have a lot of problems,
one of which is mental health.
That feeling of being overloaded with stress and obligations,
and that hopelessness for improvement.
Shakespeare was able to capture these feelings
and decant them into Hamlet 400 years ago.
Sylvia Plath was able, before her suicide,
to write a book about the struggles of women in the 1950s
and discuss whether life is worth living, if you can’t see your own value in it.
That was written 60 years ago
and like Hamlet, it’s still relevant to the 21st century.
You really can find any form of literature
which explores any topics that your imagination can produce.
I read somewhere that you're never alone with a book.
There are many pieces of literature
where you can emotionally relate to a character,
which can sometimes offer us clarity on the situation that we’re personally in.
We’re able to develop a human connection with a person
that only lives in the pages of a book.
I mean, it is amazing that me and another person can read the same book,
exact same pages, but in my head
I will have a completely different picture of what I’ve read compared to you.
I might love one character and hate another
while you might completely disagree.
Whenever I read Virginia Woolf, I felt she tackled the topic
that you never have a conclusion to your problems or situation you’re in.
We usually just outgrew them or they mutate into new challenges.
I might find that personally brilliant and genius and you might not agree at all;
one’s not right and the other being wrong,
it just sparks a conversation between the two responses.
Persistence is key.
To learn and develop any hobbies, you must be persistent
which is why it is so important to encourage children to start reading,
especially as parents.
I can’t stress the importance enough to open your children up
to the world of fiction and non-fiction, poetry and essays.
Even sitting and reading a book with your child before bed
or reading books in front of them promotes literature to them.
Parents are so influential, they have so much power,
and this is a beneficial way to use that influence for the better,
to promote reading.
Reading with my mom and talking with my English teacher
had so many benefits for me when I was 12, so they should work for children too.
It is never too late to start reading books
and to break through that intimidation we’ve all had one time or another,
but persistence is key.
Be persistent in developing an appetite for books
and be persistent in talking and promoting that appetite to the people around you,
especially young people.
Support libraries by taking out books and support bookshops by visiting them
to ensure that those resources stay for the next generation.
Thank you for listening and I hope I’ve encouraged you at home
to start reading books and appreciate literature.