The number of students that read for fun is rapidly declining. Teenagers seem to think that reading is “uncool” or it makes them a nerd. I, however, am proud to say that I read for fun. Call me a nerd; I don’t care.

Reading can take you to a whole new world. It broadens your vocabulary, improves your writing technique, and can help you improve your standardized test scores. So why do only some English teachers provide daily time for leisure reading? If reading can improve our standardized test scores, wouldn’t it make sense to have all students read books for leisure? Studies show that every school day in America, 3,ooo students drop out. The majority of those kids are poor readers and don’t comprehend what they read. In middle school, we had a thirty minute period everyday to read a book of our choice. Many kids would complain and grumble about it; however, I don’t think that students really understood that the school was making us read for our own good.

Once you become a high school student, there is limited time outside of school to read for leisure. Teenagers are so focused on schoolwork or extracurricular activities that they rarely find the time to sit down, relax, and read. Having a scheduled reading period at school for all students would change this. Even if it was just fifteen minutes of reading at the end of the day, the number of hours and novels read would add up. Those fifteen minutes a day could make a significant difference in reading comprehension, writing skills, and vocabulary.

Reading benefits your everyday life. If the school had a short reading period everyday, it would help the school as well as the students. The school could have better testing scores if students had better reading comprehension, and students would perform better on tests such as the ACT or SAT. Exercising your brain is just as important as exercising your body. Students need to be given a time during school that makes them read. While students will still complain and grumble, it will help them in the long run.