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Reading is one of the most important methods of teaching English to yourself, the amount of "drilling" you do without even noticing it. With reading, you can get so lost within a story and visually imagine everything that you are reading, forming your own opinions about what you are reading and how you see them. I do remember when I first started learning English at the age of 14, just constant drilling and repeating word after word which never helped me in any way. Only through reading did I get what I needed in order to learn. If some words you don't know the pronunciation you can ask and if some words you don't know what they mean you can use a dictionary and learn new words to put into the story that you are building. I do not know if it is just me personally but I feel that when children learn a new language they are very drawn to fun due to their ability to lose interest so quickly, which is why games are involved and grouping them up for fun activities and all other things that stimulate their creative and flexible thinking. If you can get a child interested in reading the will get to a point where they will be reading more complicated material and teaching themselves words that their teacher has never taught them and they will see a variety of different compiled sentence structures that they don't normally see outside of the classroom and learn new phrases, sayings and analogies."Reading. Of the four language skills, reading has the greatest impact on school success."(Cdl.org, 2019). When it comes to older children and young adults this is where things take a turn because the more you read, the more complex things you will eventually end up seeing. Reading is a skill that no one actually loses interest in, there are always more articles and books. Reading has a very big range on personal use, people read because it's their job, people read because they like the stories and people read because they want to know more about the content that they are reading such as articles, news and biographies. So to answer the question "How can reading influence language acquisition?": Reading like all knowledge-based learning is most influenced by personal interest. What makes reading so special is that stories are up for interpretation and everyone loves a good story. Reading is combing through millions of words and repetitively seeing how the words are used, in what context they are used and to what extent they could be used. Seeing multiple phrases never seen before, reading words not used often and learning them to know how they fit into the story. Reading is having fun while studying, working while taking a break and learning while being creative. So i would advise that instead of drilling word for word into their brains, try getting the students interested in reading, advise some books that are fun to read and full of content. Because getting students to have an interest in reading helps both the students and the teachers. Reference List. Cdl.org. (2019). Language | Center for Development and Learning. [online] Available at: https://www.cdl.org/language/ [Accessed 28 Jun. 2019].
