why reading is better than TV- Jonas Holle

Why reading is better than TV

By Jonas Holle

Many children prefer to watch TV in their free time rather than read a book. Why is this so? Is it because children (and adults) are too lazy these days to even use their imagination? When you read a book you create the images of the characters and the setting, and they are your people, not another human being on the planet will imagine the same images that you will. However when you watch TV you do not do this, you merely sit there and stare at a picture in a box created by someone else. You are not expanding your imagination; in fact you’re shrinking it.

You might think “sure reading might be better for you than television, but its still boring.” If you are a person you thinks this, then you are lazy! This is because TV is no more entertaining than reading. It just doesn’t require you to do as much thinking. Therefore, you find it more relaxing, but what you don’t get is when you read a book, not only do you expand your imagination, you expand your vocabulary at the same time. Whenever you read a new book, you learn lots of new words and you don’t even realize it!

Secondly, reading exercises the brain, which doesn’t just help with things like your vocabulary and your imagination, but it actually makes you a more focussed and knowledgeable person. You just have to stroll into your local library and look at the nonfiction section and you’ll see that there are hundreds of books filled with interesting facts about all manners of things! There are books about insects, there are books about history, there are even self-help books! The list is truly endless. At the same time books are incredibly portable. All you have to do is slip it into your bag (or your pocket, if its small enough) and you can take it anywhere, while a TV is probably one of the least portable objects in the world.

 The scary thing is that our whole planet is being overrun by TV. There is not a single country in the world that doesn’t have television. But the even scarier thing is that nine in ten people will choose TV over reading in their spare time. Now that is a scary statistic and I’m not saying that everyone should go and throw out their TV right now and never look at a screen again. I’m just trying to say that we should cut back a bit guys and if you have learnt anything from the last few paragraphs then you’ll help our planet from being overrun by TV.   

"Is Reading, more beneficial than Television??" By Shivona Chandiramani

                                                                                                                       8^th April, 2011 J                        

                             Is Reading Books, better than Television??

In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."

Day in and day out, the masses huddle in front of the magic box in hopes that it will entertain them. 

No, I’m not talking about a toy box or even about a computer terminal; I’m talking about what seems to sometimes be synonymous with God almighty — the television. It utterly amazes how so many networks can all recycle the same garbage and call it entertainment.

Fifty some-odd channels on and not a thing that most people even remotely are interested in watching. The sole virtue that TV seems to possess is that it can occupy the mind undemandingly. For the record, I do own a TV, and I do have cable (FOXTEL), but I don’t sit there the whole day occupying myself to it.

I do get some use out of it, I just do not think that just because I don’t watch TV that no one else should. 

I just find it disturbing how many fat, lazy couch potatoes there are out there who will engage in such behaviour when they actually do remove their lazy butts from the couch as they to proceed to tear up the entire room just to look for the remote when they could simply get up and manually change the channel. I can think of a million more productive ways to spend one’s time. First and foremost, why not 

try reading a book?

Instead of sitting in front of the TV all day long, you could be reading a fascinating book and broadening your horizons.

I have received a great many rewards from reading, such as an extensive vocabulary and much better grades on papers, because even if it isn’t class-related, writing a better paper never hurt anyone’s grades. 

For movie buffs out there (not saying I'm not one, HaHa), many of the great movies are in all actuality originally based on books, and for the record, the books are always better because they are so much more informative and allow for greater immersion into the story.

So the next time you get the urge to watch some mindless, tasteless, regurgitated garbage on TV put down that remote, do yourself a favour and curl up with a good book.

I hope you have gained a lot of knowledge on my report on “Is Reading Books better than Television??”

By Shivona Chandiramani J