Foster: Hey guys and welcome to another episode of Inglês Nu e Cru Book Club. One month of books, reading, improving your English with reading. So let's put down our phones for a moment, we're going to learn a lot, have a lot of fun. Let's get started.

Hello, hello. Hey guys and welcome to the first episode of the Inglês Nu e Cru Book Club. My name is Foster, I'm going to be your teacher, your host, your kind of guide this month as we travel the world of books, reading and how to use reading to really super charge and level up your English. But today I want to do something a little bit different before we get really deep into the material of the course. So today we're going to talk about why reading is awesome awesome. And not just awesome for your English and your language studies but just a fantastic skill and resource to have in your life. It will make your life so so much better. 

So more specifically, today we're going to talk about 8 reasons why you should be reading in a foreign language, why reading is awesome. But before we do that, I want to give you just a little bit of my story with reading, a little bit of background, so we have a little bit more context and everyone is on the same page. 

I have always been a reader for most of my life. When I was a little kid I read a lot, I enjoyed reading. I don't know if I was like a "bookworm." We have this phrase in English, a bookworm, that is someone that enjoys reading a lot and they always have their nose deep into a book. I don't know if I was that nerdy but I really loved reading and this continued throughout my childhood, throughout my adolescence and into university and even to when I was an adult. In college and in university I was constantly reading. I loved it, I learned a lot from it. It really helped me when I started focusing more on languages and it was a great thing, it was a beautiful part of my life. 

But at some point, maybe three, four, five years ago, I'm not exactly sure, I kind of stopped reading for some reason. Probably for a lot of reasons. Maybe the emergence of smartphones and just being constantly connected and also the introduction of podcasts, I started listening to a lot of podcasts, I started listening to a lot of audiobooks. And I began noticing that my thinking was a little bit different, my mindset was a little bit different, my attention really really diminished and it was just more difficult for me to focus on the things that I wanted to focus on. It was more difficult for me to pay attention to things for a long period of time, for an extended period of time.

And recently, probably in the last year I would say, I've really begun this habit of reading all of the time, reading quite seriously again. And I have to say, it has been wonderful and I'm not exaggerating it. It has quite literally changed my life. It has been excellent for my language learning, tremendous for my attention and just really good for like, my mental health and my focus. It's been such a positive thing in my life. 

So obviously in this course we will talk a lot about different strategies of how to read, how to improve your English with reading but I also just really want to make sure that I can convey this message of reading is really awesome, it's a really positive thing for you.

So that's a little bit of my story. Let's talk more specifically about 8 reasons why you should be super excited and motivated about this next month of books and reading. 

So Reason 1 why reading is awesome, is to reclaim your attention. So I mentioned this a little bit in the introduction but if you are like me and I imagine we have some things in common, I imagine we have some similarities, if you are like me, you probably noticed that you don't read that much anymore and it is difficult for you to pay attention. And you spend a lot of time on your smartphone or on your computer.

And reading is an excellent, a natural way to combat this very effectively. So when you sit down to read something and you're really focused on a story or on the material, you really start to cultivate this habit of focusing for a long period of time and this is extremely important when you're learning a new language because naturally, learning a new language, it's really hard, it's very very difficult, it requires a lot of time, focus, energy and effort. 

So if you have difficulty focusing on just one simple task without looking at your phone, it's going to be way more difficult to actually learn how to speak another language fluently and confidently. So that's the first reason why I think reading is so awesome and especially beneficial for your English learning, because it just strengthens your attention span, it helps you focus and it really helps you reclaim the sense of motivation and attention. 

Reason 2 why I think reading is really awesome. Again, this is a personal reason for me but I think it will apply to many of you as well is, reading is a great tool and resource for introverts. So I am naturally a very introverted person just by my nature. I am shy, I get anxious in social situations and… Yeah, I'm a very timid person and this is really difficult for someone that loves languages because the real reason that I learn new languages is to talk to other people, to have conversations, to make connections with people from different places and different cultures. But when you are not 100% confident in a new language, it can be really difficult to have conversations without getting very nervous. And reading is an excellent way to improve your language learning skills, to be more confident, to understand the nuances and the small details of language and just to have a better sense of what you are doing. And you can do this totally by yourself. 

So you don't have to be nervous, you don't have to be anxious, you don't have to be really in the moment of "Ok, I have to say everything correctly in a conversation." You can just sit back with a book, enjoy yourself and you can still learn a lot. So that's reason number 2 why reading is awesome and you should take it seriously.