My English teacher always tells us that our english will improve if we read, due to the fact that we will take in punctuation and also learn a better vocabulary. I read all the time and am predicted a grade B.I don’t know if this is due to reading or because i am just good at it. however, in our class the people who read generally do get higher grades. btw, it’s GCSE’s i’m doing.

totally, i’ve had friends who learned english from watching tv!

Ten years ago I gave my Mongolian wife children’s fairy stories to read, then I quizzed her afterwards, she hated the three bears, and she thought it was stupid, looking back it my have been cruel as she was raised as a commie, where work and productivity come first before anything!

What phase of second language learning are you talking about? I’m not an authority on ESL, although I was around it in public ed, as well as living in Germany and Mexico for several years. But from my own experiences in learning these above mentioned languages, it takes a variety of encounters with that language. Learning English, like any other language may be factilitated by study, practical encounters with native speakers (who by the way, may speak with a regional variation), and listening to stories. In my mind, there’s just no substitute for immersion in the language, you may learn to read and write a second language, but without actual face to face interactions, you are accomplishing little more than a person who watches a film on how to drive a car, and then gets behind the wheel.

Stories are a useful way to learn the English language when used in conjunction with other language tools. In the “Learn English Kids” section of its website, the British Council provides a number of stories to aid with language development. The BBC’s Learning English guide provides simple versions of its leading news stories as part of its language package.

References:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories