By SYCORAX TIYESA NDHLOVU –

Effective reading skills are key to achieving higher academic and professional achievements that can facilitate you landing in a job with good monthly salary and excellent conditions of service.
Little do most pupils, students and professionals know that by allowing poor reading culture to accumulate to a greater heap in one’s brains, one is actually not only disadvantaging oneself in further academic and professional achievements but one is also engaging a neutral or a reverse gear in one’s career development processes.
It is said that wide reading gives wide knowledge; and that a good reader is a good writer. A good writer has clear thinking.
Therefore, by developing good reading skills, one also develops effective writing skills. With effective writing skills, one also develops clear thinking on one’s personal and professional articulation of issues that affect society.
This means that effective reading skills lead to effective writing skills with clear thinking in job application letters, curriculum vitae (CV), reports, memoranda, project proposals and many business correspondences.
In organisations with objectives to achieve, it is only workers with effective writing skills in business correspondence and presentations who are promoted to senior positions in those organisations.
This is why it is also said that good readers are good leaders. This is because good reading skills take you to effective writing skills which facilitate elevation to senior positions in an organisation. Senior positions in an organisation are leadership positions.
But with poor reading skills, one cannot understand what a textbook is saying on a specific topic. One students told this writer that he had all the relevant textbooks for the programme he was studying; but that he couldn’t understand what those books were saying almost on every topic. This is a sign that his brains lost capacity to absorb written information some years ago.
Poor reading culture is also manifest in low vocabulary, poor word selection and poor spellings; even in the so-called educated people.
Therefore, read widely to increase your reading and comprehension skills. Through reading widely, you will automatically also increase on your vocabulary and spelling power. Effective sentence construction skills will also fall in place through learning how effective sentences are constructed from other materials you read. Learning is a continuous process.
Such a process will take you to greater heights in your career advancement processes.
Being literate is not just being able to read and write. To be literate consists of many things. It includes being able to effectively understand what you read and what you write.
Being able to read and understand personal and business letters, many newspapers, magazines, professional textbooks, journals, novels, etc and ability to tell a good story from each story or article you read is what constitutes being literate.
Reading skills are critical nowadays. Most colleges and universities offer training through part-time, distance education or through online. All such modes of learning demand good reading and comprehension skills.
How do you expect to pass your examinations at whatever level of studies with poor reading skills in yourself?
The more one reads; the more one increases his or her knowledge; and the more one relates his or her qualifications to practical situations on the ground; and how to exploit opportunities and how to address some challenges.
Therefore, one cannot claim to be highly educated when the same person has poor reading culture which hinders his or her ability to translate his or her academic or professional knowledge into solutions to societal needs and challenges.
One professor said: “Being educated is being able to contribute to addressing local community problems.” And one can argue that it is difficult for a professional to contribute to exploiting or solving societal’s opportunities or challenges if one has low current knowledge on opportunities and challenges his or her society is facing.
To prove that functional literacy skills are critical to career and life development, vice president, Dr Guy Scot said that government is considering reviving such literacy classes. And if some people with high academic and professional achievements continue sustain their current poor reading culture, who knows, may be such professionals might join such functional literacy classes to rekindle their good reading skills which might have been eroded with long time of not reading.
The challenge with poor reading culture is that if one hasn’t been reading seriously for a certain number of years, to start afresh, it is like starting grade one. One fails to understand even a paragraph one reads. Each time one wants to finish reading a page or so, one finds that half way of a page, one falls asleep. This happens every time one wants to study. This is a sign of achieving high levels of poor reading culture.
Don’t aim at reaching the highest levels of poor reading culture. Develop good reading skills for increased and sound knowledge on current affairs and in your professional field.
Take reading as one of your hobbies. Read something for about10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes every day. Read with an intention to understand something. Read what interests you most. Continuously reading for such time every day, week, month and every year will transform your poor reading culture (if you have any) to effective written comprehension skills.
With effective reading skills, you can study further to achieve higher academic and professional qualifications with ease. High academic and professional achievements facilitate your landing into a good job with a better monthly salary with good conditions of service.
Ask anyone you think is in a good job with many responsibilities of writing memos, business letters, reports, proposals, making presentations, etc. You will be told in no uncertain terms that effective professional performance starts with good reading culture.
Therefore, as you persuade your son or your daughter or your niece or nephew to develop good reading skills, you should also be doing the same. Walk your talk in reading skills.
Good reading culture is a key to your career advancement processes. The author is a trainer and career coach.
Contact: Cell: 0976/0977 450151. E-mail: sycoraxtndhlovu@yahoo.co.uk