It has been believed that people who read for pleasure develop better imagination and language skills than people who prefer to watch TV. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

I agree with the statement that reading has an edge over TV as far as developing language skills and imagination is concerned. A number of arguments surround my opinion.

To begin with, reading books is better than watching television because it provides an active learning for learners while the latter is a passive one. Reading can greatly enhance people’s imagination. For example, the individuals make different images in their mind when they read some articles or sentences and then use their imagination to put the story together whereas the TV audience just passively accepts information from the TV screen.

What is more, reading can also contribute a lot to language skills. Reading begins the journey through one's language development stages. Language is so much more than just letters and sounds.  It is words, sentences, grammar, syntax, and most importantly, putting it all together for meaning. Reading weaves these complex and vital aspects of language development stages together. Reading opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for people.  Reading and writing are important ways we use language to communicate.

On the other hand, watching television does not develop a person’s skills in word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, spelling or high-level thinking. TV programmes focus more on pictures than on language. The quick change of visuals and the fast pace of the scenes causes the visuals to dominate the language. To add to it, the vocabulary of television is lower than nearly all forms of print, from comic books to children's books and newspapers and magazines.

Finally, reading relaxes the body and calms the mind. This is an important point because people have forgotten how to relax and especially how to be silent. The constant movement, flashing lights and noise which bombard our senses when we’re watching TV are actually quite stressful for our brains. When we read, we read in silence and the black print on a white page is much less stressful for our eyes and brains.

To put it in a nutshell, I pen down saying that reading is undoubtedly better than TV not only in developing language skills and imagination but also in many other ways.