Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-10950063-20131125204106/@comment-10950063-20131128174745

Professionally written books reinforce good writing habits. Not reading doesn't make you a terrible writer, but reading does help you. Obviously, kids read a lot. The world isn't a Denny's menu where it's all pictures you can point to.

And I never implied that other forms of media aren't valid or don't have merit. Don't project bullshit on me because you feel like going off on it. However, watching a movie, even a great movie, even the most complex, beautiful movie will not help a person write as well as reading would. It can help them craft imagery, it can help with pacing, it can help with showing instead of telling, but when you get down to it books are better for teaching writing than other forms of media. Just like films are the best for film-makers, television in the best for script-writers and music is the best for musicians. That was all I was saying.

And obviously schools are still teaching English. They'll go through it once or twice, then move on. My point is they're not effectively teaching. When an english teacher tells me that her senior-level students don't know how to write properly and she says that it's because the system doesn't train them to write properly, I'm inclined to believe the professional.