Reading Like a Writer And then, too, there’s the teaching power of reading; we learn to write, spell, and punctuate, and structure a sentence, a paragraph, and a text through voluminous reading (Krashen, 2011). It’s not a coincidence that so many published writers point to the voluminous reading they did as children as both their inspiration and their instruction for their own exemplary writing. Listen to author Lola Schaefer in Culham (2014) explain: I’m not sure which comes first, the reading or the writing. Early on in my career, the reading had the strongest impact. I immersed myself in children’s books—both classics and the newer titles. I passionately studied them for pacing, vocabulary, cadence, humor, voice, leads, use of figurative language, and endings. I learn so much from reading like a writer, and still do.
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READING AND WRITING CONNECTIONS
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