Recently a student announced that English class is wonderful because "All we do is talk about books".
That is not quite all we do, although English is, above all, about learning to read carefully, and about learning how to talk and write critically about what you read. And, although we try to choose books that are interesting in their own right - because of plot, setting, characters, what they learn and the moral dilemmas they face - English may be the only subject in which what we study is not nearly so important as learning how to study it. For if you are an attentive English student, you will complete Twelfth Grade able to read anything well - to appreciate what a writer has to say, and how he, or she, goes about saying it. Students who can read novels, poems and plays critically and perceptively can also recognise dubious points in a politician's, or a lawyer's (or even a teacher's) argument. Students who can read well generally also become good writers and speakers, because they understand how to construct a coherent and convincing argument.

But above all, we concentrate on reading in English so that students will want to read on their own. On this subject no one is more eloquent than the English novelist Virginia Woolf:

Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards-their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble-the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."