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It’s true that the older a non-reader becomes, the more likely he or she is to disengage with the act of reading. It’s also true that to become a good, or even just an efficient reader, requires daily practice. Clearly there is a conflict between these two sets of circumstances which perpetuates a cycle of low self-esteem, frustration and unwillingness when it comes to reading that, by the time the person is a teen or young adult, can be really hard to recover from. However, spend a few moments considering how such a simple thing as a Photography Monthly subscription was enough to break the cycle for one non-reader!

We all know that being unable to read effectively does not make a person unskilled generally, and this particular non-reader was extremely artistic and skilled in the area of photography, being able to master complex cameras without reading the dense advice manuals that invariably accompanied them, but by trial, error, experience and instinct. He was also able to compose fantastic photographs through the lens, his own minds-eye and a great perception of light, colour and effects –in short, he did not need to read to be able to successfully and creatively take breathtaking images.

However, to set up working for himself he did need to be able to read and the thought of practising daily with the ‘Janet and John’ type tomes of his youth was enough to put him off the idea of ever being able to work for himself. Until we hit upon the idea of taking out a Photography Monthly subscription and practising reading skills by building photography knowledge and expertise! The benefits of using the magazine in this way were three fold:

• Individuals with weak reading skills spend a significant amount of time de-coding text initially and read with a reduced level of understanding at this stage. This makes it difficult to follow a story, as the mechanical process of the act of reading overrides the story telling process of the book. However, a magazine is easier to dip into for a designated time daily to read an interesting snippet, without having to remember where you were or what happened last in the story –just pick a bit you like the look of and off you go, much more motivating.

• Photography Monthly offers highly visual content with a wealth of image-rich pages interspersed with text rather than vice versa. Additionally, the visuals offer clues as to the content and context of the text, which helps to support the reading process and gives the poor reader a better chance at independent reading.

• Because the non-reader was a self-taught ‘expert’ in the field of photography, matching the written form of familiar words with the words he uses every day did not take him long to master, suddenly making whole sentences much more accessible: where sentences contain friendly, familiar words, it is easier to make sense of the unknown words.

It really wasn’t long before this extremely poor reader was able to read quite complex, technical sentences with a degree of understanding and began to really look forward to receiving his new Photography Monthly subscription issue every month. If you have an adult non-reader in the family, it’s an approach that we’d highly recommend.