Does reading books improve your english skills?

[addoil]

Personally I never read books other than school texts (lol i hate books >.<)

I know it's quite a bad habit but nonetheless I've made my way through Year12 and am doing alright in english..
A noticeable difference however is that I read relatively slowly compared to others and I'm guessing it's because of this.. and sometimes I might misinterpret extracts if they're too deep and meaningful

[Trebla]

In high school I was never the kind of person who read books recreationally, so my comprehension skills were pretty crap. However, my writing skills (when it came to essays) were pretty good probably because I always read analytical/factual stuff (like news/feature articles, editorials, reviews etc) rather than fictional books.

[Eg155]

I could count the amount of non-school based books I've read, that's how little.

I've been top 5 of my cohort (200s) school since year 7 and when I moved to a school in the 100s (400+ students) I was coming first in extension english.

I have always been told I have a very sophisticated vocabulary for a person of my age and they are astounded by my lack of reading.

However, on that note, I have difficulty with expression- making sentences succinct. They tend to be too 'wordy', so reading does help with expression irrrc, but vocab on the other hand you can pick up for T.V or your parents ect. Depends how you learn, I'm an auditory learner.

[kwu1]

From what I have know, more reading = greater vocab --> greater comprehension from reading in context and searching up words

[Crobat]

The last time I legitimately picked up a book and read it was 5 years ago in Year 7. Since then I have managed maybe 1.5 books a year (all prescribed texts for English) and this year I've read 2 books altogether (1 prescribed, 1 related). However, I'm also ranked quite strongly in Advanced, Extension One, and Extension Two, and my school is in the top 20s of the state.

I know that those around my rank don't, or at least didn't, read much as well. So in answer to your question, no, not always. But I have heard that it's only beneficial.