Importance of Magazines in Education

Introduction to Magazines

The word magazine in an “Arabic” means “to store” or we can say that it is a store where we place the content. The meaning of the word “publish” is “to make it public”, it makes the content for their public or target readers in order to distribute the innovative information. The magazines are a scheduled publication that appears at a fixed schedule. It can be published in the hard copy (printing) or it can be electronically (Soft copy) published which can be known as E-magazine or online magazine.

 Particularly magazines are published on a fixed schedule, which consists of a variety of contents in different categories. The first magazine was published in England in the 18^th century, they were “Spectator” and “Tattler”. There are many types of magazines some of them focus on religion, education, sports, music, history, technology, science, travel, current issues, politics, lifestyle, social issues or advertisement. Depending upon the interest of learner it provides huge content on different topics which become helpful for them. Magazines play an important role in the publishing world for many years, it brought information and enjoyment for many learners. So, the impact of magazines are great to society.

Survey report

Survey Report

  According to a survey report, magazine readers are most influenced by magazines than any other media.  In reference of the Pakistan today website, the recent report shows that 75% Pakistani not read any magazine or books, while only 9% are eagerly read. As compare to Pakistan, the highest ratio (91%) of Americans used to read magazines. Research study shows that magazines are the most motivating and inspiring for the young generation as compare to other media.

As print media is the most powerful and instructional tool, the use of print media displayed an entire civilization, country or world in front of students within seconds.  Magazines are one of the mass media which plays a great role in education, it is powerful and endless sources of information, also magazines are the source of communication, their aim is to communicate with and inform to their reader about the different occasions. Generally, the content of the magazine supports the learners or readers to grow in the development of their literacy. Use of the photos and colorful artwork and informative content in magazines inspires the young readers to their love of reading. The engaging content in a magazine encouraged the students to read, to learn and to interact with it, which are very helpful in improving the reading and writing skills as well as enhance their vocabulary, helpful for the practice of dialogues and phrases, it gives knowledge about a particular topic, it provides informative content to learn, it tells the use of right words on the right situation, and grip on different topics, which can be helpful during the debate presentation or addressing the speech on any particular topic in a great way with the wonderful content. So, the magazines are very beneficial which provides a lot of benefits to the learners or readers in a portable and readable form, some of them are discussed as follows:

It gives an opportunity to the readers and learners to enhance the knowledge and facilitate them for self-education in any particular field such as Education, Fashion, Technology, Business, News, Beauty, Lifestyle, Current Affairs, and Social Affairs, etc. From the pedagogical point of view, access to magazines is crucial. It is very interesting, which motivates the learners to work on a variety of topics. Most of the learners prefer to learn through print media in their classroom because it is a more interesting way to get knowledge and brings some creativity in class, and students don't get bored with this activity due to the colorful graphics. Organization of the photograph activities, which help the learners to stimulate verbal or written stories. According to a research result, it shows that children and teenagers are very attracted by the magazines because it consists of pictures, child friendly and colorful contents.

In general, the benefits of using magazines are, magazines allow teachers to use them in different subjects because it covers a wide range of topics with valuable and authentic materials, which can be useful for the classroom.

Nazish Jamali
Editor