Picking up a book for fun positively affects verbal abilities. A new study shows that the more people read any kind of fiction the better their language skills are likely to be. Researchers found that people who enjoyed reading fiction for leisure and who identified as a reader scored higher on language tests, whereas those who read to access specific information scored more poorly on the same tests. Source 1d.
I agree with the above article. English is a second language for me and though I am fluent, my speech pattern was deemed a bit too formal. Reading fiction for young adults helped me transition into a more colloquial way of speaking.
Seconded.
I agree with above statement, especially the part about reading fictional material vs specific topic only, since fiction tends to use a lot more vocabularies compared to specific topic which uses only certain terminologies in related field.