The main difference between my regular English class and the Gifted Class across the hallway is not as much basic ability as reading interest. Many of my students have only read what they have been forced to read in junior high classes.
Good readers tend to fall in love with an author and read many of that author's books.
In so doing, they absorb the author's sentence patterns, vocabulary, and paragraphing, quickly seeing repeated themes and settings. I asked the librarian to assemble a list of young adult and adult authors suitable for high school readers from fifth through twelfth grade readability. Students were asked to choose ONE author from the list. Each student signed a contract to read a minimum of three books by the same author, one for each of the first three academic quarters. Toward the end of each quarter, the students were asked to write a one page comment about their book in the light of the civilization we were studying in our social studies class.