How to acquire new vocabulary every day...believe it or not

As an ESL teacher it strikes me as funny when students tell me they've realized they lack vocabulary in English. Duh...no surprise there considering they never do any reading, not even in their own language because Reading is boring, according to them.
I was brought up in a bilingual home, so both English and Spanish are my mother languages. However, I was introduced to reading at a very early age. When I say I was introduced, I mean that it wasn't forced on me, I watched my dad read at all times and so just followed his example. There were tons of books at home, there were many others I could check out of the library (to me this was heaven)and pretty soon I couldn't conceive a life without having something to read.
Why is reading so important? it provides you with endless new vocabulary, spelling and correct grammar. It's infinitely more entertaining and you're not even aware that you are learning because it is not done within a class setting.
To show you an example, I'll tell you about Simon. Simon was a korean student I had in fifth grade once. Simon had arrived in Mexico when he was in the second grade. All he could speak and understand was Korean. simon was extremely smart and learned Spanish very fast. By the time he reached the fifth grade he was fluent in Spanish and English as well as Korean. By fluent I mean he could understand, read, write and speak. His classmates could hardly master their own language, and English?....no comments. I had never seen a grade shool kid who ordered as many books from the Scholastic books catalog as Simon did; and read them all as well. When talking to his mother I congratulated her for investing money in Simon's favorite hobby...which I vehemently share. What's the difference between Simon and his classmates?...forget the fact that he's asian and asians are wired differently; the answer is that Simon reads and they don't. I prefer knowledge to ignorance any day So I'm going to play "Simon says"....and Simon says: READ
:)GLB