Reading

By Eric (Discover English Teacher)

Reading is a great pleasure.  It can take us to new worlds, new lives, new experiences, new knowledge and all from the comfort of our cosy reading chair.  It can wash away the bleak solitude of lockdown with bright adventure.

But reading in a second (or subsequent) language can be really difficult.  The sea of new words and complicated sentences can threaten to overcome us.  It can take ages to read just a small paragraph and that can scare us away.

However, it is exactly those things that make reading so difficult that also make it so rewarding. Reading will also help to improve your vocabulary, grammar, writing and even your speaking.  So it’s well-worth the investment.

There are a few things that can be done to try to make the act of reading a little less scary and hopefully more pleasurable.  I find these things help:

1: Choose a topic that interests you – if the book is about something you love, you are much more likely to persevere.

2: Start with books of a lower level than you are currently studying.  When you first start out to read a book it can be daunting, but reading something from a level or two below your class means there is likely to be more vocabulary you’ve already seen.

3:  Don’t worry if you don’t understand every single word.  You won’t.  When we’re speaking, we don’t need to hear every single word to understand what someone is saying and it’s the same with reading.  Look at the words and sentences before and after the part you are having trouble with, and try to solve the meaning.  If you can understand the message, it doesn’t matter if you skip a few words.

4:  Having said that, it’s a good idea to write down interesting new words you come across.  Don’t look them up in the dictionary/translator straight away – this will interrupt the book you are reading and make it harder to continue – but write them down and save them for later.  You’ll soon have a list of cool words.

5:  Try to use those new words when you’re speaking.  It’s a fun way to bring the reading into your social life and helps to remember new words.

6:  Setting a dedicated time for reading can help to focus.  Even if it’s just for 15 minutes after breakfast a set time becomes habit, which is much more reliable than waiting until you ‘feel like reading’.

7:  Lastly, I think it’s important to say that if you’re not enjoying a book, stop reading it.  This applies to any book, in any language.  You do not have to finish if you don’t want to.  Put it aside, find a new book.  I’ve wasted so many months trying to finish books I ‘should’ read and I end up reading nothing.

Reading certainly is challenging, but it’s also so very rewarding.  And what better time to start than when we’re shut up at home?  We can’t go out but we can bring all the worlds of the imagination in.