How to learn reading english

Learning to Read in English: 7 Hacks for Understanding Any Text

By Yuliya Geikhman Last updated: April 18, 2022

So you have plenty of English to read, but how can you learn to read it?

Don’t worry, by using the tips in this post, you can learn to read whatever you’d like.

And that’s because reading is a skill that can be learned and developed over time.

With these seven techniques, you can better understand what you read in English—no matter your level. Especially when you get to more challenging texts, this system will be a big help.

Contents

• Learn to Read in English with Somewhat Challenging Texts
• Steps to Take Before You Start Reading
• Learn to Read in English with an Article from The Atlantic
• 7 Hacks for Understanding Any English Text When You’re Learning to Read
• • 1. Make a vocabulary list before you begin.
  • 2. Don’t define every word.
  • 3. Use context clues.
  • 4. Look for word roots, prefixes and suffixes that you know.
  • 5. Break up sentences into chunks
  • 6. Look for related words and ideas.
  • 7. Read and summarize.
• Knowing When to Ask for Help

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Learn to Read in English with Somewhat Challenging Texts

When you’re learning to read in English, it’s best to read just above your reading level.

This means you read articles or books which are a little bit difficult for you. Some words and sentences will be challenging or unfamiliar, but you can still understand what the text is saying.

Why would you read above your comfortable reading level? It can be fun to read something easy, but if you only ever read easy texts, you won’t improve. It’s still a good idea to read something easier every now and then, but it won’t push you to the next level. By reading just above what’s comfortable, you will be challenged to learn a little more each time.

This way, you can push your English reading level higher and higher. Before you know it, a text that used to be a little too difficult will now feel easy!

Don’t push yourself to read something that’s way above your reading level, though—unless you must. Working with text that’s much too difficult can be very frustrating. So the goal is to find something a little challenging, but not too hard.

Steps to Take Before You Start Reading

Whether you’re reading something easy, difficult or just right, here are some steps you can take (before you even start reading!) to make your reading easier.

• Choose a time of day when you’re the most alert (awake). Are you a morning person or a night person? Do you feel like your brain works the best at a specific time of day? Try to read at that time.

• Determine your reading goal. Why are you reading the text? How you read a text will be different depending on what you want to get from the reading. Reading for a general understanding of a text will be completely different from reading to fully understand it, or to just learn new vocabulary.

• Skim and scan. Scanning a text means looking for a specific part or for the answer to a specific question. Skimming a text means letting your eyes look over the text quickly without really reading every word. These are both excellent strategies to use before you start reading. They will let you understand a little bit about the text or topic so you have a rough idea of what you’re going to read about.

• Make sure you’re comfortable and have plenty of light. Poor lighting can make you strain your eyes, and being uncomfortable is distracting. You want your mind to be completely on the text, not on how much your back hurts from your terrible chair!

• Eliminate distractions. Find a place where you can have some peace and quiet when you read, to help you concentrate. Turn off the television, put your phone on silent, and go to a quiet room alone.

• Use a pen or finger to guide your reading. If you’re still having trouble focusing, slide your pen or finger under the words as you read them. This will help keep your eyes from moving all over the page.

• Take breaks. After a while, your brain gets tired. When you’re tired, it can be difficult to focus. Schedule breaks to give your eyes and mind a rest, or only read for short periods of time.

Learn to Read in English with an Article from

In 2008, journalist Nicholas Carr wrote an article in The Atlantic called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” It’s about how Google and the Internet are changing the way we read and think. It’s an interesting look at how current technology is changing how our brains work—but it’s a pretty difficult piece for an English learner.

To show you how to read any kind of text, no matter how easy or difficult, we’ll apply our learning tips to two (slightly changed) paragraphs from Carr’s article.

Here they are below. Try reading them now, but don’t worry if you don’t understand it. We promise that by the end of this post, you will!

Reading is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains.

Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

7 Hacks for Understanding Any English Text When You’re Learning to Read

1. Make a vocabulary list before you begin.

In the excerpt above, you might have noticed some words you don’t know. Some words are more important to understand than others (we’ll learn more about that in the second tip). Before you read a text, skim it for words you don’t know and make a list with definitions.

Look for:

• Words that are repeated more than once.
• Unknown words in short sentences.
• Words you’ve seen in other places.

Here’s a possible vocabulary list for our sample text:

• Instinctive: Something you do or know how to do without needing to learn it.
• Etched: Something that is carved into a surface, or something that is remembered very well.
• Circuitry: A closed route or path that something takes—usually an electric current.

2. Don’t define every word.

As mentioned in tip #1, you don’t need to know every word to understand the text. Stopping to define every word takes time and distracts you from understanding the text.

When you come across a word you don’t know, ask yourself if you can understand the sentence without it.

In our sample text, the last sentence of the first paragraph says:

“And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading…”

You might not know what the word “craft” means, but you don’t really need to! If you skip over it, you can still understand the sentence: “And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing reading.”

If you’re curious, though, “craft” means the skill of making or creating something. Now you know!

3. Use context clues.

The great thing about sentences is that they give new words context. This means the unknown word is surrounded by other words which clarify its meaning. By looking at the words that come before and after an unknown word, you can often figure out the basic meaning.

For example, the end of the last sentence in the first paragraph talks about the “neural circuits inside our brains.” What are neural circuits? By looking at the rest of the sentence, you can tell that neural circuits are something we have inside our brains.

If you made a list of vocabulary words before starting to read, you might already know that a circuit is a closed route that electricity takes. So you might guess that a neural circuit is the path that signals in our brains take when we think, act or learn something. And you’d be right!

4. Look for word roots, prefixes and suffixes that you know.

Many words in the English language use parts of words from Latin, Greek or other languages.

Prefixes are word parts that come at the beginning of a word. Here are two examples of prefixes:

• bi- (means “two”): bicycle, bipedal, bilateral
• im- (means “not”): impossible, imperfect, immoral

Suffixes come at the end of a word. Here are two suffixes:

• -ology (means “the study of”): biology, archaeology, zoology.
• -less (means “without”): powerless, worthless, pointless.

Roots are the part of the word that’s left when you remove the prefix and the suffix. A root is the main part of the word, and what gives the word its main meaning. For example:

• bio (means “life”): biology, biodegradable, antibiotic.
• hydro (means “water”): dehydrate, hydroelectric.

You might have noticed that both “bicycle” and “biology” seem to have the same “bi” in the beginning. That’s not quite true! Bi and bio come from two different Latin words. So be careful when you’re looking at a new word. Prefixes, suffixes and roots can be very useful, but they’re just a way to get the possible meaning of a word.

In our two sample paragraphs, there are a few words you might recognize from their Latin origins:

• Ideograms are written symbols that show a concept or a thing instead of the sounds used to make them (like numbers). The word comes from the root idea (form) and suffix –gram (method of being written down). You might know the -gram suffix from “telegram” and “Instagram.”

• A circuit is (as you probably know by now) a closed loop or path. It comes from the Latin word circum (round), which you might recognize in the more common word “circle.”

5. Break up sentences into chunks

Now that you understand single words, you can apply your new knowledge to full sentences. Some sentences can be difficult to follow because they are long or have a complicated structure. Make them easier to understand by breaking them up into smaller pieces. You can separate sentences by commas, or by thoughts and ideas.

The first sentence in the second paragraph is quite long:

“Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet.”

Try to break it apart and take it one piece at a time. It can be helpful to restate each part in your own words. It might look something like this:

• Experiments demonstrate that — studies show that

• readers of ideograms — people who read characters (which show meaning instead of sounds)

• such as the Chinese — Chinese people are an example of ideogram readers

• develop a mental circuitry for reading — create paths in their brains when they read

• that is very different from the circuitry — which are not like the paths

• found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet — found in people who use an alphabet

Since you understand the different parts of the sentence, you can put it together in your own words now:

Studies show that people who read characters instead of an alphabet (like Chinese people, for example) have very different brain paths for reading than those of people who do use an alphabet.

See, that wasn’t as complicated as it looked!

6. Look for related words and ideas.

Understanding every sentence is a good start, but now it’s time to link all the sentences together and understand the full text. You can do that by looking for words and ideas that are related, and making sure you understand how they go together.

One way to do that is by looking for repeated words and phrases. This method works well in our example since the word “circuit” is repeated many times in just two paragraphs.

The first paragraph points out that how we read changes how our brains make sense of the information (using neural circuits). The second paragraph shows a more specific example of this. It states that people who read using an alphabet and people who read using ideograms have very different brain circuits.

Your text might not have repeating words. In that case, you can also look for bold words, words in italics or dialogue found between “quotation marks. ”

If you’re reading fiction, you can look for feelings or emotions for a hint on what’s happening to the characters and their response to it. In non-fiction, time-related words and phrases like “before,” “then,” “soon after,” and others can help you organize the information.

Just by following the word “circuit” in our text, you almost understand the full text. Now there’s just one more tip to look at.

7. Read and summarize.

You understand the words. You understand the sentences. You’re even beginning to understand the ideas. Now stop! Read the text again and try to summarize it. Describe the main points and ideas using your own words.

After going through the text little by little using these seven tips, you should be able to understand it a lot better than when you read it for the first time. Here’s a summary of the text, using simpler words:

Reading is not something we do naturally, so our brains need to learn how to change the letters on a page into actual meaning. How and where we read can change the way our brains make this change.

Studies have shown that our brains work in very different ways when we read an alphabetical text than when we read a text of ideograms (like Chinese characters). This probably means that our brains also work differently when we read text online than when we read text from a physical book.

In other words, you might be changing the way your brain works right now, just by reading these words on a screen instead of a printed page. Pretty crazy!

How close did your summary and understanding come to the summary above?

Knowing When to Ask for Help

You just went from barely understanding a text to understanding it very well. Great job! Now you know you can read any text.

We only used two paragraphs from a much longer article. You could read the entire article this way, working through it a paragraph or two at a time.

You might still have trouble sometimes, so remember that it’s okay to ask for help! If part of a text is too difficult for you, try asking a friend, a native speaker, a professor or even searching the Internet for an explanation or a summary. In fact, just by searching Google for the title of the article, followed by the word “summary,” you can find a few one-paragraph summaries of the article.

The author of the article might think Google makes us stupid, but it’s definitely helping to make us smarter, too!

But the best thing for improving your reading skills is practice. You have to look at a lot of English sentences and become confident with how to break them down. 

So read as much English as you can! Even if you’re not reading from a book or magazine, you can still find a way to expose yourself to written English. For example, if you’re watching an English TV show or movie, turn on subtitles and read along.

Language learning programs, with their special tools, can also help you get guided reading practice. For example, FluentU lets you learn natural English with short videos. Each clip comes with interactive subtitles, so you can read what you hear and click on any word to get its definition, grammar details and example sentences. Quizzes are also included so that you can practice reading, writing and speaking vocabulary.

Reading English can be challenging in many ways, but it comes with many rewards too. So keep practicing and building your skills–soon enough, you’ll comfortably pick up any old English book and finish it without any trouble!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

« The 9 Best Books, Apps and Websites for Mastering Conversational American English

#learnenglish: 6 Cool Ways to Learn English on Twitter »

Is Reading English Hard? How to Improve English Reading with 9 Easy Steps

By Yuliya Geikhman Last updated: February 27, 2023

“Reading comprehension,” or your ability to understand what you read, is a key skill that should be trained to make sure that you understand the words on the pages whenever you read an English book.

This article will help you figure out how to get better at this skill beyond just…reading more books.

I will help you learn English reading with smart strategies. You’ll discover exactly how to read English books in a way that will actually improve your skills.

Contents

• 1. Learn How to Use Staircases and Scaffolding
• 2. Always Make Special Time to Read
• 3. Read the Right Books
• 4. Ask Yourself Questions While Reading and After Reading
• 5. Improve Fluency First
• 6. Once You’ve Learned to Speed Up, Slow Down!
• 7. Ask Lots of Questions
• 8. Read It Again
• 9. Read Many Kinds of Texts
• Challenge Yourself with Classics
• Practice with Quality Long Reads
• Learn to Appreciate English Poetry
• Find Translated Books from Your Own Culture

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

1. Learn How to Use Staircases and Scaffolding

When a house is built, it doesn’t all get done at the same time. Workers have to build some temporary structures to help keep the house standing up and to help them work on the higher parts. These structures are called scaffolding. Scaffolding is also a method of learning.

The idea is that, to learn a skill well, you need to learn smaller parts that will help you “build” your knowledge and skills.

This is true for reading comprehension too! To really understand what you read, you might need to work on other skills first. You might need to practice reading quickly (or slowly). You might need to stop choosing very difficult books, and start choosing the right books for your skill level. Start easier, start smaller and slower, and then gradually increase the difficulty.

Remember this when you’re working to improve your reading comprehension—and any other English language skill!

I’m sure you already know what a staircase is. You use it to climb step by step up to a higher level of a building. In the same way, the following steps (and the smaller steps within them) will provide the staircase to climb up to the next levels of reading comprehension. 

The steps below will show you exactly how to improve reading skills the right way. Use these tips and you’ll be understanding a lot more of what you read.

2. Always Make Special Time to Read

Reading for fun can be done anywhere. You could take a fun book out on a bus, in bed or at the office, and you can enjoy it.

However, if you’re reading to improve your comprehension, you need to focus and study.

This means you need to make a special time for this reading. Making time for your reading will let you focus well without risk of being interrupted. This time should be quiet, and you should avoid being distracted.

You should try to spend at least 30 minutes every day on focused reading. That’s how to improve your reading skills seriously and successfully. The more you read, the more you’ll improve.

Try this:

Turn your reading process into a ritual, something you repeat every time you sit down to focus on reading English.

Follow these steps, or any other steps that you’d like to make a part of your reading process:

• Find a quiet, comfortable spot with bright lighting to sit.

• Get everything you might need ready before you sit down. For example, you might want to have a pen, your notebook, a dictionary and something to drink.

• Decide how long you will read. (30 minutes is a good minimum amount of time.)

• Put all your electronics on silent mode (or turn them off) and put them away.

Turning off the sound on your electronics might not seem important, but it’s something you really must do!

If you have a specific process for preparing to read, then your brain will know when you’re about to read and you’ll be more focused before you even start.

3. Read the Right Books

If you dislike science fiction, you might not want to read a book about a man stuck on Mars. When you’re choosing books (and other texts) to read, keep two things in mind:

1. What you’re interested in

2. Your reading level

Whenever you can, you should read things that you enjoy. You should also choose books that are at an English level just above the one you’re most comfortable with. You want to challenge yourself just enough to learn new things, but not enough to get frustrated with your reading.

Try this:

Not sure where to start? There are lots of places online where you can find recommendations for books to learn English reading:

• Listopia on Goodreads is full of lists created by people just like you.

• Your Next Read lets you search for books that are similar to the ones you’ve read and liked before, or you can browse some of their lists.

• Jellybooks helps you discover new books and sample 10%, which means you can try the book and see if it’s a good fit for you.

• Whichbook is a very different kind of website—you choose the kinds of things you’re looking for in a book (happy/sad, beautiful/disgusting) and the website gives you suggestions based on that.

Any of these can help you find the perfect book for improving your reading comprehension.

4. Ask Yourself Questions While Reading and After Reading

Learning how to read English books is about more than just reading the words!

There are a few things you can do before, during and after reading to help you better understand the text.

Before you read, browse the text. That means you should look over the text quickly without actually reading every word.

Take some time after you read too, to browse again and summarize what you remember. Try to quickly say or write a few sentences that describe what the text was about.

Thinking about what you read will show you how much of it you really understood, and help you figure out if you still have questions.

Try this:

Before you read, here are a few questions you can ask yourself as you browse, to help you prepare for reading:

• Are there any words in bold or italics?

• Are there titles or subtitles?

• What are some of the names mentioned?

• Is there a lot of dialogue?

• Are the paragraphs short or long?

After you read, the questions below can be used to help you think about what you did and did not understand:

• What was the text about?

• What are the most important things that happened in the text?

• Did anything confuse you?

• Did anything surprise you?

• Are there any parts you didn’t understand?

You might have some more questions depending on what kind of text you were reading, but these are good basic ones to start with.

5.

Reading. Is. Fun.

Do you notice how you stopped every time you saw the period?

Now imagine reading an entire article or even book like this, stopping after every word. It would be difficult to understand, wouldn’t it?

It’s hard to form an understanding of what you’re reading when you read word-by-word instead of in full sentences. That’s why, to improve your understanding, it’s important to improve your fluency first.

Fluency is how smoothly you can read. When you read in your head, you should have a certain rhythm to the words. The words should flow together naturally, like when somebody is talking. That’s how to read English books like a native speaker would.

Improving fluency can be as simple as choosing slightly easier texts to read, or it might take some time and practice. If you take some time to improve how fluently you read, though, it will help you in the future. You’ll improve your reading and even your speaking. It will also make reading feel more fun and natural.

Try this:

Many of the words you find when you’re reading are actually “sight words.” These are words that you should know by sight and should not have to think about how to read them.

You can practice sight words very quickly. Just find a good list of sight words, like this one, and take about a minute or two every day to read the words as fast as you can.

If you don’t know any of the words it’s a good idea to look them up beforehand, but remember that this exercise is about reading faster, not understanding more. Once you can read at a comfortable speed, you can focus on understanding.

It might seem strange, but another great way to practice reading fluency is with videos. Specifically, look for English videos with subtitles. That way, you will read the words while hearing how a native speaker naturally says them.

6. Once You’ve Learned to Speed Up, Slow Down!

After you learn English reading more fluently, you can stop worrying about your speed and start thinking about the text and its meaning.

That’s right, now that you can read fast, it’s time to read slowly. Take time to really get into the text you’re reading, instead of speeding through it.

Try this:

One great way to slow yourself down is to read out loud. Not only will you be practicing your reading and understanding, but also your pronunciation, listening and speaking. Focus on speaking every word carefully and pronouncing it well.

If you can’t (or don’t want to) read out loud, you can try pausing every few paragraphs to make sure you’re paying attention.

Another way to pace yourself well is by making notes and writing down questions as you read.

7. Ask Lots of Questions

Speaking of questions—ask them. Ask a lot of them! The more you question what you read, the deeper you get into the meaning.

Asking questions is also a good way to make sure you understand what you’re reading. Asking questions like “what’s happening now?” or “who’s speaking here?” can help keep you focused. Asking questions like “why did he do that?” or “what is she thinking?” can help you think deeper into the story.

Try this:

Keep some Post-it notes and a pen nearby. Write down any questions that come to mind as you’re reading on the Post-it notes. Stick them in the text.

When you finish reading, go back and see how many of the questions you can answer now. If there are any questions you still don’t know the answer to, re-read that part of the text and try to find the answer.

8. Read It Again

The poet Ezra Pound says that with books, “no reader ever read anything the first time he saw it.”

Sometimes reading a text just once isn’t enough to understand it. This is true if you’re reading something difficult, or even if you’re not—reading something more than once can help you understand it much better.

Re-reading is great for those times when you read the words but can’t get them to make sense. It’s also great for finding things you might have missed the first time. If there are any new words in the text, you’ll see them again every time your read again, helping you remember them.

In short, reading things again is great!

Try this:

Choose something short to read, no more than a few paragraphs. This can be a story or a news article, anything you want—as long as it takes you only about five minutes to read.

Read the article at your own pace, then write down everything you can remember from the article. Write every little detail, even write down parts of sentences if you remember them.

Now do it again.

Read the article again. Write down everything you can remember again.

Do you see how much more you remember the second time around?

Every time you read something, you understand more of it. When you want to get the most out of your reading, try reading three or more times. The first time, focus on understanding the words.

The second time, focus on the meaning. The third time, you can start asking deeper questions like “what is the author really trying to say?” or “how does this news affect the rest of the world?”

9. Read Many Kinds of Texts

Today we don’t just read books and newspapers. We read blogs, emails, Tweets and texts. The more you read anything in English, the better you’ll get at the language.

Don’t just read books and news. Read anything and everything! Find a magazine that you enjoy, follow some interesting people or websites on Facebook, or visit a blog you like reading.

Magazine Line is a good place to go to find digital or print magazines on just about any subject. They give you lower prices on magazine subscriptions, and you may be able to save even more if you’re a student (check the “Student and Educator Rates” section for details).

Even a video can provide good reading material. For example, the videos on FluentU have full, accurate subtitles as well as transcripts. You can pick a video that you’re interested in to make this a more engaging experience, like a movie trailer or a clip from a popular show. You can also pause the video and check the definition of any word by hovering your mouse over it in the subtitles. 

Read the transcript before you watch the video, then read along with the subtitles as the video plays. Since you have to keep up with the speed of the video, you’ll be training your fluency this way.

Try this:

If you’re having trouble discovering new things to read, try any of these aggregators—websites that take news and interesting articles and put them together for you to look through:

• Mix helps you find new websites based on your interests.

• Digg collects interesting stories from around the Internet onto one page.

• Reddit seems a bit less friendly, but it’s a collection of websites and images that Reddit users submit for others to enjoy.

Whatever you read, just remember: The more you practice, the better you’ll get.

Challenge Yourself with Classics

A book becomes “classic” because it stands the test of time, which means that it is still popular after many, many years.

Human beings born in different generations tend to have similar desires, emotions and relationship expectations. In 2016, we can still read classic books from 1600 or 1800 and relate to the ideas, emotions and events the author describes.

Many of today’s young readers find “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson very exciting because they have the urge to explore and feel a sense of adventure, similarly to the generation before them and the ones before that.

Furthermore, classic books are loved by many generations thanks to the mastery of language usage and storytelling. When I first read “The Three Musketeers,” I felt like I was a part of the trio, even though I was born a few hundred years later in a country some thousands of miles away. At the time, I knew nothing about France and French history, but I was still drawn into the story. Alexandre Dumas was a skillful storyteller like Jane Austen, Hemingway and many other word mavens who have left behind countless books for us to treasure.

Classic books are fairly available to everyone, as most public libraries in the United States and abroad have a huge section of them. Plus, most of them are available for free to read online, on cool websites like Project Gutenberg.

I grew up in the late 80s in Vietnam when bookstores didn’t sell any books from the West. At school, Chinese and Russian literature was predominant. In the mid-90s, after a change in our foreign policy, we started to import more things made in the West and what came first in print were classic books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Wuthering Heights,” followed closely by “Harry Potter.”

Here’s the list of my favorite classic books:

“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë

“The Adventure of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

“The Call of the Wild” by Jack London

“Emma” by Jane Austen

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde

Practice with Quality Long Reads

The term “long reads” refers to long-form journalism, when journalists investigate in-depth matters and write long articles about them. Thus, a “long read” is usually a long article which offers a wider and more complex perspective on contemporary issues while taking less time to read (if you compare it to most classic novels).

Long reads are good for people who want to stay relevant and learn about modern issues, but who are fed up with the constant stream of headline updates that offer very little information. The quality of writing is high, so you can benefit from the best writing and best information.

You can find long reads on the website like Longreads or Digg’s Long Reads Channel. Reddit also has a Longreads subreddit that you can check out. My favorite source for long reads is The Guardian because the articles are also recorded and published as podcasts, available both on iTunes and SoundCloud. I love to listen to those podcasts when I am doing the dishes or running on the treadmill.

Here are four long reads you can bookmark and go through this weekend:

“Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster”

“Geek Love”

“Liquid assets: how the business of bottle water went mad”

“The Very Quiet Foreign Girls poetry group”

Learn to Appreciate English Poetry

Poems embody the fluidity of a language. Reading a poem out loud, or better yet, participating in a spoken word performance (which is when you read a poem for an audience) brings you in touch with what sounds right and beautiful in English.

Check out these TED performances by poets Harry Baker and Sarah Kay:

“Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter…”

“Harry Baker: A love poem for lonely prime numbers”

If you like to read classic poems, study the works of Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Eliot or Emily Dickson.

Poetry is a beautiful way of telling stories. In the last long reads article I shared above, “The Very Quiet Foreign Girls poetry group,” a teacher at an Oxford school organized a poetry club to encourage her foreign pupils to express themselves and their experiences in poems. It’s a great example of language acquisition and integration.

Benjamin Franklin shared a technique to learn English writing in his biography: He converted prose into poetry so the restraint of measure and rhyme would force him to search for variety in the language and make him master it.

Next time you read a poem, pay attention to the choice of a certain word and look for as many alternatives as you can. It is a good exercise to increase your vocabulary so you learn to appreciate poetry and the English language even more.

Find Translated Books from Your Own Culture

I admit it sounds strange but let me explain.

You first read a book in your own language, from your own culture.

Then you find an English translated version of it, read that through, and carefully compare the two versions.

Think about the reasons to choose one specific word in English for a concept in your culture. For example, “bride” in Chinese literally means “new mother,” as shared Lisa Bu shared in her TED Talk. It makes you think, doesn’t it?

Some examples of books in a language pair:

“Le Comte de Monte-Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas, père (French) and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” translated by Robin Buss (English)

“Ngược dòng nước lũ” by Ma Văn Kháng (Vietnamese) and “Against the Flood,” translated by Wayne Karlin and Phan T. Hao (English)

“Cien años de soledad” by Gabriel García Márquez (Spanish) and “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” translated by Gregory Rabassa (English)

The best part about these tips is that they can work for reading comprehension in any language!

If you follow these steps to learn English reading, you might suddenly discover that you’re reading better and understanding more even in your own native language.

Huh! And you thought you were just here to learn how to improve English reading!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

« 25 of the Best Resources to Learn English Grammar Online [2023]

Want to Learn English for a Hospitality Job? Start Here! »

English from scratch. Learning to read

What is the first thing a child is taught when he comes to school? Of course, the alphabet, and then reading and writing. Any teaching of a foreign language begins with the same. Is it possible to speak English without mastering the literacy? Yes, if you completely immerse yourself in the language environment. But even under such ideal conditions as living in an English-speaking country, you will still feel like a child in the company of adults. Without a decent knowledge of English, it is not easy not only to live in an English-speaking country, but also to travel the world. Even the airport is much easier to navigate for those who know how to read English.

So, it is clear that in order to master the language, you will definitely need to learn how to read. Any foreign course is built in such a way that in the first lessons you learn the alphabet and pronunciation. At the initial stages, of course, you will need to make an effort to remember how certain letters and letter combinations are read. But having mastered English literacy in the first lessons, you can easily voice any text, even filled with unfamiliar words.

How to learn to read English correctly. Some Tips

There are many ways to learn to read English. Someone resorts to the help of transcription. Others write down the pronunciation of English words using Russian letters. There are people who like to read aloud a lot. And someone focuses on audio files. In fact, all methods are good in their own way. When learning to read, it is not enough to learn letters, diphthongs and remember all the rules. In this matter, constant practice is important. Here are some tips to help you develop your English reading skills:

• Learn to listen to English. Oddly enough, but the ability to hear what the British and Americans say directly affects our ability to read. At the initial stage, adapted books are very useful, provided with discs with audio recordings of the texts themselves. Having before your eyes the text that the announcer reads, you learn to read correctly on a subconscious level.
• Try to read every day. Make it a rule to read English books for at least 20-30 minutes every day. Choose books according to your level of language proficiency. At the initial stage, you can read fairy tales and short stories. And in order to develop spoken language skills, it is also useful to occasionally look at English-language periodicals and blogs.
• Get used to writing in English. As you know, reading and writing are directly related. One follows from the other. If a person reads English at a decent level, then he will most likely state his thoughts on paper very competently. Getting to know native speakers is one of the most affordable and effective ways to improve your reading and writing skills. Communication in modern society is often based on correspondence in chats and social networks. Therefore, having met a native speaker, you yourself will not notice how correspondence in English will become part of everyday life. Introverts can be advised to keep a diary, which will be filled with entries in English.
• Learn English tongue twisters and poems. For example: Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not. Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot. We'll weather the weather whether we like it or not Tongue twisters help to work out the pronunciation of complex sounds. Poems enrich vocabulary.
• Practice pronunciation. Spend time practicing those sounds that are unusual for Russian speakers. For example, the combination th is not given to every student the first time. And, of course, the easiest way to learn the correct pronunciation is to listen to the dialogues and monologues of native speakers. Modern TV series with English subtitles help to deliver the correct speech.

Suppose you want to learn to read English from scratch. In this case, you will have to start from the very beginning, that is, from the alphabet, consisting of 26 letters.

English alphabet (alphabet)

English has 20 consonants and 6 vowels. Vowels include letters: A, E, I, O, U, Y.

In order to learn the alphabet faster, you can turn to children's songs. Bright cards with letters also help a lot.

There are a few letters in the English language that "behave" differently from the rest. So, almost all consonants in English make one sound. But X is an exception. This letter conveys two sounds at once [ks]. It is also worth paying attention to the last character in the English alphabet. The pronunciation of Z depends on whether we are dealing with the British or American version of the language. In the first case, the letter is read as [zed], in the second - as [zi:].

The pronunciation of the letter R is also very different between the Americans and the British. In the UK, this is a long sound a [a:]. In the American alphabet - ar [a: r].

Reading English will be much easier if you learn the transcription, which is a system of signs used to record sounds. Since this or that letter may sound differently depending on what signs surround it, it can be difficult for a foreigner to read some words correctly without transcription. However, recently many students refuse to memorize the symbols of English phonetics. Indeed, thanks to the Internet, today you can easily listen to how the right word is read.

It's easy enough to remember how to read consonants in English. The fact is that you can easily find analogues in Russian for many consonant sounds. For example, the English Mm is, in fact, the familiar M [um]. And in the word lemon, the pronunciation of the consonant L is similar to the Russian L. Also, analogues in our language can be found with the consonants N, B, F, Z.

The pronunciation of the letter C depends on which characters it is adjacent to. If C is followed by the vowels I, E, Y, then it will be read as [s]. For example, in the word cinema (cinema). Before other vowels, C reads like [k]: come (come), camel (camel), cake (cake).

The consonants T and D in English are very similar to Russian T and D, only they are most often pronounced with a breath. But the letter Q will always be accompanied by a vowel U. The letter combination Qu is pronounced as [kw]. For example, in the word queen (queen). The consonant G before the vowels I, E, Y will be read as [j] - [dʒ]. For example, orange (orange), badge (icon). Before all other letters, G is pronounced like [g]: game (game), gale (storm).

Another unusual letter for the Russian language is Jj, which is always pronounced as [dʒ]. This consonant is very common in the names of representatives of English-speaking countries: Jack (Jack), James (James), Jane (Jane).

Below we provide a list of all English consonants with transcription:

Bb - [b]

Cc - [s] or [k]

Dd - [d]

Ff - [f]

Gg - [dʒ] or [g]

Hh - [h]

Jj-[dʒ]

Kk - [k]

Ll - [l]

mm - [m]

Nn-[n]

Pp - [p]

Qq - [kw]

Rr - [r]

Ss - [s] or [z]

Tt - [t]

Vv - [v]

Ww - [w]

Xx - [ks] or [gz]

Zz - [z]

Reading in English for beginners is usually complicated not by consonants, which are often read the same way as they sound in the alphabet, but by vowels. There are only 6 vowels in English, but the problem is that each of them, depending on the position in the word, can have several reading options. Much is determined by whether the letter is in stressed or unstressed position. For stressed vowels, there are 4 types of syllable in English:

1. An open syllable is a syllable ending in a vowel or a consonant (except R) followed by a silent E. A stressed vowel in an open syllable is pronounced as it is pronounced in the alphabet. For example, plane (plane), placement (room), he (he).
2. A closed syllable is a syllable that ends in one consonant (excluding r) or several consonants. The stressed vowel in such a syllable is transmitted in a short and clear sound. The vowel A is pronounced as the middle between e and a [æ]. For example, cat (cat). The letter O in stressed position in a closed syllable sounds like [ɒ] in the word dog (dog), E - like [e] (for example, ten - ten). Vowels Y and I in a closed syllable are pronounced as [i] (little - small, myth - myth). Finally, the stressed letter U will resemble a somewhat slurred short sound and [ʌ] (cut - cut).
3. If a stressed vowel is followed by the consonant R alone or in combination with other consonants, then the vowels will be read as follows:

• a [ɑː] - long Russian sound a - park (park)
• o [ɔː] - lingering long Russian sound o - sport (sport)
• e [ɜː] - resembles the Russian sound ё in the word "honey" - fern (fern)
• y [ɜː] - byrd (bird)
• i [ɜː] - first (first)
• u [ɜː] - burn (burn)

4. If a stressed vowel is followed by a consonant R in combination with any vowel, then the syllables are divided into diphthongs or triphthongs (complex sounds consisting of two or three letters pronounced as one). In this combination, the vowel A sounds like [ɛə]. For example, in the word fare (fare, fare). The vowel O in the fourth type of syllable will be pronounced as a long Russian sound O [ɔː]. An example here is the word more (more). The vowel E under stress is pronounced as something of a fusion between Russian I and A [ɪə], for example mere (only). Y and I with the fourth type of syllable are read as [aɪə]. For example, in the words fire (fire) and tire (tire). The letter U turns into the sound [jʊə] (during - during).

At the initial stages of learning a foreign language, students will also need to find the answer to the question of how to read diphthongs in English. This term refers to combinations of two letters that give one sound.

Table of English diphthongs. Consonants

If you are seriously wondering how to learn to read in English, you will also have to learn diphthongs with vowels. Here are some of them:

1. ai, ay, ei, ey - [ei] - aim (goal, task)
2. ai - [eə] - air (air). Before consonant R
3. ae - [ɪ:] - aegis (protection, aegis)
4. au - [o] - autumn (autumn)
5. ea, ee - [ɪ:] - meal (food). Only if the vowel is not followed by the letter R
6. ea, ee - [ɪə] - dear (dear). In position before R
7. ie - [ɪ:] - field (field).
8. oa - [ou] or [o:] - boat (boat)
9. oi, oy - [oi] - enjoy (enjoy)
10. oo [u:] or [u] or [uə] - moon (moon), book (book), poor (poor)
11. ou - [au] - ground (earth). In the middle of a word

Those who have been reading English for quite some time rarely remember all the rules for pronouncing diphthongs. And even more so in the process of reading, not everyone pays attention to the fact that some consonants are dumb. But at the initial stage of learning, it is important to remember that the following letters are not read in English:

• G and K before N at the beginning and end of a word. Foreign (foreign)
• B and N after M. Autumn (autumn)
• W before R. Wrong (incorrect)
• P before N and S. Psychology (psychology)

You can learn to read English from scratch on your own. Do not try to cover everything at once, learn the sounds gradually. After you learn a diphthong or a letter, do not forget to consolidate the result by performing special pronunciation exercises.

In fact, there are a lot of rules for reading in English and exceptions to them, we have considered only the main ones. True, it is not necessary to learn them all. As you memorize new words, memorize their pronunciation and spelling immediately. So you will not have an urgent need to master all the rules of reading.

How to quickly learn to read English from scratch on your own. Tips for learners of English.

05/26/2017

204172

When you study a foreign language, you study not only a set of vocabulary and grammar, but in any case you come across the culture and mentality of the people who speak this language. The best means of learning the language and culture is reading in the original . And in order to read in a foreign language, you must first learn to read in that language .

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

It is not necessary to burn books to destroy a culture. You can just get people to stop reading them.

---

~Ray Bradbury

Is there an easy way to learn to read English ? If you studied English at school, you should have got an idea of ​​how English letters are read, you know what transcription is and how basic letter combinations are read. If your level is not beginner, but for example intermediate, then you will be interested in the article "Books in English for the intermediate level"

But, if at school or university you studied German or French, or your school base turned out to be smaller than you would like, and now you decide to learn English, then let's start with the most primary and basic and learn a few techniques where to start to learn the rules of reading.

English alphabet

I think you know that English is different from Russian and German, in which we mostly read and write. In English, the system is a little more complicated. The very first thing we need to do is to learn the alphabet.

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, of which 21 are consonants and 5 are vowels. Knowing the letters and the ability to pronounce them correctly is the key to successful and competent reading in English.

English alphabet with transcription of letter names.

A very easy way to remember letters visually and aurally is with the help of a song. Watch the video and sing the song until you remember the letters of the alphabet.

You can use the same method to teach the alphabet to your children and sing along with your little ones.

Rules for reading in English

After studying the alphabet, let's start studying the combination of letters and reading short words. In English, there are a number of rules that you need to learn, practice and remember if you want to read English words correctly.

The same letter can be read in different ways, depending on the letters that surround it, as well as whether it is a closed or an open syllable.

Rules for Reading English Consonants

Many consonants read similarly to Russian consonants, for example, the letters m, n, l, b, f, z . You can see this in words like mom, lemon, finger, boy, zebra .

Letters like t and d sound similar, but are pronounced with aspirated . For example, the words table, teacher, dad, dirty .

The letter c has two readings. Before the letters i,e,y it reads like [s] - city, face, cyber . And before the rest of the vowels, it reads like [k] - cat, cake, factory .

The rule with the vowels i,e,y also applies to the letter g . Before them, it reads like [dʒ] - gym, George, giant . Before other consonants, the letter reads like [g] .

The letter q is always found in combination with the letters qu and is read as [kw] - quick, queen, square .

The letter j is always read as [dʒ] - jacket, jam, joy .

Table of the ratio of consonants and sounds in English.

How vowels are read in English

In English, a word can end in an open or closed syllable, which affects pronunciation. For example, the words cat, pot, sit end in a closed syllable and have vowels a, o, i give sounds [a, o, i] .

Words such as name, home, five end in an open syllable, since the letter e is at the end of the word, which is not readable. But, thanks to her, the vowels in the middle of the word are read exactly the same as they are pronounced in the alphabet, that is, the word name is read [neɪm].

Types of reading English vowels in stressed syllables.

Reading vowel combinations in English

There are certain combinations of letters that have established reading rules, although English is the language of exceptions, and when reading more complex words, you should consult a dictionary. The table below shows combinations of English vowels with examples of , how they are read and what sound they make.

Table of vowel combinations in English.

And of course, there are exceptions to all rules. However, do not worry and think that you will never be able to learn it. Everything can be understood, you just need to try a little and practice.

English diphthongs with transcription

When you learn the basic rules of reading, you will see that in English there are diphthong sounds that are quite difficult to reproduce, especially if you start learning the language not from childhood, but in adulthood.

Table of English diphthongs with transcription.

Transcription of sounds in English

Practice shows that when children learn a language, they must necessarily study transcription, while adults do not want to learn it, and for them it can be difficult.

If you still want to learn how to write and read transcription, then great! And if not, then you can use online dictionaries where the word will be pronounced for you. One of the best dictionaries for today is Multitran and the online dictionary Lingvo.

Important!

Remember that it is necessary to use dictionaries, not translators!

Here is an example of reading short words with transcription:

Table of English vowel sounds and transcription.

The fact that we live in the age of the Internet has some advantages. Sitting at home, you can learn different knowledge online. To your attention video lesson , which explains the basic principles of reading. However, even after gaining knowledge through an online lesson, they need to be consolidated in order to form a skill.

Tips on how to quickly learn to read English

In this section, we would like to share with you the experience that we gained in practice, teaching students of different levels. These tips have proven to be effective and useful in language learning. They can be used for levels from beginner to advanced. Use)

Learn English tongue twisters

Here tongue twisters can help you, which are often aimed at practicing one sound. Here are some examples you can use.

English tongue twister	Russian translation
Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not. Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot. We'll weather the weather whether we like it or not.	The weather will be good or the weather will not be good. The weather will be cold or the weather will be hot. We will weather any weather whether we like it or not.
Three swiss witch-bitches, which wished to be switched swiss witch-bitches, watch three swiss Swatch watch switches. Which swiss witch-bitch', which wishes to be a switched swiss witch-bitch, wishes to watch which swiss Swatch switch?	Three Swiss bitch witches, wishing to change their gender, looking at the three buttons on the Swatch watch. What a swiss bitch witch wishing to change their gender, looking at which button on the watch "Swatch"?

Do not worry that these are tongue twisters! At this stage, when you are just learning to read and practicing sounds, it is important to pronounce them correctly, albeit slowly. You can always speed up.

Learn to hear English speech

After learning the basic, basic rules of reading, you can use the method of repeating after the announcer. Your auditory memory will also work and you will hear how words are pronounced correctly and what intonation is in sentences.

For this you can use small dialogues and audiobooks for beginners. At this level, it will be ideal if the text is in front of your eyes, you listen, read and repeat at the same time!

You can use a great resource like Oxford bookworm Library for audiobooks for all levels. You can download the library for free here

For those who continue to learn English, we recommend learning the language from movies, which you can read about in the article "10 sites to learn English from movies"

Work on the pronunciation of

The ability to read is only the first step in learning a language. As well as learning grammar and vocabulary, learning how to pronounce and hear correctly is very important if you want to understand what is being said to you and say it so that you are understood. Especially if you're talking to a native speaker.

As we said a little above, one of the best ways is to listen carefully to native speakers and try to copy their pronunciation and intonation .

Pay special attention to sounds that are not in your native language. Often, English learners have a problem with the 'r' sound, as in Russian it is hard, while in English it is more guttural and growling.

There are also difficulties with the pronunciation of two sounds, which gives the combination of the letters ‘th’ . Students stubbornly pronounce it as 'c' and 'h'. Although it is worth paying attention that in such words as this, that, there this sound is said as between 'z' and 'd'. And in words like three, think, thief, it is pronounced as a sound between ‘f’ and ‘s’.

This may seem strange to you, since there are no such sounds in the Russian language, but if you listen to native speakers, you will understand that this is what they say.

Don't worry if you can't get these words right the first time, it takes a little practice. But, try to learn correctly from the very beginning, because it will be more difficult when you are forced to relearn.

Learn to pronounce phrases in English correctly

In English, words in sentences are not pronounced separately, they often merge, as if into one whole, especially if it is a combination of vowel and consonant letters. Look and practice on these transcription examples.

Phrase	Transcription	Translation
Look at those children.	/lʊkətðoʊzˈtʃɪldrən/	Look at these children.
Turn off the TV.	/tɜrnəv ðətiː:viː:/	Turn off the TV
Let's ask that man.	/lɛtsæsk ðət mæn/	Let's ask this person.
Don't open the window.	/doʊntoʊpənðəˈwɪndoʊ/	Do not open the window.
Let's eat at home.	/lɛtsit əthoʊm/	Let's eat at home.

The same applies to phrases where one word ends with the letter 'r' and the next word begins with a vowel. In such cases, the 'r' sound is pronounced. Here are some examples:

Finally:

We hope that this article has helped you understand how you can and should start learning English, and you have become familiar with some useful resources.

Learn more

• 
  Learning letters in preschool
• 
  What are lexile levels of reading
• 
  Activities for kindergarten students
• 
  Math games for little kids
• 
  Learning to read for kindergarteners
• 
  Photos of the letter a
• 
  Good night story book
• 
  Importance of reading at home
• 
  What your child needs to know for kindergarten
• 
  Learner readiness definition
• 
  Social skill lessons