TWO Tips for Fluent Reading in English

hi i’m vanessa from speak english with

vanessa calm how can you start to read

books in english let’s talk about it i

recently made a video about six books

that i recommend reading in english well

in this video i want to give you some

tips about how you can read those books

maybe you’ve never read a book in

english and there’s a couple different

techniques for starting to read in

another language so I’d like to present

those to you and help you to be on the

right path

the first method for reading a book in

English is a more active method maybe

this is one that you’ve heard before but

you’re not sure if it’s a good fit for

you so I want to explain it a little bit

and let you decide if you think it’s

good for you well this active method

means that as you’re reading if there’s

a word or an expression that you don’t

understand you take your pencil and

underline it or you look it up

immediately you’re actively searching

for those words or expressions that you

don’t know in the middle of your reading

time so when I was reading this book in

French The Chronicles of Narnia I use

this method at the beginning so I

underlined some expressions here we have

Asuka which means in any case I

underlined this expression because I

didn’t know it at the time so I

underlined it and in my dictionary I

looked up the meaning for this

expression but do you know what it takes

a long time this method can be useful

especially if a word is repeated a lot

and you feel like maybe this is

important to the general story

well it’s good to look up a couple words

but maybe it takes a long time to stop

every sentence or every couple sentences

and look up a word and try to remember

it and then continue the story this

could take a long time but if your goal

goal is to really learn every single

word why not try it out a less active

way to use this method is to simply

underline the words that you don’t know

and then after you finish reading the

chapter or you finish reading for the

day go back and look them up this way

you’re not stopping your reading process

but you’re still learning new expression

as long as they’re not so important to

the story that you can’t understand this

will help you to continue the story

without stopping your thoughts the

second method for reading a book in

English is not so active it’s an

immersive method and this is what I used

after a couple chapters of reading this

book I felt like it took a long time to

understand every single expression and I

was so interested in the story that I

didn’t really care if I didn’t

understand every word I wanted to find

out what was going to happen I was

immersed in the story so what I did as I

was reading there are no underlines

there are no notes I just try to

understand the general concepts and

that’s what this method is the second

method is just understanding general

concepts so this is a good method to use

if you kind of already know the story so

if you know that this book is about

animals and about children and they’re

kind of in this fantasy world you know

that maybe the word that you think is

talking lion actually is talking lion

even if you don’t know those words yet

this will give you a general idea of the

story so I hope that this more immersive

method is a good way to balance with the

first active method and now I have a

question for you I want to know if you

have already read a book in English or

even an article or a short story which

method have you

used do you underline and look up new

expressions immediately maybe after you

finish reading that whole article or do

you try to understand just general

concepts which one have you used or

which one are you interested in using I

recommend starting this now trying to

read something immerse yourself or try

to write each expression and see which

style is the best fit for you thanks so

much for learning with me and I’ll see

you next time bye the next step is to

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thanks so much for learning with me bye