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
download my free ebook 5 steps to
becoming a confident English speaker I
want to help you master English and
speak fluently feel free to subscribe so
that you don’t miss new English lessons
thanks so much for learning with me bye