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8/11/2019 How to Read English Texts if You Want to Improve Your English

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How to read English texts if you want to improve your English

Reading for content

Normally, when reading a text, people use a strategy that I call "reading forcontent". The goal of this strategy is to get the main idea of the text as quickly as

possible and with as little effort as possible. To accomplish this goal, your brain willtry to read as few words as possible and spend only a fraction of a second on each

word.

For example, when reading the following passage, you dont really see it like this!

nce when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called TrueStories from Nature, about the prime#al forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor

in the act of swallowing an animal. $ere is a copy of the drawing. In the book it said!"%oa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. &fter that they are

not able to mo#e, and they sleep through the six months that they need fordigestion."

I pondered deeply, then, o#er the ad#entures of the 'ungle. &nd after some workwith a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing.

To your brain, it looks more or less like this!

nce when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True

Stories from Nature, about the prime#al forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictorin the act of swallowing an animal. $ere is a copy of the drawing. In the book it said!

"%oa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. &fter that they are not able to mo#e, and they sleep through the six months that they need for

digestion."

I pondered deeply, then, o#er the ad#entures of the 'ungle. &nd after some workwith a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing.

$ere are some characteristics of "reading for content"!

• Not seeing "grammar words" like a, the, in, of , through, that . The eye only

stops at content words (main nouns, #erbs, ad'ecti#es and ad#erbs).

• Not seeing word forms! *as it look or looked + Has looked or had looked +

• Not noticing the exact spelling. It is well known that the brain recognies

whole words - it does not analye them letter by letter. Nati#e speakers see

the word piece all the time, but many of them still misspell it as peice, because

the two spellings ha#e similar shapes.

•

Ignoring difficult words that are not essential to understanding the meaning(here! primeval , constrictor ). *ho has the time to use a dictionary+

&n extreme example of "word blindness" is the rather wellknown pule where

youre asked to count how many times the letter F occurs in the following passage!

FINI/$01 FI20/ &30 T$0 30/42T F 50&3/ F /6I0NTIFI6 /T415 67%IN01*IT$ T$0 08903I0N60 F 50&3/.



3eading for content is a great, timesa#ing way to extract information from printedsources. The problem is that you may not need the grammar words to understand a

text, but you do need them to produce a text. /o if you dont pay attention tothings like articles and prepositions, you wont be able to use them correctly in your

own sentences.

For example, here is a sentence from the opening paragraph of this article. 7ostlearners (except those who are proficient in 0nglish grammar or extremelyobser#ant) will probably find it difficult to fill in the blanks!

To accomplish this goal, your brain will try to read as ::: words as possible andspend only a fraction of ::: second ::: each word.

The abo#e explains why some learners can read a ;<<page book and still ha#eproblems with relati#ely basic grammar. It also explains why articles and prepositions

are among the hardest aspects of 0nglish to learn. The conclusion for the 0nglishlearner is that if you want to impro#e your production (output) skills, you will have

to train yourself to notice grammar words.

$eres an illuminating passage posted by 7aya labeille at the &ntimoon Forum!

I belie#e that seeing correct and typical 0nglish sentences helps a lot to learn how touse 0nglish properly. It is also important to read and read again e#ery structure that

is new to you, so that you can remember them. If you only read the book without

taking any pause to think carefully about the "new" sentences, you will hardlyremember any of them.

I#e read all $arry 9otter books straight myself, and when I opened them again, I

realised I had #iewed loads and loads of useful structures whithout remembering

them which was such a shame= Im reading The Full 7onty (9enguin 3eaderscollection) using the "pause and think" method at present. Now after a few days of

daily reading, when I take a look at an 0nglish text, many structures are familiar to

me "hey, I remember reading this one in The Full 7onty=".

Therefore, I belie#e this method is efficient and I would ad#ise it to all learners.

/ometimes, we dont realise how wealthy a single book can be loads to learn 'ust in

one of them.

Pause and think

I agree with 7aya labeille about the "pause and think" method. $eres the process

that I recommend for dealing with sentences in texts!

>. /top at interesting (not ob#ious) things! a new word, how a word was used, a

grammatical structure, a preposition, an article, a con'unction, the order of

words, etc. For example, spend a while to think about the fact that thesentence contains the preposition at , and not on. 9erhaps the sentence usesthe present perfect tense where you would ha#e expected the past simple.

9erhaps the word order is different than in your first language.

?. If the sentence contains a useful phrase, ask yourself! Could you produce a

similar phrase yourself? *ould you use the right tenses, articles andprepositions+ *ould you use the right word order+ If youre not sure, practice

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/posts/5595.htm

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/posts/5595.htm



saying a similar phrase aloud or in your mind. The idea is to mo#e the phraseto your "acti#e #ocabulary".

;. If necessary, or if you feel like it, use your dictionary to find definitions ofwords in the sentence and get more example sentences. This will help enrich

your "feel" of the word.@. If you use SuperMemo, consider adding the phrase to your collection (e.g.

as a sentence item) to make sure it will stay in your memory. f course, onlyuseful phrases should be added.

If you dont like to stop reading (to look up a word in your dictionary or add a phraseto /uper7emo), you can write down all the interesting sentences, or you can

underline them in the book with a pencil. This way, you can handle these sentenceslater.

&nother important piece of ad#ice is that you dont have to use the a!ovestrategy all the time. 3eading in this mode can be quite exhausting, so dont do it

when youre tired after a long reading session. &lso, do not try to gi#e equalattention to e#ery sentence. /ome sentences in books (e.g. long poetic descriptions)

do not contain phrases or structures that are useful for building your own sentences.

/ome characters in books use weird slang expressions which arent #ery usefuleither.

Finally, the "pause and think" technique will not always make you remember the

exact way to say something. %ut perhaps youll remem!er that this particulartype of sentence is "weird" or "difficult" in English. If you remember that, it

will at least make you stop before you write that sentence, and look it up instead ofmaking a careless mistake.

#n example

Ill now gi#e you a short demonstration of the "pause and think" method. $ere are

two 0nglish sentences and the thoughts I got when reading them!

Former 9resident Aimmy 6arter will #isit Beneuela next week to mediate talks

between the go#ernment and its opposition, which ha#e been locked in a powerstruggle since a failed coup.

• "Former 9resident" - not "The former 9resident", so I guess we say

"9resident 6arter" and not "The 9resident 6arter", e#en though we say "The

9resident will do something" when we dont mention his name.

• "to mediate talks" - not "to mediate in the talks" or something like that. I

wonder if that would be C, too...

• "power struggle" - I think I#e seen this phrase before.

• "since a failed coup" - so I can say "$es been paralyed since an accident"

(preposition use), not only "$es been paralyed since an accident happened"

(con'unction use).

• "since a failed coup" - not "since the failed coup". The author does not

assume we know about the coup.

• "coup" - hey, I know this is pronounced Dku!E=

http://www.antimoon.com/how/usingsm-makeitems-sentence.htm

http://www.antimoon.com/how/usingsm-makeitems-sentence.htm



Aennifer 7c6oy, of the &tlantabased 6arter 6enter, told reporters /aturday that6arter may be able to help break the political deadlock when he #isits beginning Auly

.

• "Aennifer 7c6oy of the 6arter 6enter" - not "Aennifer 7c6oy from the 6arter

6enter" (in 9olish I would say from). /o wed say "Aohn %rown of I%7", for

example.

• "&tlantabased" - another way of saying "based in &tlanta". Guess I could

say Im a "*roclawbased webmaster".

• "told reporters /aturday" not "on /aturday" - seems we can skip the "on"

sometimes. "I met her Friday" would probably work as well as "I met her on

Friday".

• "told that 6arter may be able" - not "told that 6arter might be able" - lack

of reported (indirect) speech. &nd my 0nglish teacher taught me to say thingslike "/he said she might stay" (not "/he said she may stay").

• "to help break the deadlock" - It looks like help can be used without an

ob'ect (it does not say "to help Venezuelans break the deadlock"), and without

to (it does not say "help to break the deadlock"). This is different from some

other #erbs like force (we cannot say "The 9resident will force break thedeadlock", we must say "The 9resident will force Venezuelans to break the

deadlock.").

• "when he #isits" - not "when he will #isit", e#en though it will be in the

future. I dont think I ha#e e#er seen will used in such a sentence.

• "to #isit beginning Auly " - interesting structure - I would say "to #isit on

Auly ", but here beginning replaces on. This may be the first time that I#e

seen this phrase. It may be some sort of news 'argon.

Reading everywhere

If you think you dont ha#e time to read, try to carry a book with you e#erywhere

you go. That way, you can read when youre waiting in line, waiting for a bus, ore#en when walking (but make sure you dont walk into other people or #ehicles).