To Starters Reading in English

By Hu Wo (Cuckoo's Song)

NATURALLY, foreign language reading may be difficult for a person who is not a native speaker. Why is that so difficult? There will be several reasons for this. For starters, a non-na­tive person can find it difficult to read in a foreign language simply because they do not know that language well. Another potential reason is that he has no interest in the subject matter written in the language at all. The last possible reason is that any content he is reading seems like a white elephant to him for the time being. Nevertheless, reading should improve all his language skills, vocabulary, and even grammar, no matter what he has read. Here, I would like to share my probably useful thoughts on reading in English as a starter based on the British Council. How is it in the following?

Firstly, we need to find what interests us. For instance, we are likely to love sports, films, or food. We can hear announcers' words in English in foot­ball matches, actors' dialogues in English movies or series and presenters' conversation in English in cooking programmes. On top of that, we can read about our passions in English, for example, newspapers, blogs, recipes, or even film reviews. It is of the utmost importance to read in English only whatever subject matter we read. After all, whatever our interests are, learning new vocabulary is way too easy when we are interested in the topic.

Naturally, people are curious about others. At that time, stories came into use for knowing all about others. Life stories are like windows on the world since they enable their readers to know human nature or the universal truth in meaningful words and common usage. Thus, secondly, we can begin English with short stories. As a starter, reading a whole novel in English can be hard work. Most of the time, if it is too difficult, especially due to intricate or inscrutable language expressions, we may just feel like giving up quite easily. So why not try short stories instead? Then, graded readers are great too and come in all levels and genres.

A habit is something that comes into existence after being done again and again. While beginning to take up a habit, we may resist it in a moment as well as get bored with it sooner or later. But after quite a while, we will definitely stick to our habit so much that we cannot drop it. In the same way, thirdly, we must make it a habit to read in English. To put it better, English reading should be made a part of our daily routine. Too much reading time is not necessarily required by a foreign language starter. Five minutes with our morning coffee? A page before bed? Of course, it would be best if we did reading in English every day without fail, to the extent that we can give time to it, rather than read for long hours at a time. We ought to do that each day, and it will soon be a natural part of our daily life.

Finally, we have to try longer books if we have absorbed a reasonable amount of vocabulary and usage in the English language. If so, it will be okay for us to read more in English. In fact, English, not a dead language, is constantly living in many parts of the world; therefore, the English language has several linguistic varieties and is a rich source of lexicon and connotations till now. Despite this, we can start with a long book we already know in our own language or one from a film we have seen. It should be noticed that the language we are studying is English, not others. Hence, to conduct an effective and efficient study of the English language, we had better read monolingual books, that is, written in English only. However, I do not mean that translated or bilingual books are not advisable at all. When we already know the story, it will be much easier for us to follow in English.

I have heard it said that English is easy to learn but hard to master. The main reason why English is not very difficult is that English words are composed of the 26 letters merely by putting consonants and vowels together in arbitrary order. On the other hand, the fact that English is a tall order means that the language has an adaptable capacity of vocabulary richness in every field of study, such as linguistics, science, medi­cine, and engineering, thereby giving birth to massive connotations in that language. As the Chinese saying goes, only one step starts a thousand-mile journey. That is absolutely right. Thus, now start our English bit by bit day after day by using the above-mentioned ways as best we can.