Hello! How are you?
In this post I want to share with you a word of advice for improving your English. In fact, this works to improve any language you want to improve, even your mother language. And it’s READING!
Do you know the book in the picture above? What was the last book you read?
I am sure the last time you read a book in your first language you learned at least one new word. So what do you think will happen if you read a book in English? You are going to learn more than one word! There is just one minor problem. According to research, you must be able to understand at least 70% of the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) in a text in order to get a picture of what the unknown words mean. It´s like solving a puzzle. This exercise also keeps your brain active.
Of course, this means you need some vocabulary in English to start with, so reading can be very beneficial if you already know the basics of English.
In EnglishLessons.Online, we use graded books for each learning level. We use the Phantom of the Opera at the end of our Elementary level and we make sure our students know this 70% of the words so they get the most benefit from the reading. Also we pick our books to be engaging and educational. Usually we read the Classics. This way, students have at least heard about the story or may have even seen a movie based on the book. This background information is very useful when making guesses about vocabulary.
What kind of books do you use for increasing your vocabulary? Why don’t you try and let us know how it goes?
If you want more information about our group courses, you can check out our services here.