
The best way to improve your knowledge of a foreign language is to live in a country where that language is spoken. When this is not possible, your second-best option is to read in that language. And to read a lot. I mean, to read extensively in your chosen foreign language. Extensive Reading (ER) is, in fact, a classification of an approach to reading. It stands in contrast to Intensive Reading (IR).
In an Intensive Reading approach, you are trying to absorb and understand every single bit of the text. Your intention is to acquire a deeper understanding of the subject. You will probably concentrate in shorter sections of the text, possibly repeating a particular tricky sentence or paragraph and consulting a dictionary or other reference material term or terminology. This is often the approach used at many language courses in the dreaded listen and comprehension exercises. It feels very much like a chore.
On the other hand, with an Extensive Reading, the aim is to get an overall understanding of the text. You are not particularly concerned in understanding every minutious detail of it. Above all, the objective is to make the active enjoyable. It is reading for pleasure. And this can bring huge benefits to the process of language acquisition.
It is known that, in foreign language learning, new terms are never really by a single exposure to it. You need several, repeated contact with a term, in a variety of context before it eventually becomes firmly stablished in your own knowledge bank. And when you read a lot, there is a high possibility that this will take place in an organic, almost passive, way.
Which material should you use?
But which texts should you use? For a truly enjoyable experience, highly complex texts should be avoided if your kevel is not up to it. On the other hand, excessively simplistic text, aimed at toddlers are not ideal. You want to read texts that can better relate to a grown-up reality. Material written for teenagers and young adults can be more suitable.
A much better option would be texts written specifically for learners of that language as a foreign language. If you are trying to learn, or improve, English, you are in luck. Many publishing houses have collections of titles for this purpose, such as Penguin Readers, Pearson English Readers or the Oxford University Press Graded Readers series.
The books in these series are great learning material. Some are original texts while others are well known works of English Literature, rewritten for learners of English as foreign language (EFL). You will find versions of works by renowned authors such as Jane Austen, George Orwell and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
However, as many EFL students know, English is a hard language to learn on your own. More specifically, its pronunciation is often impossible to decipher from its spelling. English is not a phonetic language, that is, there isn’t a representation of all its possible sounds with a single letter. Instead, it uses combinations of letters to represent certain sounds, and this can vary enormously and be extremely confusing, and often whole chunks of a written word go unspoken. There are historical reasons for that, but this is for a different posting.
A helpful teacher can be very handy or, to use a trendy concept of our time, a “language coach”. This is the idea behind my “Book Club” group lessons. Less than a lesson, it intends to be an enjoyable experience where you can become acquainted with some classic English literature AND have the opportunity to practice what you learn or already know, another essential component of language acquisition: practice.
In the next few weeks, I will be adding different available titles to the website, and I would love to hear if any of them is of particular interest to you. I will then gradually prepare Book Club sessions with the most popular Books.
Hope to hear your opinions soon. And leave your email addresses so that I can keep you informed of any new developments.
Ta-ra!
(Goodbye in colloquial Northern British English)
professor-bruce
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