How To Improve Your Reading Skills - 3 Tips
4,185 views · Published 2 September 2017 · 40:39 · Indexed 4 October 2026
Channel: New York VS Los Angeles · 2017 · Education
This is a question I got from Lina on Facebook. She asked me how she can improve her reading skills. I imagine that for many of you reading can be difficult. Before I give you the tips, I would like to share a very common thing that happens to my clients, my private students. After a few months studying with me, I start asking my basic students to read in English. They can choose what they want to read. It can be an article from the internet, a book, a magazine, anything. Then, they have to talk to me about that article they chose My students’ first feedback after they read the article: Teacher it was so difficult. I couldn’t understand. The articles on the internet are impossible. That’s when I tell them and I’m going to tell you guys now: Reading is as important as all the other skills. Because we don’t read frequently, reading gets more difficult than other skills. When you start to study English, it is important to include reading in your routine. The second thing I tell them about this experience is: You didn’t respect your level, you just went on Google and started "googling" for stuff to read. Now, if you are an advanced or upper intermediate speaker, it is ok to do that. The problem is when you are not at that level. Consequently, reading will be more difficult. How do you know a text is too difficult for you? You were not able to understand not even 60% of the information. You felt completely lost. That’s an indicator that the text you chose was too difficult for your level. My tip number 1 – if you are trying to improve your reading skills, don’t start with subjects you don’t like. It will be very difficult to find the motivation to continue. It will be very difficult to finish a book or an article that is not interesting for you. Plan what you want to read about. Think about the subjects you enjoy in your own language. What kind of materials do you read in your own language? Now, if you like to read complex subjects in your language, if you are a beginner or pre-intermediate, that will not help you either. Think about realistic subjects that your level can handle. So before reading anything in English. Ask yourself. What kind of materials would I like to learn more about? What kind of information would I like to learn? What Am I trying to improve with this reading activity? Vocabulary? Verb tenses? Now that you have defined what kind of materials you are going to read, we can move on to tip number 2: follow a reading plan. What’s this? I will explain. Now, that you know the materials you will follow the following steps: Step 1: ask yourself: what do I know about this subject already? Write some key words about what you know about the subject Step 2: Ask yourself: what do you believe you will learn in this article? What information do you think you will find there? Step 3: read the article. Read it quickly. Don’t stop at the words you don’t know, just keep going. Step 4: What could you understand? Nothing? So this article is too difficult for your level. Find another article. If you could understand about 60% to 70% of the information, then write a short explanation of what you understand and the key words you remember from the text Step 5: Now, that you read once. Read it again. Now you will read more slowly. This time, you will use an English to English dictionary to help you with the words you don’t know or don’t understand very well. Step 6: Write a new summary about the text you read. This time pay attention to the expressions you learned, new words, try to understand the context of the text and write what you were able to understand. Step 7: Read it again. Slowly. Pause after each paragraph and then when you finish, write a new summary and compare with the previous one. Did you include new ideas? Now, in my perfect world, you can keep repeating this last step, you can read more and more times, you don’t need to stop here. Keep going, go deep. Improving reading can be done, but you gotta do the hard work. Tip 3: Understand the context and you will eventually understand the words. When you are reading a text, it is very important that you try to understand the context. If there is a word or a phrase you don’t know, try to read the information before and after it and see if they can help you have an idea of what that word or phrase is before you use the dictionary to help you. I imagine that even in your own native language you don’t know all the words when you are reading a long book or difficult article on the internet. Do you stop at every word you don’t know? I imagine not. You analyze the context if that was enough you keep going. Now, reading is a challenge but it can be done. Reading will improve not only your vocabulary but your speaking as well. As I always like to say, all skills are important and they all contribute to helping you become a more confident speaker.
