ESL Blogs

Reading English texts method

The first principle of this method is that you have to read texts you are really interested in. And read texts mainly written by native speakers.

You may read literature, news articles written or on-line, elaborations about your specific professions or anything else, the most important words should be looked up in the dictionary and written in your vocabulary notebook.

While reading the dictionary, control what you can find around the new word. In most of the cases you will see the root of the new word and many other members of the same word family. It is very easy to learn them together. You have to learn only the root, the others will almost stick in your memory.

In the dictionary compounds and expressions can be also found near your new word. And at the end it is worth learning a proverb if it contains your new word.
An easy example: friend, friendly, friendship, unfriendly
                 to make friends with sy
                 A friend in need is a friend indeed.

And now there is a very good way to use your vocabulary notebook in a creative way. As soon as you have collected a good sum of new words, don't start to read an memorize them, but mask the English side of the sheet and look at only the other side with the word in your mother tounge. Try to remember and find them out instead of looking at them and being sleepy in some minutes. If you succeeded, put a sign next to the word. If you didn't, read the solution and go on.

Decide how often a week you are going to revise the list of new words and put the second, third, fourth etc. signs next to the word.