Why you need to start reading in English on your own

whiteman

Before you can start speaking and writing in English, you have to learn how things are said in English. You do this by reading and listening to correct English sentences of other people (ideally, native speakers).

Reading and listening are both good ways to develop your English, but reading is usually much easier than listening for various reasons. With the help of a good dictionary, you can understand English texts much more easily than, for example, English television or movies.

In this article, I will show why reading English texts on your own is the way to go. The arguments will fall into three categories: Intensity, Motivation and Authenticity.

Intensity

You need 1000s of phrases to speak English fluently. To be able to use thousands of phrases, you must read tens of thousands of phrases, because you will forget a lot of what you read.

If you just read when your teacher tells you to (e.g. 2 short articles per week in your English class), you are not going to make any progress. At such a rate, even if you learn something one week, you will forget it next week. You need to read, on average, at least a few pages per day. For this, you need to take charge of your learning — get some books and start reading on your own.

If you don't believe that reading on your own will dramatically change your English, consider this: In a week, a typical intermediate English learner who attends 4 hours of English classes learns maybe 5 new words or phrases from reading 2 pages in English plus another 5 from other sources (listening, conversation with teacher). Sure, they write down more than this, but after a week they remember less than 50% of the knowledge.

If you read 20 pages per week (which is only 3 per day), you will learn, mathematically, about 50 new words or phrases per week. If you read 40 pages per week (6 per day), you will learn 100 new words or phrases per week.

As you see, it's not very hard to beat the average learner. At 6 pages per day, you're already learning 10 times faster. Which means that you're learning in 1 year what the average learner learns in 10 years.

I'm giving you all these numbers because I want you to realize one thing: If you have been an \"average learner\", you cannot even begin to imagine how quickly you can develop your English skills with a little work on your own. The difference between readers and non-readers is that big. (Take a minute to read the passage in the box to the right to see what I mean.)

Motivation

You need to start reading on your own not just because it is effective, but also because it is so damn motivating. When you read on your own, you read something you chose yourself, something you really find interesting, rather than something your teacher told you to read. As a result, you read much more willingly and spend more time on it.

If you choose texts which are interesting and fun (Harry Potter, an article about computers, sports news, movie reviews, e-mail messages from friends, an Internet forum on relationships — whatever fits your bill), reading will not be something you have to do. It will be something you want to do. Once you try it, you will probably be thankful that you can understand English and read such great stuff!

Furthermore, when you read something that matters to you, you can remember much more. For example, if you read an article your teacher gave you, you want to read it quickly and be done with it. But if you read the lyrics of a new song by your favorite band, you're much more likely to repeat them to yourself and keep them in your memory — together with all the grammar and vocabulary.

A lot of people associate English with unpleasant things. For example, they think \"I must learn English or else I won't find a job\" or \"I must learn English or I won't get a passing grade\". In their minds, studying English is something they have to do, even though they would rather not do it — just like they would rather not have to go to school or work.

Those who read on their own think differently. For them, English is something which helps them achieve their own goals, such as reading the latest book by Stephen King or talking to people from other countries in an online forum. They are much more willing to spend time on English, even in ways which are not directly related to their interests, e.g. learning with SuperMemo or asking grammar questions on discussion groups. This shows that \"free reading\" improves your general motivation for English.

Authenticity

I believe it's important to learn from real American and British sources instead of resources prepared especially for English learners. If you see a phrase in a book or in a blog, you know it's really used in the English-speaking world.

By contrast, texts used in English classes often attempt to teach \"proper\" English, stripped of any informal expressions, such as crap, sucks or stuff. Authors of such texts probably disapprove of such phrases and believe that learners don't need them. But the fact is that most learners would choose relaxed, natural language — the language of regular educated Americans and Britons — over the stuffy standards of the proper-speaking \"elite\". Which is another reason why learners should go beyond English classes and start reading \"real-life English\" on their own.