Becoming A Reader: My Journey

As I have mentioned several times, I have developed a passion for reading that has taken me to a completely different place in terms of my career and my life as a whole. That being said, becoming the avid reader that I am did not come easily. I had to develop the resilience and the patience to understand that my linguistic skills needed time and a serious commitment in order to improve. Therefore, I think that you have to develop a similar mindset when you decide to embark on the journey to become an avid reader. 

Since the previous post has been all about recommended books to read, this post will be about my journey as an ESL student trying to learn to read novels written in English.

Note: This post is targeted towards English language learners and beginners who wish to learn to read English. If you are familiar with the language and the content of the written work, you can skip this post. If you are at an intermediate level, another post will be dedicated to your situation. 

 In addition, I am also going to include the usual disclaimer of this post only being based on my own experiences and these tips may not work for everyone. However, we are more than willing to help you set up a learning and reading strategy that suits you best. If you are interested, please contact us at levelupproficiency@gmail.com

Without further ado, here is my own journey to becoming a reader!

I. Humble Beginnings… 

This is the part where I go to the start of my journey to learning English and learning to love reading. I assume that you think that I started off with reading English as much as possible, right? Actually, that is completely wrong! I actually started “reading” with pictures! Yeah, you read right, I never really read a word of English during this phase. I just focused on pictures!

I know, this sounds a little off, but I think that there are great advantages to starting off with picture books or books with both pictures and text. Not only do the pictures make the book look a lot more colorful and inviting, but they also help learners visualize the story that they are reading. Pictures can become a very helpful aid for those who are just starting to learn English or for those who are in the beginning phases of learning English. 

A book that I can think of that may work for you is called Mimi The Selfish Kitten. This kind of book is the perfect way to start learning English as there is not much language to focus on and there are big and colorful pictures. In my opinion, this book’s design is not only perfect for its alluring and clear pictorial design, but the fact that it has very little and simple language makes it a very good place to start learning English and to get used to the thought of reading. 

As a child, I remember that I focused very intently on the pictures as opposed to the words themselves. In fact, I think I felt that the pictures told me the part of the story that I could not gather from my lack of language fluency. 

In addition, the pictures actually helped me while I was learning to read. When I came across a word that confused me, I usually looked at the pictures to try to determine what that specific word meant. For example there is sentence in the book that goes “… some of his [the crow’s] feathers fluttered does to the ground” (); as you can guess, the word “fluttered” threw me off. I did not know how to process the word. 

As that particular sentence is accompanied by a picture of an angry crow with his feather falling from his body, I was able to infer the meaning of fluttered as something akin to “falling” or “raining”. In fact, that is still the image that I have in my own head when I think of the word. 

So, I think that pictures can be a great aid to learning language. Visualizing a concept is a great way to begin learning it. I think that this can be a great trick for you to try as well! When you encounter a word that you find hard to remember, why don’t you try associating a picture with the word? Maybe that can help you.

The book that I have mentioned is not the only book you can use! I am sure that any children’s book is perfect for this! Keep your eye open and look out for anything interesting! You never know what you will find and learn! 

II. Flying the Broomstick to New Heights…

Now, this is when I grew out of reading picture books. To be honest, “grew out” is not the correct word to use in this situation; a more accurate word to describe this phrase is gaining the confidence to try something a little more challenging while keeping the basics in mind. 

During this phase, I was dedicated to finishing the Harry Potter series. Yes, this was quite a jump from the book with pictures that I was used to! No doubt, it was very intimidating at the beginning. Each and every page looked exactly the same and there were so many words! It was terrifying!

As intimidating as it is, there is a trick to getting through these kinds of texts: patience. Remember to take things one step or one page at a time. I’m serious! It is that simple! 

Although, I understand that this “trick” does come with its disadvantages. For instance, taking things one page at a time requires you to invest a lot of time to complete the novel. I promise you though, the time it will take you to finish a novel is time well spent as it takes you several steps forward when it comes to learning English. 

In fact, I recommend that you use techniques you have picked up in the beginning phase. For example, you can use the same visualization technique that you used in the first phase of your reading. While I was reading the first novel of the series, I used to constantly refer to the dictionary if I found a word I didn’t know. After that, I used the scene/page the word was used in as the visual reference for that word! 

While I was reading the second book of the series, I came across a sentence that read “Several uneventful hours later, however, Harry had to admit that some of the fun was wearing off”. As I read this sentence, I remembered being puzzled by the word “uneventful”. While I encountered this word, I stopped reading my book and took the time I needed to understand the word and decipher the meaning of the sentence as a whole. In my case, I took this time to turn to my pocket dictionary and learn the definition of the word. After that, I combined the sentence with the definition of the new word in mind. And now, Voila! The image of Harry and Ron sitting in a state of boredom their flying car has become my visualization of the word “uneventful”!

I know, this technique looks and sounds complicated when I explain it to you, but trust me, it has worked wonders when it came to improving my language. Like I said before, the time that you will invest in this process is well worth it! 

III.Up and Onward…

Now, this is the part where reading novels such as Harry Potter or Nancy Drew becomes a thing that you are comfortable with. In fact, you may be completely familiar with the language that you find in the young adult genre. This is the part when you can start thinking about tackling texts from literary figures such as William Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Yes, this looks like the step that some of you may never take, I know. If you are comfortable and willing, there are ways in which you can tackle texts of this nature. In fact, there are more advantages than difficulties when taking your reading and language skills to this level. 

That being said, the techniques mentioned in the previous two phases are essential to implement in texts of this nature and the process itself can get incredibly hard and frustrating if you still find yourself struggling.

Though I will not go through this as much as I could in this post, I will dedicate a separate post to this as soon as possible. However, I recommend that you focus on the first two phases and solidify the techniques suggested above. 

Well, all I can say to you now is that we are always here to help you with your language needs and remember that it takes work to level-up your proficiency!

As usual, you can always contact us in the email stated above if you have any questions or if you want to get in touch with us!

R.M, 2nd Year English MA Student