Are You Still Reading?

Lately, I've been doing a lot of reading in preparation for my final exam next semester. My final exam will be on issues of identity in early twentieth-century American literature. The philosophical questions of "who am I?" and "What is my place in society?" have always been fascinating to me; in fact, we have written a few posts addressing identity issues such as Tuesday's post which you can read here. Anyway, I've been reading a lot by F. Scott Fitzgerald and, while the writing itself doesn't seem to offer any direct lessons that would help you improve your proficiency, it has made me think about a point that we talked about several weeks ago: the importance of reading to improve your linguistic abilities. 

Now, you might be thinking that the type of reading you'll need to do has to be education or language books that were written especially to help people learn, and yes, those type of books can be beneficial. But unfortunately, books like that tend to be horribly boring especially if they were written to be used in a classroom. Honestly, I've never read a book like that because I wanted to. 

You can virtually read any type of book you want; in fact, it doesn't even have to be a book. It could be any piece of writing. You can safely assume that published writing has been thoroughly edited which makes it a great example for how you should structure your own writing. Granted, an article written for a website will probably be written differently than a published book-- after all,  there are many different forms of writing-- so it really depends on what kind of writing you want to emulate. I would say that published books are your best bet for improving your overall English competency.

The great thing about reading is that it helps you both directly and indirectly. Directly because it teaches you about the topic you choose to read and indirectly because it shows you what proper writing looks like. That's not to say that a more casually written piece-- such as this, I suppose-- won't help you improve your own writing. In fact, most of time time it may be more beneficial to begin by reading informal writing

For example, consider the following sentence by Fitzgerald:

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" (The Great Gatsby)

There's a lot going on in that sentence and it can be translated incorrectly especially if you are unsure of the vocabulary and grammatical structure. Of course, this is still a great sentence and one that's very much akin to Fitzgerald's style of writing, but it may not be very helpful because of the form.

Now, consider the following casual translation of that sentence:

I was both both aware and unaware, being drawn into the limitless variety of life.

Which sentence is easier to understand? They both virtually mean the same thing, but Fitzgerald's sentence is much more intricate, and therefore, more complicated, than the one I wrote.

So, while there are many different forms of writing-- each of which are useful in its on way-- you are going to want to read material that is the most understandable to you. Maybe you're English is already at the level at which Fitzgerald and other similar authors can provide the greatest amount of help to you, but if you're not there quite yet, that's alright. It's a fairly slow learning process even for native speakers of English.

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Regardless of where you are in the process of learning English, the most important thing you can do to help improve your proficiency is to read. In fact, it's so important that I felt compelled to write an additional post reiterating the benefits of reading (i.e. this post). If you missed our previous posts about this topic you can read my post here and R.M's posts here ando whet here. In these posts we talk a bit more about what kind of books you should be reading based on your proficiency level.

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It doesn't necessarily matter if you are reading literature or blog posts as long as you're reading something. I suggest reading for at least ten minutes everyday. It may not be something everyone enjoys, but when it comes to language proficiency, there really isn't a better way to learn. Let us know in the comments what you are most interested in reading and why. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, email us at levelupproficiency@gmail.com or send us a message on our Facebook page. 

-Ryan M. Shea, English Proficiency Specialist