Hi people! English is not my native language, but I’d like to read some books in English, but I don’t feel to comfortable. I am considered a fluent speaker, but I really don’t know if I’ll find some difficulty. Do you have any suggestions on reading in other languages? Or even books I can read?
by Ukw2_2
3 Comments
What sorts of books do you like?
Are there movies that you like that have books? Try reading the book of one of those movies.
Harry Potter starts simple and gradually gets more complex as Harry grows up.
I think there are two good ways to approach this:
1. Young Adult books (sometimes called “New Adult”) tend to have exciting plots and simpler writing. One issue is that a lot of them are fantasy or science fiction, and will include a lot of invented words that won’t improve your vocabulary. This CAN be a good thing, because it can help you figure out language structure (you can try to figure out whether they’re verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc).
2. There’s this series, called “Great Illustrated Classics” that takes classic books and re-writes them for a younger or ESL audience. The language is simple, there’s a picture on every other page to help with context. Here’s a section from their version of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, about a submarine called the **Nautilus**, so you can check if it’s the right reading level for you:
“Suddenly, the **Nautilus** stopped. A blow made the ship tremble violently. Ned, Consiel, and I rushed to the window, then froze! There, before our eyes wriggled a terrible monster -a giant squid twenty-five feet long! The eight long, snake-like tentacles coming out of its head were twisting about furiously. Suckers on the inside of the tentacles had fastened themselves to the window. The monster’s mouth -a horny beak- opened and closed rapidly. Its long body, with a bump in the middle, formed a huge, fleshy mass which weighed at least 50,000 pounds! Soon, several other squid appeared and swam around the Nautilus, grinding their beaks against her steal hull.”