Hi all, I’m looking for some suggestions for books or audiobooks my partner can read/listen to to help improve his English. He does speak and understand English, but his confidence is really low and he avoids it as much as possible. However, as we live in the US and plan to stay here long-term, both of us can feel the need for him to become more proficient for various reasons.
I am an interpreter and translator in his native language, and I know from my own experience that reading and listening to things specifically produced for native speakers is one of the best ways to boost language skills and confidence. However, he’s not much of a reader by nature, so I’m looking for options that would get him hooked immediately and wouldn’t overwhelm him with overly complicated prose or vocab.
He really enjoys gritty dramas like murder mysteries or detective stories (spy novels could also be a good choice?), sci fi with a lot of action, or really anything kind of creepy/paranormal.
In the past, he read a lot of non-fiction in his own language, and he’s interest in topics on personal finance/investing and psychology/mental health, but I’m not sure if those might be a bit too dry to keep him hooked despite the language difficulty. If there are suggestions in this area, though, I’m all ears.
Thanks in advance for any tips y’all have!
by hambrian
3 Comments
I don’t know if this is a good idea or not but you may check to see if works by Ward Farnsworth are readily available in both text and audiobook. The audiobooks are read with a soft and slow cadence by an American male narrator. His books go into detail about the English language and how it came to be. You can read or listen to the first few chapters and determine if they may be of interest.
There is I think 4 different books covering different aspects. The audiobooks are available free in the USA Audible Plus catalog so I suspect they can be found easily as audiobooks, as well as print books and ebooks.
I don’t know specific books but if you can find something both in written form and an audiobook your partner would be able to listen to the english while following along in the book.
Alternatively watching TV or movies in english with english subtitles could kinda do the same thing.
Normally I wouldn’t suggest non-book options on a subreddit called suggestmeabook lol BUT if your partner is not usually much of a reader by nature then I can’t imagine having him read content that’s not in his native language is going to accomplish much of anything at all other than probably have him see it as work.
The other issue with learning a language by reading it is that he’s not going to get any of the proper pronunciation or gain any confidence in his speaking ability.
I think audiobooks in this case would definitely be the way to go but if you’re looking for stuff to keep him engaged long enough to actually improve his english I’d say start off with some more basic stuff. There’s a reason we don’t just throw kids straight into full fledged novels when they’re first getting started.
Comic books, graphic novels, manga that are in english can be a great option. He’ll get context clues for some of the stuff from the actual artwork to potentially help him understand things he doesn’t initially get. There are less words that he’ll need to read and it’s more visually stimulating so it might hold his interest longer.
TV shows/film obviously are a good option but even better would be to get him to watch some english language content with the subtitles on in his native language. That way he can read along in his native language while hearing what they’re saying in english.
Another one that might be a great option is if he enjoys playing video games at all. Get him to play something really wordy like a visual novel or an RPG. RPGs can be really good for this because not only will there be plenty of voiced content but there will be a lot of reading too and generally speaking the reading level in video games is kept pretty low so that kids can play them too.