It’s no secret – reading and listening are the key to language development. The more you read and the more you listen, the more your English will grow. It’s that simple. But there are some things you can do to turbocharge (add energy to) your reading and listening to make it more effective.

Practices that will help you turbocharge your reading and listening

Make good choices. The most effective reading and listening material makes it possible for you to focus completely on the story or the message. If you can’t, the material is too difficult or too boring, and you should find something else. Your time’s too valuable to waste it trying to read or listen to something that isn’t going to work well for you.

Practice narrow reading and listening. When you read or listen to several things by the same author or on the same topic, you understand more. Also, vocabulary and grammatical structures are usually repeated, so you see and hear them more often. Better understanding and repetition make it easier for your brain acquire, or pick up, more language.

Read and listen at the same time. Some students find things easier to understand when they see them and hear them at the same time. In addition, reading and listening at the same time helps builds connections between how the language looks and how it sounds. Read sometimes. Listen sometimes. Do both together sometimes.

Sources that will help you turbocharge your reading and listening

I’m sure you’ll be able to find to find something that interests you among these sources – the range, or variety, of topics is unbelievable! All of them provide transcripts. And most of them can be used for narrow reading and listening; I’ve marked those that can.

Many of the sources are podcasts, so you can subscribe, or sign up, for them and have them delivered to the app you use for listening to podcasts. You can also stream them from your browser or download them to your computer. A couple of them have iOS or Android apps that you can download and use.

The ESL Podcast  (intermediate/advanced)

If I could recommend only one online source for English learners, it would be the ESL Podcast, produced by Dr. Jeff McQuillan and Dr. Lucy Tse.

Two days a week, the podcasts cover subjects related to life in the United States – daily life, business, entertainment, health/medicine, relationships, shopping, etc. Once a week, in the English Café, Jeff answers listeners’ questions about English and life in the United States.

A Learning Guide accompanies each podcast. It contains definitions for some of the words in the podcast, a short article about American culture, and a complete transcript of the podcast.

You can practice narrow reading (using the Learning Guide) and listening by using the drop-down search tool on the home page to choose groups of podcasts on the same subject.

VOA Learning English Audio (intermediate/advanced)

VOA Learning English produces a number of daily and weekly audio programs:

• As It Is takes a daily look at issues in the news in the United States and around the world.
• American Mosaic is a weekly program about music, pop culture and life in the United State
• In the News explains one of the week’s main news stories to help make sense of our world.
• The Making of a Nation explains the history of the United States and how it and its people have developed.
• Science in the News is a weekly show about news from the worlds of science, technology, and medicine.
• This Is America looks at a major issue in American life and society each week and explores popular places around the United States.

VOA provides a variety of other activities for English learners. However, if I were choosing how to spend my time, I would choose to read and listen – time spent doing that will be much more profitable than time spent on other activities.

This American Life (advanced)

This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass, is a popular, award-winning weekly radio show from National Public Radio (NPR).

The shows’ producers say it’s a combination of journalism (news reporting) and fiction. They use a story-telling style of journalism to describe what it’s like to be here, now, in the world. They sometimes describe themselves as “a documentary show for people who normally hate documentaries.”

This American Life makes it easy to practice narrow reading and listening: each episode of the show is built around a theme, or idea, and contains a variety of stories on that theme.

Start by looking at This American Life Favorites.

TED (advanced)

Each year, TED conferences bring the world’s leading thinkers and doers together to share their ideas. Presentations are short – no more than 20 minutes – but they’re always informative and exciting.

TED video transcripts can be used to navigate the video – move forward and backward – by clicking on the text in the transcript.

You can experience a certain amount of narrow reading and listening by reading and listening to presentations in a specific topic area.

TED Radio Hour (advanced)

TED Radio Hour shows, from National Public Radio (NPR), are perfect for narrow reading and listening. Each show builds on a theme, or central idea, using material from a number of TED talks. Guy Raz, the host of TED Radio Hour says that he tries to lead listeners on “a journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing inventions, fresh approaches to old problems, and new ways to think and create.”

The TED Radio Hour Archive is a good place to start.

Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! (advanced)

Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is an entertaining weekly quiz program hosted by Peter Sagal. This NPR show asks “what’s real news and what’s made up?” You can play along and test your knowledge against experts from the world of news and entertainment.

Fresh Air (advanced)

Fresh Air, also from NPR, is an award-winning daily magazine hosted by Terry Gross. It covers many aspects of contemporary life – such as politics, technology, the arts, science, important issues, and sports. Some people may call it a talk show, but it’s much more than that.

Stuff You Should Know (advanced)

Josh Clark and Charles (Chuck) Bryant have one goal: to teach you about common things and how they work. Sound boring? It’s not. Their podcasts are as diverse, or varied, as the world we live in.

Freakonomics (advanced)

“The hidden side of everything” – that’s the subtitle of Freakonomics. The program is built on an unusual partnership between journalist and author Stephen Dubner and award-winning econimist Steven Levitt. It asks questions you probably never thought to ask, and answers them in Stephen and Steven’s own unique style. Here are some recent questions:

• Would a Big bucket of Cash Really Change Your Life?
• Is Twitter Making Kids Smarter?
• Who Wants a Haircut for $9.99?
• Who Are The Most Successful Immigrants in the World?
• Do Baby Girls Cause Divorce?

Academic Earth (advanced)

Academic Earth offers free online courses from the world’s top universities. You can view all the lectures from one class or use the playlists, which are lectures organized by theme – a good way to practice narrow reading and listening.

Most of the lectures include transcripts. Links to transcripts can be found under the Related Resources heading on the same page as the lecture video.

Practice narrow reading and listening by reading and listening to all the lectures in a course.

To use another effective strategy, choose classes you’ve already taken in your native language. The background information from what you’ve already learned will make the English class more understandable and help you acquire more English.

Start by looking at the list of courses.

Finally

I want to thank my friend and occasional student Bryan for helping me put this list together. Bryan’s a French lawyer, a father of two girls, and active in other activities, yet he spends one-and-a-half to two hours a day reading or listening to English. I don’t think you’ll be surprised when I tell you that his English is very good. Yours could be too if you take advantage of the suggestions and sources in this article!

Warren Ediger

Young adult books are often a good place to start for intermediate English learners who have difficulty reading regular popular fiction. After reading a few young adult books, many learners discover that they’re ready to move on and enjoy popular fiction. I’ll warn you, though, that many of these books are so good you’ll want to read more than just a few. And that’s okay!

1book140 is a Twitter book club and a good place to find new books to read. Club members have recently suggested nearly 40 outstanding young adult books for their members to read during February. The list is a mixture of new and classic books.

The links – to Amazon – make it possible for you to preview each of the books. Just click on the “Look Inside” link to see the preview.

The books

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (also consider Beyond the Chocolate War)

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (Newbery medal winer)

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde (writer of the Thursday Next series)

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

Up from Jericho Tel by E.L. Konigsburg

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Phantom Toll Booth by Norton Juster (illustrated by Jules Feiffer)

Eragon by Christopher Paolini (the first book in his Inheritance series)

Little House in the Highlands by Melissa Wiley (a prequel – comes before in time – to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s very popular Little House on the Prairie; the Little House series includes several books)

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (part of her Shades of London series)

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Just As Long As We’re Together by Judy Blume

Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (combination conventional and graphic novel; nominated for Caldecott and Newbery medals; his book The Invention of Hugo Cabret won the Caldecott medal)

The Giver  by Lois Lowry (the other books in this excellent series include Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son); The Giver won the Newbery medal)

The Sea of Trolls trilogy by Nancy Farmer.

Getting the most out of your reading experience

Most of these books are also available as audiobooks. If you really enjoy a book, get the audiobook version and listen to it, or read and listen at the same time. If you want to read and listen at the same time, be sure your audiobook is unabridged, or complete. Some audiobooks are abridged, or shortened.

If you enjoy one of these books, see if the author has written other books and read some of them. This is called narrow reading, and it’s a good strategy for language development.

If you’ve already enjoyed any of these books, write a comment and let us know about them.

Happy reading!

Warren Ediger

There’s no question about it. Reading and listening are essential for language development. You probably know that. But if you’re like a lot of people, sometimes you need a little nudge and a little encouragement to keep you going. This should do the job!

A few weeks ago I ran across How to Read More: A Lover’s Guide on Leo Babauta’s web site. He obviously loves to read. And, if you follow his suggestions, so could you. By the way, what he says about reading could also be said about listening to audiobooks.

Please note: Most of Babauta’s post appears here as he wrote it; I have, however, made a few changes to adapt it to the Successful English audience.

Babauta writes:

Reading a good book is one of my favorite things in the world.

A novel is a time machine, a worm-hole to different dimensions, a special magic that puts you into the minds and bodies of fascinating people, a transporter that lets you travel the world, a dizzying exploration of love and death and sex and seedy criminal underworlds and fairylands, a creator of new best friends.

All in one.

I read because I love the experience, because it is a powerful teacher of life, because it transforms me.

I am not the world’s most prodigious reader, but I do read daily and with passion.

Lots of people say they want to read more, but don’t know how to start.

Read this. It should help.

1. Don’t read because you should — read for joy, for pleasure. Find books about exciting stories, about people who fascinate you, about new worlds that you’d love to visit. Forget the classics unless they fit this prescription.

2. Make time. We have no time to read anymore, mostly because we work too much, we over-schedule our time, we’re on the Internet all the time (which does have some good reading, but can also suck our attention endlessly), and we watch too much TV. Pick a time, and make it your reading time. Start with just 10 minutes if it’s hard to find time, but do it regularly. Then try 20 or 30 or more.

3. Do nothing but read. Clear all distractions. Find a quiet, peaceful space. It’s just your book, and you. Notice but let go of the urges to do other things instead of read. If you must do something else, have some tea.

4. Love the hell out of it. You’re not doing this to better yourself. You’re doing it for joy. Reading is magic, and the magic will change everything else in your life. Love the experience, and you’ll look forward to it daily.

5. Make it social. Find friends who love to read, or find them online. There’s a world of readers on the Internet, and they’d be happy to make recommendations and talk about the books you’re all reading. Try a book club as well. Reading (and listening) is solitary, but can also be a social act. Goodreads (for reading) and Audible (for audiobooks) are great places to start.

6. Make it a habit. Pick a trigger in your daily routine, and consistently read exactly after that trigger each day. Even if it’s just for 5-10 minutes. The more consistent you are, and the longer you keep the streak going, the stronger the habit will become.

7. Don’t make it a chore. Don’t make it something on your todo list or schedule that you have to check off. It’s not part of your self-improvement plan. It’s a part of your Make Life More Awesome Plan.

8. Give up on a book if it’s boring. Reading isn’t something you do because it’s good for you — it’s not like taking your vitamins. You’re reading because it’s fun. So if a book isn’t fun, dump it. Give it a try for at least a chapter, but if you still don’t love it, move on.

9. Discover amazing books. I talk to other people who are passionate about books, and I’ll read reviews, or just explore an old-fashioned bookstore. Supporting your local bookstores is a great thing, and it’s incredibly fun. Libraries are also amazing places that are underused — get a card today.

10. Don’t worry about speed. Speed reading is fine for some, but slow reading is great too. The number of books, and the rate of reading them, does not matter. It’s not a competition. You’re reading to enjoy the books, so take your time. It’s like enjoying good food – better savored, not rushed.

Thanks, Leo!

Warren Ediger

To acquire a new language, you need to read it and hear it, not study it. And what you read or listen to must be easy and interesting enough for you to become fully engaged, or involved, in it. In fact, it should be so easy and interesting that you forget that it’s a new language.

The input you receive from reading and listening is the essential ingredient for language acquisition. But there are other ingredients – for example, the beliefs and feelings you have about yourself, your new language, and its culture – that affect your ability to acquire and use a new language.

Identification is an ingredient that plays an important role in language acquisition and use. Let me give you a very simple definition to begin with – to be like or become like another – and then we’ll allow the definition to grow throughout the rest of this article. We’ll focus on how identification affects your ability to acquire language and how it affects the sound of your new language, your accent.

Joining the club

Club, or community, membership is an idea introduced a number of years ago by Dr. Frank Smith. The concept is simple – you improve your ability to acquire and use a new language when you identify with the community of people who use the language well, when you see yourself being or becoming a member of that community.

Joining a community happens when you begin to think of yourself as a member – for example, of the community of fluent English users from your country – and when you begin to expect to become like them – fluent, comfortable, confident. It happens when you look at other community members and say, “Hello, friends, I’m just like you (or I will be soon).”

Expectation by itself doesn’t guarantee success – you still need the input, the primary ingredient I described earlier. But expectation makes success possible. Doing the opposite – thinking “I’ll never be like them; I’ll never be a member of that community” – almost always leads to negative results.

Adrian’s story illustrates how identification with a community of one – his grandpa – helped him acquire Italian and influenced the sound of his Italian.

Adrian’s story – identifying with his grandpa

Several years ago, while traveling across Italy by train, Adrian enjoyed a conversation with another young man on the train. After a while, the young man turned to Adrian, commented on his accent, and asked if he came from northern Italy. Adrian explained that he was from Brazil but that his grandparents had come from Modena in northern Italy.

Adrian tells me that he grew up listening to Italian from his grandpa, who was born and raised in Modena. And that the two of them often listened together to one of Modena’s radio stations. Adrian still listens to radio programs from Modena when he can, probably, he says, because he enjoys the accent and loves to listen to it.

Like most boys, Adrian identified with his grandpa, he wanted to be like him. They were friends and spent many hours together. And he identified with his grandpa’s native language, Italian from Modena. As a result of hearing Italian from his grandpa and the radio programs they listened to, and as a result of identifying with his grandpa and the Italian he spoke, Adrian picked up a significant amount of Italian and the sound of Italian from northern Italy.

Gwen’s story – identifying with the people in the new country

Gwen, who has been able to develop a good accent in the new language she acquired says, “I think the reason I do get the pronunciation eventually … is that I have a kind of feeling of wanting to be like the people in the country, and the people I’m associating with … though of course I fully recognize I would never be one.”

“…I have a kind of feeling of wanting to be like the people in the country. I want to become as much a part of that social group as I can, to identify with them as much as possible without losing my personal identity. It’s a very deeply fulfilling kind of thing to be able to do … to relate with them in a way so that they can begin to react almost as if [I] were one of them.”

Gwen emphasizes that, when she identifies with another culture in this way, she doesn’t become a different person or less of herself, and she doesn’t lose her heritage culture. Rather, she says, it’s like adding another dimension to who she is.

Two groups of university students – to identify or not to identify

A recent study of university students in Israel illustrates how much identification can influence accent in a second language. The first group of students, Russian immigrants to Israel, began to study Hebrew when they were 13 or older, after they immigrated to Israel.

The second group of students are members of the Arab minority who grew up and live in Israel. They speak Arabic as their first language and begin to study Hebrew in school when they are seven or eight years old (It’s important to remember that Israel has two official languages – Hebrew and Arabic – but Hebrew is the principal, or main, language.).

The two groups are similar in many ways. And there was a range of accents in both groups. The groups are different, however, when you discover why members of each group had light or heavy accents. The study suggests that the best explanation is the students’ “attitude toward the majority culture and language.”

Among the Russian students, lighter accents were explained by a measure of empathy – the ability to adopt the perspective, or point of view, of someone else. Empathy is an important part of identification. The Russian students immigrated so they could become part of – to identify with – the Israeli culture, and learning Hebrew was part of that process.

The Arab students, understandably, wanted to maintain their Arab cultural identity. They studied Hebrew because it is necessary for daily life in Israel. The researchers report that many of the Arab students “remarked that they maintain their accent in Hebrew precisely because it identifies them as members of the ethnic minority, and that they would not like to be misidentified as belonging to the majority Jewish ethnicity.”

The study concludes that light accents among the Russian students were explained by their desire to identify with the culture and become part of it. On the other hand, heavier accents among the Arab students were explained by their desire to maintain their Arab identify. Both choices are reasonable, but each choice has its consequences.

These stories make an important point: success in acquiring a new language and in developing a good accent depends in large part on how much you identify with the language and the people who use it.

What will your story be?

If you want to become fluent in English, one ingredient is essential – maximum exposure to easy, interesting English by reading and listening. This one ingredient feeds all aspects of language development, including your sound, or accent.

Beyond the input from reading and listening, you can enhance your ability to acquire and use English by identifying with the growing group of people in the world who use it well and by identifying with the language and its culture.

Acquiring a new language is more than developing a new set of skills. Acquiring a new language opens a door to a new world – the world of the new language and its culture, a world that includes those people who use the language well. I encourage you to walk through the door. Enter the new world. Become part of it. And allow yourself to enjoy it.

Warren Ediger

References:

Ibrahim et al (2008) Speaking Hebrew with an accent; Krashen (1997) Foreign language education the easy way, (2003) Explorations in Language Acquisition; Moyer (2007) Do language attitudes determine accent; Smith (1995) Between Hope and Havoc; Stevick (1989) Success with Foreign Languages.

People who must learn a new language to work in another country often work with a native speaker, called a language resource person (LRP), to help them acquire conversational language. There’s a variation on the idea of LRPs  – called language parents – that could do the same for you.

When one of my former graduate students went to Ukraine to teach, he worked with a language resource person (LRP) – a native speaker from Ukraine. My nephew and his wife did the same when they went to Costa Rica to work with an organization that helps people adopt children without parents. The language student usually spends several hours a day in conversation with their LRP. And they or the organization they work for usually pay the LRP for their time. You can imagine the benefits of working with an LRP, but you might not have the time or money to do what my friends did. There may be another option for you – finding a language parent.

What is a language parent?

Language Parents for Second Language Acquisition, an article from the International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, describes an informal relationship that  language students could develop with native speakers to help them achieve many of the benefits of working with an LRP.

According to the article, a language parent, like an actual parent, is someone “who will participate in conversation with you in the language you’re acquiring. A language parent will take an interest in you as a person. Enjoy talking to you. Try to understand you. Encourage you and support you.

The writer of the article says his wonderful Viennese landlady spent hours telling “the same stories again and again.” He says “they were great stories and I understood more each time I heard them.” One of my friends tells me that the grandmother of his host family in Mexico did the same for him. Another writer says that he and his “parent” in China “spent many hours talking to each other about every possible subject one could imagine.”

Finding a language parent

Who could become your “language parent”? It doesn’t have to be an older person. It could be anyone who’s willing to spend time talking to you.

If you live in the U.S., a language parent should be easy to find. It could be someone who lives in the same apartment building. Someone you meet at a coffee shop or super market. Some of my students used to go to the local senior center so they could meet and talk to the retired people who gathered there every day. One of them, a former Japanese English teacher, became friends with several of the people he met there and spent many hours talking with them.

If you’re living in your native country, look for native-English-speaking students or expatriates, people from the U.S. or other English-speaking countries who live and work in your country. Many of them would love to develop a relationship with someone like you. It would be well worth paying for coffee or an occasional lunch to encourage a relationship like that.

On the Internet there are web sites that connect people from different countries. You could use one of them to help find someone to talk to.

Using a language parent

The goal, when you work with a language parent or LRP, is to receive input in the language you’re studying. Remember:

• The goal is to listen as much as possible. Listening is much more important than speaking for language development.
• Don’t expect or allow the language parent to become your teacher. What you need and what they can give is comprehensible, or understandable, input in the language you’re learning.
• Don’t ask them to correct your mistakes. Your language will improve naturally as you listen and receive more input.
• It’s okay to ask for explanations from time to time, but that shouldn’t be necessary very often. Most native speakers will simplify their language when they find out that you’re a student.
• Avoid doing things like making vocabulary lists to study later – after hearing new words several times, you’ll acquire them naturally.

Focus on the conversation, not the language! Don’t turn the conversations into classes.

What to talk about

I can hear some of you asking, “But what will we talk about?” And I have some suggestions. The writers of The Natural Method, a book for language teachers, suggest a variety of topics to use with language students. Here are some you could use for conversations:

• Recreation and leisure activities – favorite activities, sports and games, climate and seasons, seasonal activities, holiday activities, parties, abilities, cultural and artistic interests
• Family, friends, and daily activities – family and relatives, physical states or conditions, emotional states, daily activities, holiday and vacation activities, pets
• Plans, obligations, and careers – future plans, general future activities, obligations, hopes and desires, careers and professions, place of work, work activities, salaries and money
• Residence – place of residence, rooms of a house, furniture, activities at home, household items, amenities (desirable or useful features)
• Narrating past experiences – immediate past events, yesterday’s activities, weekend activities, holidays and parties, trips and vacations, other experiences
• Health, illnesses, and emergencies – body parts, physical states or conditions, mental states and moods, health maintenance, health professions, medicine and diseases
• Eating – foods, beverages
• Travel and transportation – geography, modes (kinds) of transportation, vacations, experiences on trips, languages, making reservations
• Shopping and buying – money and prices, fashions, gifts, products
• Youth – childhood experiences, primary school experiences, teen years experiences, adult expectations and activities
• Values – family, friendship, love, marriage, sex roles and stereotypes, goals, religious beliefs
• Issues and current events – environmental problems, economic issues, education, employment and careers, ethical issues, politics, crime sports, social events, cultural events, minority groups, science and health, technology

You can also use these topics to ask questions about specific situations related to them. For example, if you’re talking about eating, you could ask questions about ordering a meal in a restaurant, shopping in a supermarket, or preparing food from recipes.

Conclusion

References: Krashen (2012) Language Parents for Second Language Acquisition; Krashen and Terrell (1998) The Natural Method: Language Acquisition in the Classroom.

Warren Ediger

Reading (and listening) is the key to language development. More specifically, the comprehensible input we get from reading and listening is the key to language development. Without it very little happens. With it, vocabulary grows, a feel for correctness emerges, and fluency increases. Comprehensible input is necessary and also sufficient to achieve your goal – better English.

Decisions you make – what you read and how you read – determine most of the language benefits you receive from reading. Here are some ideas from a recent book, Free Voluntary Reading, that can help you fine-tune your decisions and make your reading as effective as possible.

Effective reading is effortless reading

The best reading for language development is effortless – “easy reading that seems to be completely comprehensible without struggle.” Many students believe they need to challenge themselves, to read above their comfort level to improve. The opposite is true. One researcher, for example, found that your vocabulary grows faster if you know at least 95% of the words in the text you are reading.

Effective reading involves you in the text, not the language

You acquire, or absorb, more language when you get so involved in what you’re reading that you forget that it’s in another language or contains language you haven’t acquired yet. To do this, your reading must be effortless and interesting, or even compelling, so you can focus all your attention on the text and ignore the language.

This idea is related to the concept of flow. Flow is the mental state or condition you experience when you are “deeply but effortlessly involved in an activity. In flow, the concerns of everyday life disappear … our sense of time changes [e.g., time ‘stops’] and only the activity we’re involved in seems to matter.” When we say we “got lost in a book,” we’re describing the effect of flow. Language acquisition happens most effectively when you experience flow.

Worrying about your progress makes reading less effective

Language acquisition takes place “behind the scenes.” As a result, you won’t usually be aware of the progress you’re making until sometime later, when a word you need suddenly “appears” or when someone comments about your improvement.

Many students worry too much about progress. They create stress for themselves by worrying about remembering and forgetting what they’ve read. Some manage to convince themselves that they’re not improving.

If you do what you need to do – become deeply involved in effortless reading – your brain will automatically and quietly do what it does well – acquire more language. And you will make progress.

Checking your comprehension makes reading less effective

When you stop reading to check your comprehension, you interfere with the language acquisition process and make it more difficult. This happens, for example, when you stop to look up a word or add it to a vocabulary list for later study.

Stopping to check a word or write it down takes your attention away from what you’re reading. It requires you to remember what you’re reading while you stop to do something else. The result? You’ll be focused on the language, you’ll be less involved in the reading, and you will experience less flow. You’ll enjoy the reading less and, most importantly, significantly reduce its benefits. The more you stay involved in the text without interruption, the more language you will acquire.

Your job

Dr. Jeff McQuillan recently wrote that language acquisition is both incremental – it happens little by little – and incidental – it happens as the result of another activity – reading. Your job, as an English learner, is to do the other activity – to read interesting, effortless English. To enjoy what you’re reading. And to get deeply involved in it. This is the greatest contribution you can make toward your ultimate goal – better English.

A final note: it works for listening, too

You should also apply these ideas to the listening you do.

Warren Ediger

References: Krashen (2011) Free Voluntary Reading; McQuillan (2012) Even better than you think: more good news for incidental vocabulary acquisition.

If you want to improve your English, there’s nothing better than a healthy reading diet of interesting, understandable English. And if you want to become a good writer, there’s no better way than to read the works of good writers. Byliner, a relatively new web site, simplifies finding and choosing good things to read and promises to help you “discover great reads by great writers.”

Put simply, curators are people who identify, organize, and share. In a museum, a curator identifies significant works of art, organizes them into exhibitions, and shares the artworks with museum visitors in a way that helps people enjoy and understand them.

Byliner is a curated web site for readers. By identifying, organizing, and sharing “great reads”, they make it possible for upper-intermediate and advanced English learners to spend valuable time reading rather than looking.

Using Byliner

When you go to the Byliner home page, you’ll find a list of topics – arts, science, politics, business, tech, travel, sports, and crime – across the top of the page. Clicking on a topic takes you to a topic page with recommended articles,  links to articles by a featured writer, and links to the works of the three most frequently read writers in that topic. If you find a writer you like, you can follow him or her to be sure you hear about new articles from them.

Spotlight is a daily collection of articles about a current topic. Today it’s Tech Bubble 2.0? about technology and whether or not we’re entering another tech bubble. The last few days, they’ve spotlighted Arctic Adventures, Tales from Titanic, and others. You can use the Spotlight RSS feed to have each daily Spotlight sent directly to your favorite RSS reader.

The Story Lineup sidebar makes it easy to quickly scan lists of current, just added, and popular articles. And at the bottom of the home page, you can sign up to receive The best stories of the week, Byliner’s weekly email newsletter.

Getting started with Byliner

A good place to start – and the Spotlight that got my attention – is a yearly collection of articles called 101 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories compiled by Conor Friedersdorf.

Wherever you begin, Byliner looks like the kind of web site you’ll want to return to again and again.

Warren Ediger

Related reading:

• More reading, less looking
• Learning to write
• The power of reading and listening

Good writing comes mostly from reading what good writers have written. But quite a few good writers, like C.S. Lewis, John Steinbeck, and George Orwell, have also taken the time to write tips – practical suggestions – for good writing.

The key to good writing – in short – is clear thinking followed by clear, concise writing. Here are some tips from a few of the world’s great writers about how to do that.

C.S. Lewis was one of the greatest British writers of the 20^th century. He is best known for the Chronicles of Narnia, but he also wrote a large number of philosophical and religious works, such as his popular Mere Christianity. Here’s what he said about writing:

• Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
• Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
• Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
• Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”
• Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

David Ogilvy, a writer and advertising executive, has been called “The Father of Advertising.” He tells writers to:

• Write the way you talk. Naturally.
• Use short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs.
• Never send a letter or a memo (or anything else) on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.

John Steinbeck was an American writer. He is best known for his novel Grapes of Wrath.

• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.
• Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place … it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader.

George Orwell was an English novelist and journalist who wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. His advice is similar to Lewis’s:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (In other words, be yourself).
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, alway cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

If you want to learn more about writing, read Learning to write and Better Writing, two collections of short articles I wrote last year.

Warren Ediger

References: C.S. Lewis on Writing, 10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy, Steinbeck’s Tips for Aspiring Writers, and Writing Tips by … George Orwell.

If you’re tired of news and want something different to listen to to improve your English, Audiofiles may become your new best friend. Audiofiles is the audio version of longform journalism – what I have called “more than news, different than fiction.”

More than a year ago, I introduced several good sources for a new kind of non-fiction reading, called long form journalism – well, not new, but newly popular. And I published several lists of articles in Something to read.

I have just discovered a similar source of listening material called Audiofiles, a web site to “share and discover great radio.” Audiofiles’ producers select what they believe to be the best radio programs from networks, radio stations, and producers in the U.S. and Great Britain. It’s a great source of listening material for high intermediate and advanced English learners.

When you go to the Audiofiles web site, you’ll find a seemingly endless list of stories to choose from, beginning with the newest additions to the list. You’ll find a brief description of each story, the names of the producer and source, the length of the story, and the date it was first broadcast.

In the sidebar, you can choose stories by mood – awesome, dark, dreamy, fascinating, funny, etc. – and by type – all-time favorites, art & culture, business, documentary, humor, interviews, etc. You can also select stories by producer, source, or length – less than 10 minutes, 10-30 minutes, and more than 30 minutes.

If you want to learn about new stories on Audiofiles, you can follow them on Twitter.

Happy listening!

Warren Ediger

Lessons for better English is a collection of Successful English articles – organized like a textbook or course outline – for English students and teachers. Its goal – to help you improve your English by helping you understand and practice successful language acquisition.

Someone once told me that you need to know three things to successfully complete a project. You need to know:

• What to do;
• Why it’s important to do that; and
• How to effectively use the resources or tools you have to get the job done.

This collection of readings from Successful English explain the what, why, and how of language acquisition. And, as a bonus, I’ve added three stories that tell how different people have successfully used these ideas to acquire, or pick up, English and other languages.

   I. What you need to do

If you only read one article in Successful English, it should be The power of reading and listening. It clearly describes what you need to do to improve all aspects of your English – reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

 II. Why that’s important

Successful teaching and learning need a solid foundation. There must be good reasons for what teachers and students do. The basics, a series of short essays, briefly explains the theory and research behind the ideas you find in Successful English – why they’re important and why they work.

III. How to work effectively and solve problems

Even when you know what to do and why it’s important, you may still have questions. Here are answers to some of them:

• How does reading or listening to popular fiction help improve my English?
• Fine-tune your reading for better English
• How can I get the greatest benefit from my reading?
• Does correcting mistakes help me improve?
• How can I tell if my English is getting better?
• How to fight negative feelings about yourself and your English.
• Is working hard the answer to better English?
• What should I do when I see a word I don’t know?
• Why is English so difficult?
• How can I learn to speak better?
• I’ve worked hard to improve my English, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. What can I do?

 IV. Success stories

Case histories – the experiences of people or companies – are popular in many university management programs. Here are three case histories to encourage you and give you more ideas for improving your English:

• A group of Korean women
• A Brazilian teacher – part 1, part 2, part 3
• An American language teacher

Warren Ediger