How to improve your reading

This is a 10 minutes long but interesting video of how to improve our reading skills.

How to improve your reading

Many people have difficulties with reading. Some of them don't read well the words, others don't understand what they read, some people don't like what they are reading so they don't concentrate etc. Reading is an ability that is important to be improved. Here there are some advices: 

- Read things that interest you. This will make easier your improvement.

-Think about your reasons for reading, this will help you, because it is different to read a menu than to read a book.

-Don't choose  too difficult readings that you won't be able to understand because you will get lost, and stressed. 

-While reading don't stop in every word you don't understand, look for the key words that will help you understand the topic or the main idea that the writer wants to express.

-If it's a short text, not a book, read it twice, the first time looking for the main ideas and the second one reading more carefully. 

-Finally, try to read it well by stoping on the comas and the spots and by  reading the words like they sound. But don't be too obsessed with that.

How to deal with difficult vocabulary

Pieces of advice on learning vocabulary

Leaning all of the vocabulary of a language is really difficult. There's a lot of vocabulary but you don't  expect to know all of it. If you want to learn vocabulary or to improve how to interpret the vocabulary that you don't understand of the language you’re learning, follow these advices:

-Read newspapers, books, magazines, and underline new vocabulary.You have to read texts on your level where you don't understand three of four words, but don't chose text with a lot of words you don't know.


-Listen to songs and read their lyrics to learn new words. It's a funny way of learning. Don't try to search words in the dictionary, it's boring and not very useful.

-If you don't know a word try to describe it with other words or just use another word or expression that is closer to it. 

-The new words you lear, write them in a Post-it and put it somewhere yo ucan read it every day. Don't try to memorise, just read this vocabulary every day to get used with it. 

- If you don’t know some of the word in a text, don’t stop reading; think about their meaning according to the context. 

-If you're writing a text and you don't know a word, look for some synonyms that you're more used to write. 


If you want to learn a new word you will have to pronouce it well, spell it well, know the situation when you can use it and finally know the positive or negative connotations that it has. 

Learning grammar

Grammar is important when you learn a language because it helps us to learn quicker, it's like a shortcut.  Here there are some advices to learn grammar:

-Write schemes of grammar rules. Write them in the same text. The schemes will help you to revise while writing and to have a specific place where there are all the grammar rules.

-Look for patterns of a language

-Practise grammar exercises. You have to practice the rules you have studied. It's important to put into practise what you have studied. Do exercises like: correcting errors of a text, sentence transformation, filling the gaps, etc.

-Write compositions. Give them to a teacher who will correct your grammar faults.

-Don’t be obsessed only with grammar.

-If you don't understang a grammar rule of a word use logical deductions using some examples.
What you have to do is just make hypotesis using examples.

-Check everything after writing.

Learning styles

As you will see in the power point there are different types of learners. This power point will help you to find what learner you are and some strategies that you can use.

Learning Styles from LauraTRich