George, I’ve got a question: “Reading English Books For Learning English. Your opinion?”

George Rusky
November 2005

George, I’ve got a question:
“Reading English Books For Learning English. Your opinion?”

In spite of a predicted answer “Yes, it certainly does help and will help…,”
I would rather say: ”It depends....”

Consider the following:

For a school learner where teachers follow the program, where a book for out-off-class reading is an element of the program,
it is good.
In a primary school it’s a book of adapted fairy tales or any other book for children.
In high or higher schools different levels of book for out-of-class reading are listed.
I’m a supporter of this reading.

Now, a university graduate with firm habits of learning various disciplines starts learning a foreign language, transforms her practice onto foreign language learning.
She buys a lot of books, follows a number of theories, among which her own occupies the main position, goes to various courses and changes the teachers, and so on and so forth…

But nothing works as quickly as she wants.

Then she thinks:
”I should learn a bigger vocabulary, I will read a book!”

In a book store she purchases a book or she finds appropriate book in a library, and full of good intentions starts reading carefully finding in a dictionary each unknown word.
After one or two pages she quits, simply stops reading.
A number of new words is overwhelming, writing the words in native language above the words in the text, doesn’t help much…

In fact, this kind of reading may give some information about the text, say for a purpose of general comprehension of the text.

But, I’m strongly against this kind of reading.