Second languages are languages that are not your native language, your first language, and acquisition means acquiring, learning. The field of second language acquisition has lots of important research for language teachers like me! When you say that there is no shame in doing something , it means that you should not feel shame, you should not feel bad, for doing it.
For example, many people worry about making mistakes when speaking a language, but there is no shame in making mistakes. When something is comprehensible , it means you can easily understand it. When I teach, I work hard to make sure that I am comprehensible to the students, that the students can easily understand me. I tried really hard to complete my homework by today, but I ran out of time… Can I have more time to do it?
Take as long as you need. When you contradict something, you say the opposite of it, you say something against it. Actually, humans contradict ourselves very often.
I get this question a lot from students. Firstly, reading skills are more important than ever, whether that be in English or your native language. All jobs, from office workers to mechanics, require far more reading and writing than a century ago. The competition is higher, and readers win. Secondly, reading is the best way to improve proficiency in English overall. Yes, you heard me right. Reading will improve your speaking, writing, vocabulary and grammar far more efficiently than any other method.
In school, you probably read lots in English. Boring textbooks and stories with exercises at the end. That means reading a book because you enjoy it. Not because your teacher told you to. No questions, no book reports. Just pure pleasure. In , an experiment was carried out in juvenile delinquent reform centres in America. One group of the students were given free books. They made sure they were exciting books that would appeal to young boys, such as James Bond. But unlike most reading programmes, they were not required to read the books.
They were simply given them. They could throw the books away, give them back, or draw on the pages, and nobody would punish them for it. But the boys did read them. They read a lot of them. Some of them read a book every two days. At the end of two years, they tested the students. Not only did their reading and writing greatly improve, so did their attitude towards school.
But the students who were not on this programme stayed the same. In fact, some of them got worse over the two years. A study of English as a Second Language ESL students in the Fiji islands looked at three methods: traditional English teaching, sustained silent reading which means reading in silence for a long time , and a more conventional reading programme, where the teachers read aloud to the students.
By the end of the first year, students taught with the two reading methods had a 15 month advantage in English ability, compared to the 6. When the study was replicated in Singapore, the students who did only sustained silent reading did better on grammar tests than the students who had taken only grammar classes!
When we do grammar exercises, we try to memorise the rules of the language. When we read, we absorb them. I get bored of looking up words, and I give up after a few minutes. It is designed to make you fall in love with reading, by providing fun, familiar stories that are easy to understand. The stories gradually increase in difficulty and length, so that you can feel a sense of progression and success at the end. Most of them were originally released on my podcast, Easy Stories in English , but they have been rewritten and improved for this book, as well as having a version for each language level.
They are a mix of classic and less popular fairy tales, as well as one that I wrote myself. But those are for kids! I need useful vocabulary, about business and science and technology. We use a wide range of words when talking about technical topics as well as chatting with our friends. Rolls and Rogers found that, if a student read a million words of science fiction, they would acquire many of the technical words required for a science degree.
So yes, reading fairy tales will help your English in all areas, even for academic purposes. For IELTS, for university, for business or just for travel, reading is the factor that predicts success. When I learned about all this, I was, too. But I like to experiment, and I have a passion for learning languages.
So in , I decided to test this theory. I set myself a goal: I would read a million words in Spanish and see what my level was afterwards. A million words is roughly twenty standard-length novels, so it was a huge task. I started with very easy resources, like transcripts of podcasts for learners, but I avoided anything that felt too much like work. With the reading, I also listened to podcasts, but I always read the transcripts and counted the words as part of my reading. After I achieved my goal, I tested myself by writing and talking to native speakers, and found I was at a decent intermediate level.
I could understand almost everything I read, understand clear speech, and have conversations at a comfortable level, even though I had barely spoken the language since I started learning.
I had been learning for about a year, and I had made more progress than most students make in five years. This is your excuse to read comics, magazines, detective stories, romances, etc.
There is no shame in reading translations. I know, dear reader. It was a beautiful day! Jerry jumped out of bed and threw open the curtains. He sang to himself as he did his daily routine, pouring coffee and buttering toast.
This is especially great because it seems obvious to me that an explanation or analysis of the book—which introductions, in my experience, often end up being—should come after the main text. But these are things that can usually make sense after the fact. Sometimes, footnotes explain these bits.
Other times, you might go for an annotated edition especially useful for things like Shakespeare, where the language is unusual, to an extent, even for its own time in the pursuit of things like meter and rhyme. Despite otherwise being a completionist , I give myself leeway with introductions.
Sometimes, the content is debatable. Use your introduction to communicate everything you need to convince a prospective reader that your book will be worth their time.
As noted above, it must be pitched to — and engage — your ideal reader. The human brain is hard-wired for story. Any information provided in that format instantly activates two compelling questions in our minds:.
Lisa Allen, according to her file, was thirty-four years old, had started smoking and drinking when she was sixteen, and had struggled with obesity for most of her life. The woman in front of the researchers today, however, was lean and vibrant, with the toned legs of a runner …. As I stared out the rain-spattered window of a city bus, I saw that the years were slipping by.
The U. Military, it occurred to me as I watched it in action, is one of the biggest habit-formation experiments in history. He goes on to explain:. We know how to break them into parts and rebuild them to our specifications. We understand how to make people eat less, exercise more, work more efficiently, and live healthier lives.
Many readers are looking for people who are only a step or two ahead of them in a journey. Some readers are keen to read the experiences of people who are at the same place in life as them.
Think fellow parents, for example. The first section focuses on how habits emerge within individual lives …. Each chapter revolves around a central argument: Habits can be changed, if we understand how they work. This section of your introduction acts as a roadmap for the reader. It tells them what to expect and creates confidence that your book will provide value for them. This ties directly into the audience section you wrote in your positioning.
The story or stories in the introduction should dive deep and describe the massive pain the reader is suffering by not taking the advice or lessons in your book. Pain induces action. Show them why the results are so amazing and that the goal is worth the pain. Again, this ties into your audience positioning—you already have this story, you did it in your audience section. Dive deep into it and provide more specifics. Make sure this is so clear and simple that even a seventh grader could understand.
The best way to do this again, is to tell a story. Why did you write this book? Why does this subject matter to you? How did you learn enough to be in a position to teach what you know to people? Why are you qualified—even uniquely qualified—to write this book? Why should the reader credit what you have to say? After all, if you are going to help them by teaching them so much, they need to know why they should listen to you.
They only care about you and your story insofar as it applies to the book and to your expertise. Do not give them an autobiography. Just enough about you to know that they should listen is all it takes. This is an optional part of the intro, but many authors like to put this in. By telling the reader what the book is and is not, it sets the right expectations in the beginning.
You can do this very simply, mainly by stating what you will not be, and the things they will not get out of it. Once you have done all of this, then all that is left is a simple transition to get the reader ready to dive in and start engaging the book.
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