7 ways to IMPROVE ENGLISH READING skills and comprehension | Learning English Technique Lesson

hello everyone and welcome back to english with lucy so i've made a video

about improving your listening and i made one about writing very recently as

well and i have made one on conversation but today the time has come to make a

video about improving your reading and your reading comprehension because

that's what you guys have been asking for so this video is going to be

jam-packed ie really really full of tips that will help you improve so whether

you want to improve because you need to do a reading exam or if you just want to

read for pleasure and understand more these tips are going to help you let's

get started with the video now let's start with an easy one and one that you

definitely will have heard before but it's so important I feel like I need to

reiterate it and this is read the question now at school I remember being

bored of my teachers telling me to read the question always read the question

remember to read the question but having worked as a teacher and having marked so

many exams oh my god so many points are lost through people miss reading the

question how many times have you seen a question that says answer with one

example of bah-bah-bah well if you give two examples most of the time you will

not get the point because you've given too many examples or if they asked you

to describe something and you provide a list it's not a description so you might

lose that point so please just bear it in mind you need to read the question

that was a pretty easy one let's get on to the next one now tip number two is

all about practice but the best way to practice and this is by reading the news

we're better to find up-to-the-minute current vocabulary that you can use in

conversations that you're going to see in exams because often exams will

use examples of current events or recent events so as a teacher I am always on

the lookout for the best news resources for my students

The Telegraph app have very kindly sponsored today's video but it wasn't a

hard job for me because I already use the app on a daily basis it is the news

app that I recommend to my students the reason I recommend this to my students

is because it's trusted news content you can use it both online and offline so

when you're connected to Wi-Fi you can download all the news stories and then

when you're out and about you can catch up on everything it's excellent because

you can click on the topic that is relevant and interesting to you because

that's really important download it whilst you're at home or

connected to Wi-Fi and then when you're on your commute or you're out and about

or you're somewhere where there's bad internet or at school for example you

can catch up with all the latest news stories in the section that interests

you most so that's one thing that I love about it the way that you can view

everything offline as well as online know it's all very well reading the news

every day but how can you use the news to get as much vocabulary into your

brain as possible well I would encourage you to keep a vocab diary my

recommendation is keep it all on your phone use the Telegraph

app try and read the articles that are relevant and interesting to you and then

on the note function on your phone keep a vocab diary so you could date it every

day you can note down the words that you don't understand in the app and then

when you get home you can fill in that diary find out what the words mean and

there you have a list to study from now you guys have probably heard all the

fake news and the untrustworthy news articles going around The Telegraph is

completely trusted it's well written it's well researched it's current it's

up-to-the-minute and you can view it both online and offline so it's

completely accessible I've left the link in the description box for anybody who

wants to download it I really do encourage you to do that vocab diary

because it has transformed so many of my students vocabularies right tip number

three relates back a little bit to tip number two but it's really important if

you want to achieve the right amount of because practice does make perfect and

that is scheduled in reading time and you will be amazed at how much this can

increase the amount you read every morning on your commute or or during a

break work or school or you could be reading for pleasure so you could be

setting aside an extra half an hour in the evening but make sure you make

reading part of your routine because otherwise other things take priority and

you will miss out because improving your reading and improving your other

language skills really is like running a marathon

you can't cram it you can't do something once and then inspect to see a massive

improvement it needs to be little and often that's why little tasks like

scheduling in and writing a vocab diary are so so effective let me know in the

comments below when you most like to read or if you're going to schedule in

reading time and when that's going to be now another way you could look at

scheduling in reading time is setting yourself a reading goal so depending on

your level schedule in a certain amount of articles every single day or however

many chapters or pages of a book every single day you know I'm not reading to

improve my English I'm reading for entertainment and to keep up to date

with current affairs I like to set myself the goal of reading at least 5

articles in the morning whilst I have my coffee I skim read them and it's just

the right amount of time for me obviously if I have more time I'll read

more I do like to start off the day with my set amount I can go over but I can't

go under so look at scheduling in a goal for each day now the next hip is a

little bit strange and it might not work for everybody but it really really works

for me it worked for me when I was doing my exams at university because I found

studying so boring but I needed to ingest a huge amount of articles essays

textbooks literature in general and something I found incredibly helpful and

something that made reading much more pleasurable and much more enjoyable was

reading using the voice of a celebrity in my head

and my celebrity of choice was always Stephen Fry who I've mentioned in

previous videos he speaks with received pronunciation

he's very very intelligent he's a comedian he has a lovely voice and I

used to read through all of the essays literature for my university degree in

in his voice and I just got into a habit and I found that it made everything less

dreadful and I've seen that other people do it too because I get messages on

Instagram and comments on YouTube saying whenever I read anything in English I do

it in your voice loosely and at first I thought how strange and then I thought

oh that's what I do just even Fri so yeah pick a voice of somebody that you

really really like and and try using their voice in your head next time you

read something if you're reading to practice your English let me know which

person you choose in the comments because I think it'll be quite funny to

see who everyone chooses now the next tip is for people who just really aren't

satisfied with their reading comprehension if you feel like you are

underperforming in exams or you're not getting the most out of reading for

pleasure this tips for you I want you to step back from your reading and evaluate

what's going wrong why why are you dissatisfied in order to find a cure you

need to find the problem you need to ask yourself why are you lacking vocabulary

is it that every other sentence you can't understand because you don't

understand the words are you lacking technical vocabulary so you'll fine

reading a general story but if you read about politics or science you're

completely stumped stumped means confused is it that you really struggle

with tenses is it that you can't work out which past tense is being used or if

they're talking about the present or the future is it rather than the language

used is it that you find reading too tiring or too boring is it that you run

out of time in an exam you need to think about what is going wrong and then find

yourself a solution or ask some I'd help you find a solution I can give

you all the tips to apply to your reading but if you don't work out what's

wrong in the first place you're going to have a tough time improving so I invite

you to think about your reading what is going wrong write it in the comment

section and let's all help each other to improve our reading skills I can

identify what's wrong with my reading when I read in Spanish for example I get

bored i skim read I miss the point and I don't try hard enough to understand the

whole passage what do I need to do I need to work on summarizing every

paragraph or every page to make sure that I get a clear grasp of the context

and just what's going on in the piece so what's your problem and if you can what

do you need to do to fight it comment down below my next tip is going

to sound weird as well but it's something that really worked for me and

this is use a pen and this helps you in a couple of different ways one of the

obvious ones which you will know about is you can underline words but it is

really really important to underline key words or even cross out words that you

think are not relevant as well I wouldn't completely cross them out but

maybe put a line through if you think no no this stuff doesn't matter just the

key words but another use for your trusty pen is use it to help you speed

read so you use it as a pointer this is going to really help anybody that

struggles with reading a text in a short amount of time in a lot of exams you're

under time pressure so you want to read as much as possible in the shortest

amount of time so I find that by using a pen and following under the words like

this I know I look ridiculous right now but I want you guys to speed read really

helps me read much more quickly you can try it out see if it works for you take

an article read it first without the pen read it again with the pen time yourself

see which one is quicker it might take some getting used to but learning to

speed read and using a pointer it can transform the way you perform in reading

exams right guys that's it with the tips for today I really really

encourage you to click on the link in the description box and download the

Telegraph app I've already said how great it is it was what I was using

before and it was an absolute pleasure to be invited to work with them because

I love recommending things I truly believe in I'm confident that if you set

yourself a goal of reading to 3 or 5 articles a day for example you really

really will improve your reading comprehension over time don't forget to

connect with me on all of my social media I've got my facebook I've got my

Instagram and I've got my Twitter and I will see you soon for another lesson

yeah

you