Reading and comprehension tips | Learn English with Cambridge

Everyone, I’m George,

and today I’m going to share four tips

with you to improve your reading comprehension skills.

It’s important to improve your reading skills

because not only will it help you to develop

your vocabulary and grammar,

it will also have a positive effect

on your written skills too.

But before I begin,

don’t forget to subscribe to the channel

so you don’t miss out on any of these lessons.

Tip number one: Choosing reading materials.

If you want to read in English,

choose something that you enjoy reading in your own language

that’s not too difficult.

Don’t feel like you have to read something academic or clever

because you’re reading in another language,

that’s already clever.

So you could read a film script,

a magazine interview, a comic book or a cookery book.

If you want to read a book, choose one

that you’re very familiar with in your own language.

For example, when I was studying Korean,

I decided to read Harry Potter because,

when I was a child,

I was a massive Harry Potter fan,

so I must have read this book maybe three or four times.

This stopped me from checking every single word

that I didn’t understand.

It also helped me to understand words

and expressions from the context that they were in.

For instance, look at this sentence

and imagine you don’t know the meaning of the word scar.

Harry Potter had a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt

on his forehead.

If you know the story of Harry Potter already,

you’ll probably remember what was on Harry Potter’s forehead,

therefore you could easily guess the meaning of the word scar

without looking it up in the dictionary.

However, it’s important to read various genres too.

So you could read some of your favourite novels

and you could read your favourite music magazine.

This will help you to familiarise yourself with formal

and informal English.

Tip number two: Vocabulary.

Don’t look up every single word you’re unsure of.

Note down or highlight any unknown words or expressions

that appear more than once in the text.

You can try to guess

what they mean through their context and then,

afterwards, look them up in the dictionary.

You can also make some flashcards

so that these words

and expressions stay fresh in your memory.

Tip number three: Interact.

Note down any opinions you might have about the text.

Don’t be afraid to write notes in the book or the magazine,

unless it’s a library book,

in which case you can write on some Post-it notes

and stick them on the pages.

Tip number four: Respond.

This is your chance to produce language

in response to what you’ve read.

You might write down your response

and give it to a teacher,

or you could upload it online and receive feedback that way.

Alternatively, you could discuss

what you’ve read with some friends or classmates,

or you could even join

a book club and talk about what you’ve read there.

I thought the book was good.

The characters were also very good.

Before joining one of these discussions,

you could prepare by thinking

of some interesting adjectives to describe the characters

and the story.

Let’s summarise what we’ve learnt today.

Number one: choose something you enjoy reading in your own language.

Number two: don’t look up every single word.

Only look up the words

that frequently occur in the text.

Number three: make notes.

And number four: respond to the text.

That’s all we have time for today.

If you have any reading tips of your own,

please leave a comment below.

And don’t forget to like the video

and to subscribe to the channel.