essays to read to improve english

Ultimate List Of Articles to Read to Improve Your English

English is well spoken in the entire world. it is spoken across almost 60 countries in the world. of course, each country has its pronunciations and way of speaking. today we will list the articles to read to improve your overall english vocabulary and speaking skills. .

Let me elaborate on why having a good command of English is important.

1. the english language is accepted globally.

As mentioned earlier, English is spoken in over 60 countries as the main language. And perhaps, English is commonly accepted as a common language for communication.

So wherever you travel, English makes it easier for you.

2. It is a common language for business

Business around the globe is very diverse and required to be connected from one country to another. And English plays a great role in connecting multiple businesses. It makes communication and trades easy for traders.

3. You get to connect with people all across the globe

No doubt, social media has taken over the world, and you can make friends and great connections on your phone. Hence, people who have different languages across the countries can connect with you through this language.

4. It makes travel easy

English being the common language, you can communicate with people easily.

5. Communication over the internet is vastly done in the English language.

Although there are numerous languages that Google provides, but are not very accurate. Hence the majority of internet replies in the English language for communication.

Now that you know why English is important for you, I would suggest some tips and some good articles to read so that you can improve your English.

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Newspapers are a great way to improve English and catch up with current affairs as well.

They have different columns for current affairs, what’s trending, personal life & relationships, stock market, sports, and whatnot.

Being updated on every news gives us some knowledge of what’s happening in the world. Especially in today’s world, where at some point in time, we all kept track of the rising number of coronavirus cases almost every four-five hours.

Reading newspapers also build up your knowledge, and it is always nice to have a good conversation with people, rather than sitting like a fool, right?

When I was a little kid, my parents got a subscription for Hitvada, which used to be the famous newspaper of Nagpur. And since I am from a small town, newspapers such as Deccan Chronicle or The Economic Times used to arrive two days late. Hence Hitvada was the choice left. I remember I used to love the section of the mind-tree where they tell you about Life choices, how to be a better person, and philosophical stuff.

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Below is the list of 13 newspapers which is regarded as the best when it comes to their language and editing.

• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal
• Deccan Chronicle
• Deccan Herald
• Economic Times
• Reader’s Digest
• India Today
• Economical & Political Weekly
• The Indian Express

Let me guide you through the details of each newspaper.

1. articles to read –  the new york times.

The New York Times is one of the oldest newspapers in America which was founded on September 18th, 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones. The New York Times was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. Their mission is to seek the truth and help people understand the world better. Their main strength lies in their editorial excellence, and they have never been the largest newspaper in terms of circulation. The original thought of starting this newspaper was to avoid sensationalism and to focus the news in a restrained and objective fashion. In the year 1896, Adolf Simon Ochs bought the company since The New York Times was facing a $1000 loss per week.

He then focused on improving the reporting of the newspaper and hired publishers from all over the world. They emphasized more on the important news coverage of the country and removed the fiction column. They then introduced a Sunday column and reduced the paper’s price back to a penny. In 2016, The New York Times instituted a subscription plan that allows people to subscribe for its content and people can access free of cost.

2. Articles to read – The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American English language daily-based newspaper in New York City which publishes articles related to the corporate sector, and the newspaper’s international editions are also available in Chinese and Japanese. The journal is published 6 days a week by Dow Jones & Company, which is a division of News Corporation. The newspaper publishing company was established on July 8, 1889, by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, Charles Bergstresser. The Wall Street Journal is one of the largest newspapers in terms of circulation in the United States of America with a circulation of about 2.834 copies. The newspaper publishing company has won 37 Pulitzer prizes. The journal pages are typically conservative in their position.

The newspaper focuses its articles mainly on the articles related to business and stock markets, and they claim that they have seen the births and deaths of thousands of businesses. Although, they also have diversification in their articles and they also write about politics and economic opinions, readers’ letters, and reviews of the art. 

3. Articles to read – The Guardian

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in the Manchester Guardian and later got its name changed to “The Guardian” in the year 1959. The Guardian media group is among the world’s leading media organizations having a global and progressive audience. Their main business is “Guardian News & Media” which is the publisher of theguardian.com, and it is one of the largest English-speaking quality news websites in the world.

The Guardian is mostly known for its in-depth journalism, its rational discussion of issues, and its coverage of literary and artistic fields, and its criticism. The paper is owned by Scott Trust, who is also the owner of Guardian Media Group. The newspaper is backed by the income of the group and it helps in remaining financially secured. The trust ownership has prevented a buyout of the newspaper by larger media houses.

4. Articles to read – The Hindu

The Hindu is an English language daily newspaper in India which is owned by The Hindu Group and the same was founded in 1878 by G. Subramaniam Iyer in the year 1878. Its headquarters is located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The newspaper is published from 21 different locations across 11 states of India.

Do you know that The Hindu was the first Indian website that went digital? Interesting, isn’t it? In the year 1995, The Hindu launched its first website.

Also, in the year 1965, The Times listed The Hindu as one of the world’s 10 best newspapers.

Although over the years, their language and editorial skills have gone down. But still, it is recommended to read The Hindu to improve the English language.

5. Articles to read – Deccan Herald

Deccan Herald is an English language daily newspaper which is published in Karnataka by the Printers Private Limited. It is a family business owned by the Nettakallappa family. The newspaper has seven additions printed from Bengaluru, Hubbali, Hospet, Mysore, Mangalore, and Kalburgi.

Launched on June 17th, 1948, by K.N. Guruswamy, the main intention of the founder was to open a movie theatre, (two theatres being on either side, plaza, and liberty). It was then, after buying a dance club, to turn it into a movie theatre, was decided to launch a newspaper, despite having zero experience in this field.

Deccan Herald re-launched its newspaper with a revamped look to attract a younger audience. Deccan Herald was recognized as the eighth largest English language daily in India.

6. Articles To read – Deccan Chronicle

Deccan Chronicle is an English language daily newspaper founded in the year 1930 by RajagopalMudaliar and is currently owned by SREI. This journal is published in Hyderabad, Telangana, by Deccan Chronicle Holdings Limited (DCHL). The name is derived from its originating place, the Deccan regions of India. Deccan Chronicle holds eight publications in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and they also publish from Chennai and Bangalore. 

The Indian Premier League cricket franchise of the Deccan Charges is owned by the Deccan Chronicle, and the Hyderabad city in the IPL was represented by the Deccan Chronicle.

7. Articles to read –  The Economic Times

The Economic Times is an English language business newspaper which was founded in the year 1961, by the Times Group. It is the second most widely read business newspaper in the world, after The Wall Street Journal, with a readership of over 8 lakhs. Its main content is based on the Indian economy, share prices, commodities, international finance, as well as all the other matter related to finance. P.S. Hariharan was the editor when the newspaper was founded in the year 1961.

The current editor of the newspaper is Bodhisattva Ganguli. The newspaper is published in 14 different cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Indore, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahemdabad, Nagpur Chandigarh, Pune, and Bhopal. The Economic Times is sold in all the major cities in India, and in June 2019, they launched their news channel called ET Now.  

8. Articles to read – Mint

Mint is an English language daily newspaper that covers finance-related articles, and the same is published by HT Media, a Delhi-based media group that is controlled by the KK Birla family and also publishes Hindustan Times. Starting in 2007, the newspapers’ target audiences are those who are into the finance and stock sector.

Mint and economic times are targeting the same audience, Mint is good for those who don’t understand the jargon of the securities market, or for the beginners of the stock market. Hence, it is always recommended to start with Mint when one wants to start learning about the stock market.

9. Articles to read – Reader’s Digest

Reader’s Digest is an American general family magazine and is now headquartered in Midtown, Manhattan. Founded in 1922, Reader’s Digest is one of the bestselling consumer magazines in The United States. The magazine is also published in Braille.

10. Articles to read – Hindustan Times

Hindustan Times was first published in the year 1924 by Mahatma Gandhi, and it proved to be of a great independent role in the Indian economy as a nationalist newspaper, and then later turned to pro-Congress daily. Currently, the newspaper is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It is a publication of HT Media, an entity owned entirely by the KK Birla family.

11. Articles To read – India Today

India Today is an English language news magazine which is published by Living Media India Limited. The magazine was established in the year 1975 by Vidya Vilas Purie.

India Today is the most widely circulated magazine in India.

 12. Articles to read –  Economical & Political Weekly

Economical & Political Weekly is a weekly academic journal that covers all the social sciences and the same is published by Sameeksha Trust. It was first published in 1949 as an economic weekly and then in the year 1966, it was published as Economical & Political Weekly.

13. The Indian Express

The Indian Express is an English language daily newspaper, which is published by the Indian Express Group. It is a popular and one of the most recommended newspapers among the UPSE CSE aspirants along with The Hindu.

You can start by reading the newspapers whose language is simple and easy to understand, such as Hindustan Times and Mint, and then later move on to the newspapers such as The Indian Express and The Economic Times.

Apart from the newspaper, reading books also helps you in improving your English skills.

Books play a great role in improving English and personality as a whole. Each book and each author has a unique feature.

Let me tell you the benefits of reading a book.

• You get to learn new words, and hence it increases your vocabulary.
• Your grammar gets strong.
• You get to know different stories.
• You can experience different countries and locations by just sitting comfortably at your home.
• Reading books gains your knowledge.

Since you have found out why reading is important, and what benefits it does to you, below are a few book recommendations for a beginner which you can start. Some are books, and some are categorized as authors.

1. 1984 by george orwell.

1984 is a dystopian social fiction novel published on 8th June 1949. This book unleashes a unique plot as No one is safe or free. No place is safe even for hiding away from big political leaders. It must be tough to grasp the language but it is all worth the read.

2. Emma by Jane Austen

Emma is all about romantic misunderstandings. The novel is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abby. The story is about relationships among small families. It is a much read for every literature reader.

3. The Diary of a Young Girl 

The novel is about a 14-year-old Anne Frank( who is also the author of the book), who along with her family was in hiding for 2 years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

It is the written collection of the actual diary of Anne Frank who used to write when she is hiding and is a remarkable book that everyone much read.

4. Any novels of Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton’s series is for teenagers. His novels include a group of friends who solves a mystery. It used to be my favorite in school, and I am sure many of us have grown up reading his books.

5. Three Thousand Stitches by Sudha Murthy

It is a beautiful collection of Mrs. Sudha Murthy, wife of Narayan Murthy, and is also the chairperson of Infosys. She has described her childhood and little anecdotes of her life.

6. Murder in the Orient Express by Agatha  Christie

A murder took place on a train in the middle of the night. And is Poirot’s last case. It is a classic murder mystery novel for all those who are interested in suspense.

7. The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi

It is an absolutely beautiful book written by Amish Tripathi, who has magnificently described the journey of how Shiva becomes God, and how he found his true love Sati. The book is the first sequel to the trilogy, and the rest of the two beings; The Secret of the Nagas, and The Oath of the Vayuputras. The language is simple, elegant, and the story is quite engaging. You would be compelled to read all three parts of the book.

You can try out other books by Amish Tripathi as well, such as Legend of Sulhedev: The King Who Saved India, which also, along with the Trilogy, is a work of fiction.

If you are interested in non-fiction, then you can read his Immortal India, which is a collection of many short stories.

8. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This novel was published in 1960 by Harper Lee and it got instant success soon after it got released. It is widely in schools as part of the curriculum plan. Also, it has become a classic of modern American literature, by winning the Pulitzer Prize.

9. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari written by Robin Sharma

This novel is a classic self-help book describing the story of a fictional lawyer Julian Mantle, who sold his Ferrari to study the seven virtues of the Sages of Sivana in the Himalayan Mountains. A must-read classic novel for all of us, the journey teaches us a lot about how to deal with difficult stages of life.

10. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone written by J.K. Rowling

I don’t need to tell you what this book is about, right? We have all grown up watching Harry Potter and his friends. Purely a work of fiction, this book would leave you spell-bound. The book offers much more than the movie. So make sure to make it on your reading list.

Above are some of the books that are highly recommended by most readers. If you are a beginner and have never read a book before, then you can start by reading basic books of Indian Author such as 3 mistakes of my life, or any other similar novel.

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Concluding thoughts on Articles to read

Reading is the best way you can improve your English, be it reading newspapers, magazines, journals, or novels. They will not only improve your vocabulary, but they increase your general knowledge as well. There are many websites where you can read articles on various topics.   Medium  is one of them. You can write your articles on the topic you like as well.

Other than reading, you can watch English news channels as well such as ET now. You can also watch a good English web series and movies. It has two added advantages, number one, you would learn the right pronunciations. The only backdrop of reading is you can’t know the actual pronunciation of the word until you Google it. Hence, it gives an added advantage. And secondly, watching movies and series is fun, isn’t it? Who doesn’t like to watch movies!

There are many ways in which you can learn English. You can always try talking to yourself in front of the mirror. It gives you the confidence to talk to people.

It’s the digital world and you can interact with people online. There are many websites where you can make friends online. You can join communities and forums as well where you can interact with people having similar interests.

There are numerous ways where you can improve your English, you just have to start learning. And once you start, it is an ongoing process for life. There would always be new words to learn, new books, and news articles. You can always learn something new. So just start learning, and make reading a habit.

Happy Learning!

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40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I wanted to improve my writing skills. I thought that reading the forty best essays of all time would bring me closer to my goal.

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

Reading essays is like indulging in candy; once you start, it’s hard to stop. I sought out essays that were not only well-crafted but also impactful. These pieces genuinely shifted my perspective. Whether you’re diving in for enjoyment or to hone your writing, these essays promise to leave an imprint. It’s fascinating how an essay can resonate with you, and even if details fade, its essence remains. I haven’t ranked them in any way; they’re all stellar. Skim through, explore the summaries, and pick up some writing tips along the way. For more essay gems, consider “Best American Essays” by Joyce Carol Oates or “101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think” curated by Brianna Wiest.

40 Best Essays of All Time (With Links And Writing Tips)

1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra.

A great family drama takes place against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness. And the Kookaburra laughs… This is one of the top essays of the lot. It’s a great mixture of family reminiscences, travel writing, and advice on what’s most important in life. You’ll also learn an awful lot about the curious culture of the Aussies.

Writing tips from the essay:

• Use analogies (you can make it funny or dramatic to achieve a better effect): “Don’t be afraid,” the waiter said, and he talked to the kookaburra in a soothing, respectful voice, the way you might to a child with a switchblade in his hand”.
• You can touch a few cognate stories in one piece of writing . Reveal the layers gradually. Intertwine them and arrange for a grand finale where everything is finally clear.
• Be on the side of the reader. Become their friend and tell the story naturally, like around the dinner table.
• Use short, punchy sentences. Tell only as much as is required to make your point vivid.
• Conjure sentences that create actual feelings: “I had on a sweater and a jacket, but they weren’t quite enough, and I shivered as we walked toward the body, and saw that it was a . . . what, exactly?”
• You may ask a few tough questions in a row to provoke interest and let the reader think.

2. Charles D’Ambrosio – Documents

Do you think your life punches you in the face all too often? After reading this essay, you will change your mind. Reading about loss and hardships often makes us sad at first, but then enables us to feel grateful for our lives . D’Ambrosio shares his documents (poems, letters) that had a major impact on his life, and brilliantly shows how not to let go of the past.

• The most powerful stories are about your family and the childhood moments that shaped your life.
• You don’t need to build up tension and pussyfoot around the crux of the matter. Instead, surprise the reader by telling it like it is: “The poem was an allegory about his desire to leave our family.” Or: “My father had three sons. I’m the eldest; Danny, the youngest, killed himself sixteen years ago”.
• You can use real documents and quotes from your family and friends. It makes it so much more personal and relatable.
• Don’t cringe before the long sentence if you know it’s a strong one.
• At the end of the essay, you may come back to the first theme to close the circuit.
• Using slightly poetic language is acceptable, as long as it improves the story.

3. E. B. White – Once more to the lake

What does it mean to be a father? Can you see your younger self, reflected in your child? This beautiful essay tells the story of the author, his son, and their traditional stay at a placid lake hidden within the forests of Maine. This place of nature is filled with sunshine and childhood memories. It also provides for one of the greatest meditations on nature and the passing of time.

• Use sophisticated language, but not at the expense of readability.
• Use vivid language to trigger the mirror neurons in the reader’s brain: “I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose and who had seen lily pads only from train windows”.
• It’s important to mention universal feelings that are rarely talked about (it helps to create a bond between two minds): “You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings when the lake was cool and motionless”.
• Animate the inanimate: “this constant and trustworthy body of water”.
• Mentioning tales of yore is a good way to add some mystery and timelessness to your piece.
• Using double, or even triple “and” in one sentence is fine. It can make the sentence sing.

4. Zadie Smith – Fail Better

Aspiring writers feel tremendous pressure to perform. The daily quota of words often turns out to be nothing more than gibberish. What then? Also, should the writer please the reader or should she be fully independent? What does it mean to be a writer, anyway? This essay is an attempt to answer these questions, but its contents are not only meant for scribblers. Within it, you’ll find some great notes about literary criticism, how we treat art , and the responsibility of the reader.

• A perfect novel ? There’s no such thing.
• The novel always reflects the inner world of the writer. That’s why we’re fascinated with writers.
• Writing is not simply about craftsmanship, but about taking your reader to the unknown lands. In the words of Christopher Hitchens: “Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.”
• Style comes from your unique personality and the perception of the world. It takes time to develop it.
• Never try to tell it all. “All” can never be put into language. Take a part of it and tell it the best you can.
• Avoid being cliché. Try to infuse new life into your writing .
• Writing is about your way of being. It’s your game. Paradoxically, if you try to please everyone, your writing will become less appealing. You’ll lose the interest of the readers. This rule doesn’t apply in the business world where you have to write for a specific person (a target audience).
• As a reader, you have responsibilities too. According to the critics, every thirty years, there’s just a handful of great novels. Maybe it’s true. But there’s also an element of personal connection between the reader and the writer. That’s why for one person a novel is a marvel, while for the other, nothing special at all. That’s why you have to search and find the author who will touch you.

5. Virginia Woolf – Death of the Moth

Amid an ordinary day, sitting in a room of her own, Virginia Woolf tells about the epic struggle for survival and the evanescence of life. This short essay is truly powerful. In the beginning, the atmosphere is happy. Life is in full force. And then, suddenly, it fades away. This sense of melancholy would mark the last years of Woolf’s life.

• The melody of language… A good sentence is like music: “Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow- underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us”.
• You can show the grandest in the mundane (for example, the moth at your window and the drama of life and death).
• Using simple comparisons makes the style more lucid: “Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure”.

6. Meghan Daum – My Misspent Youth

Many of us, at some point or another, dream about living in New York. Meghan Daum’s take on the subject differs slightly from what you might expect. There’s no glamour, no Broadway shows, and no fancy restaurants. Instead, there’s the sullen reality of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. You’ll get all the juicy details about credit cards, overdue payments, and scrambling for survival. It’s a word of warning. But it’s also a great story about shattered fantasies of living in a big city. Word on the street is: “You ain’t promised mañana in the rotten manzana.”

• You can paint a picture of your former self. What did that person believe in? What kind of world did he or she live in?
• “The day that turned your life around” is a good theme you may use in a story. Memories of a special day are filled with emotions. Strong emotions often breed strong writing.
• Use cultural references and relevant slang to create a context for your story.
• You can tell all the details of the story, even if in some people’s eyes you’ll look like the dumbest motherfucker that ever lived. It adds to the originality.
• Say it in a new way: “In this mindset, the dollars spent, like the mechanics of a machine no one bothers to understand, become an abstraction, an intangible avenue toward self-expression, a mere vehicle of style”.
• You can mix your personal story with the zeitgeist or the ethos of the time.

7. Roger Ebert – Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Probably the greatest film critic of all time, Roger Ebert, tells us not to rage against the dying of the light. This essay is full of courage, erudition, and humanism. From it, we learn about what it means to be dying (Hitchens’ “Mortality” is another great work on that theme). But there’s so much more. It’s a great celebration of life too. It’s about not giving up, and sticking to your principles until the very end. It brings to mind the famous scene from Dead Poets Society where John Keating (Robin Williams) tells his students: “Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary”.

• Start with a powerful sentence: “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.”
• Use quotes to prove your point -”‘Ask someone how they feel about death’, he said, ‘and they’ll tell you everyone’s gonna die’. Ask them, ‘In the next 30 seconds?’ No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen”.
• Admit the basic truths about reality in a childlike way (especially after pondering quantum physics) – “I believe my wristwatch exists, and even when I am unconscious, it is ticking all the same. You have to start somewhere”.
• Let other thinkers prove your point. Use quotes and ideas from your favorite authors and friends.

8. George Orwell – Shooting an Elephant

Even after one reading, you’ll remember this one for years. The story, set in British Burma, is about shooting an elephant (it’s not for the squeamish). It’s also the most powerful denunciation of colonialism ever put into writing. Orwell, apparently a free representative of British rule, feels to be nothing more than a puppet succumbing to the whim of the mob.

• The first sentence is the most important one: “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me”.
• You can use just the first paragraph to set the stage for the whole piece of prose.
• Use beautiful language that stirs the imagination: “I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” Or: “I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have.”
• If you’ve ever been to war, you will have a story to tell: “(Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.)”
• Use simple words, and admit the sad truth only you can perceive: “They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching”.
• Share words of wisdom to add texture to the writing: “I perceived at this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his freedom that he destroys.”
• I highly recommend reading everything written by Orwell, especially if you’re looking for the best essay collections on Amazon or Goodreads.

9. George Orwell – A Hanging

It’s just another day in Burma – time to hang a man. Without much ado, Orwell recounts the grim reality of taking another person’s life. A man is taken from his cage and in a few minutes, he’s going to be hanged. The most horrible thing is the normality of it. It’s a powerful story about human nature. Also, there’s an extraordinary incident with the dog, but I won’t get ahead of myself.

• Create brilliant, yet short descriptions of characters: “He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting mustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the mustache of a comic man on the films”.
• Understand and share the felt presence of a unique experience: “It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man”.
• Make your readers hear the sound that will stay with them forever: “And then when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”
• Make the ending original by refusing the tendency to seek closure or summing it up.

10. Christopher Hitchens – Assassins of The Mind

In one of the greatest essays written in defense of free speech, Christopher Hitchens shares many examples of how modern media kneel to the explicit threats of violence posed by Islamic extremists. He recounts the story of his friend, Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses who, for many years, had to watch over his shoulder because of the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini. With his usual wit, Hitchens shares various examples of people who died because of their opinions and of editors who refuse to publish anything related to Islam because of fear (and it was written long before the Charlie Hebdo massacre). After reading the essay, you realize that freedom of expression is one of the most precious things we have and that we have to fight for it. I highly recommend all essay collections penned by Hitchens, especially the ones written for Vanity Fair.

• Assume that the readers will know the cultural references. When they do, their self-esteem goes up – they are a part of an insider group.
• When proving your point, give a variety of real-life examples from eclectic sources. Leave no room for ambiguity or vagueness. Research and overall knowledge are essential here.
• Use italics to emphasize a specific word or phrase (here I use the underlining): “We live now in a climate where every publisher and editor and politician has to weigh in advance the possibility of violent Muslim reprisal. In consequence, several things have not happened.”
• Think about how to make it sound more original: “So there is now a hidden partner in our cultural and academic and publishing and the broadcasting world: a shadowy figure that has, uninvited, drawn up a chair to the table.”

11. Christopher Hitchens – The New Commandments

It’s high time to shatter the tablets and amend the biblical rules of conduct. Watch, as Christopher Hitchens slays one commandment after the other on moral, as well as historical grounds. For example, did you know that there are many versions of the divine law dictated by God to Moses which you can find in the Bible? Aren’t we thus empowered to write our version of a proper moral code? If you approach it with an open mind, this essay may change the way you think about the Bible and religion.

• Take the iconoclastic approach. Have a party on the hallowed soil.
• Use humor to undermine orthodox ideas (it seems to be the best way to deal with an established authority).
• Use sarcasm and irony when appropriate (or not): “Nobody is opposed to a day of rest. The international Communist movement got its start by proclaiming a strike for an eight-hour day on May 1, 1886, against Christian employers who used child labor seven days a week”.
• Defeat God on legal grounds: “Wise lawmakers know that it is a mistake to promulgate legislation that is impossible to obey”.
• Be ruthless in the logic of your argument. Provide evidence.

12. Phillip Lopate – Against Joie de Vivre

While reading this fantastic essay, this quote from Slavoj Žižek kept coming back to me: “I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves”. I can bear the onus of happiness or joie de vivre for some time. But this force enables me to get free and wallow in the sweet feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. By reading this work of Lopate, you’ll enter into the world of an intelligent man who finds most social rituals a drag. It’s worth exploring.

• Go against the grain. Be flamboyant and controversial (if you can handle it).
• Treat the paragraph like a group of thoughts on one theme. Next paragraph, next theme.
• Use references to other artists to set the context and enrich the prose: “These sunny little canvases with their talented innocence, the third-generation spirit of Montmartre, bore testimony to a love of life so unbending as to leave an impression of rigid narrow-mindedness as extreme as any Savonarola. Their rejection of sorrow was total”.
• Capture the emotions in life that are universal, yet remain unspoken.
• Don’t be afraid to share your intimate experiences.

13. Philip Larkin – The Pleasure Principle

This piece comes from the Required Writing collection of personal essays. Larkin argues that reading in verse should be a source of intimate pleasure – not a medley of unintelligible thoughts that only the author can (or can’t?) decipher. It’s a sobering take on modern poetry and a great call to action for all those involved in it. Well worth a read.

• Write about complicated ideas (such as poetry) simply. You can change how people look at things if you express yourself enough.
• Go boldly. The reader wants a bold writer: “We seem to be producing a new kind of bad poetry, not the old kind that tries to move the reader and fails, but one that does not even try”.
• Play with words and sentence length. Create music: “It is time some of you playboys realized, says the judge, that reading a poem is hard work. Fourteen days in stir. Next case”.
• Persuade the reader to take action. Here, direct language is the most effective.

14. Sigmund Freud – Thoughts for the Times on War and Death

This essay reveals Freud’s disillusionment with the whole project of Western civilization. How the peaceful European countries could engage in a war that would eventually cost over 17 million lives? What stirs people to kill each other? Is it their nature, or are they puppets of imperial forces with agendas of their own? From the perspective of time, this work by Freud doesn’t seem to be fully accurate. Even so, it’s well worth your time.

• Commence with long words derived from Latin. Get grandiloquent, make your argument incontrovertible, and leave your audience discombobulated.
• Use unending sentences, so that the reader feels confused, yet impressed.
• Say it well: “In this way, he enjoyed the blue sea and the grey; the beauty of snow-covered mountains and green meadowlands; the magic of northern forests and the splendor of southern vegetation; the mood evoked by landscapes that recall great historical events, and the silence of untouched nature”.
• Human nature is a subject that never gets dry.

15. Zadie Smith – Some Notes on Attunement

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

• Build an expectation of what’s coming: “The first time I heard her I didn’t hear her at all”.
• Don’t be afraid of repetition if it feels good.
• Psychedelic drugs let you appreciate things you never appreciated.
• Intertwine a personal journey with philosophical musings.
• Show rather than tell: “My friends pitied their eyes. The same look the faithful give you as you hand them back their “literature” and close the door in their faces”.
• Let the poets speak for you: “That time is past, / And all its aching joys are now no
• more, / And all its dizzy raptures”.
• By voicing your anxieties, you can heal the anxieties of the reader. In that way, you say: “I’m just like you. I’m your friend in this struggle”.
• Admit your flaws to make your persona more relatable.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

My imagination was always stirred by the scene of the solar eclipse in Pharaoh, by Boleslaw Prus. I wondered about the shock of the disoriented crowd when they saw how their ruler could switch off the light. Getting immersed in this essay by Annie Dillard has a similar effect. It produces amazement and some kind of primeval fear. It’s not only the environment that changes; it’s your mind and the perception of the world. After the eclipse, nothing is going to be the same again.

• Yet again, the power of the first sentence draws you in: “It had been like dying, that sliding down the mountain pass”.
• Don’t miss the extraordinary scene. Then describe it: “Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring”.
• Use colloquial language. Write as you talk. Short sentences often win.
• Contrast the numinous with the mundane to enthrall the reader.

17. Édouard Levé – When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue

This suicidally beautiful essay will teach you a lot about the appreciation of life and the struggle with mental illness. It’s a collection of personal, apparently unrelated thoughts that show us the rich interior of the author. You look at the real-time thoughts of another person, and then recognize the same patterns within yourself… It sounds like a confession of a person who’s about to take their life, and it’s striking in its originality.

• Use the stream-of-consciousness technique and put random thoughts on paper. Then, polish them: “I have attempted suicide once, I’ve been tempted four times to attempt it”.
• Place the treasure deep within the story: “When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue, when I lick one, of a kiss”.
• Don’t worry about what people might think. The more you expose, the more powerful the writing. Readers also take part in the great drama. They experience universal emotions that mostly stay inside.  You can translate them into writing.

18. Gloria E. Anzaldúa – How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Anzaldúa, who was born in south Texas, had to struggle to find her true identity. She was American, but her culture was grounded in Mexico. In this way, she and her people were not fully respected in either of the countries. This essay is an account of her journey of becoming the ambassador of the Chicano (Mexican-American) culture. It’s full of anecdotes, interesting references, and different shades of Spanish. It’s a window into a new cultural dimension that you’ve never experienced before.

• If your mother tongue is not English, but you write in English, use some of your unique homeland vocabulary.
• You come from a rich cultural heritage. You can share it with people who never heard about it, and are not even looking for it, but it is of immense value to them when they discover it.
• Never forget about your identity. It is precious. It is a part of who you are. Even if you migrate, try to preserve it. Use it to your best advantage and become the voice of other people in the same situation.
• Tell them what’s really on your mind: “So if you want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language”.

19. Kurt Vonnegut – Dispatch From A Man Without a Country

In terms of style, this essay is flawless. It’s simple, conversational, humorous, and yet, full of wisdom. And when Vonnegut becomes a teacher and draws an axis of “beginning – end”, and, “good fortune – bad fortune” to explain literature, it becomes outright hilarious. It’s hard to find an author with such a down-to-earth approach. He doesn’t need to get intellectual to prove a point. And the point could be summed up by the quote from Great Expectations – “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip – such is Life!”

• Start with a curious question: “Do you know what a twerp is?”
• Surprise your readers with uncanny analogies: “I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It’s as though I had taken over the family Esso station.”
• Use your natural language without too many special effects. In time, the style will crystalize.
• An amusing lesson in writing from Mr. Vonnegut: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college”.
• You can put actual images or vignettes between the paragraphs to illustrate something.

20. Mary Ruefle – On Fear

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

• Research your subject thoroughly. Ask people, have interviews, get expert opinions, and gather as much information as possible. Then scavenge through the fields of data, and pull out the golden bits that will let your prose shine.
• Use powerful quotes to add color to your story: “The poet who embarks on the creation of the poem (as I know by experience), begins with the aimless sensation of a hunter about to embark on a night hunt through the remotest of forests. Unaccountable dread stirs in his heart”. – Lorca.
• Writing advice from the essay: “One of the fears a young writer has is not being able to write as well as he or she wants to, the fear of not being able to sound like X or Y, a favorite author. But out of fear, hopefully, is born a young writer’s voice”.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

In this highly intellectual essay, Sontag fights for art and its interpretation. It’s a great lesson, especially for critics and interpreters who endlessly chew on works that simply defy interpretation. Why don’t we just leave the art alone? I always hated it when at school they asked me: “What did the author have in mind when he did X or Y?” Iēsous Pantocrator! Hell if I know! I will judge it through my subjective experience!

• Leave the art alone: “Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities”.
• When you have something really important to say, style matters less.
• There’s no use in creating a second meaning or inviting interpretation of our art. Just leave it be and let it speak for itself.

22. Nora Ephron – A Few Words About Breasts

This is a heartwarming, coming-of-age story about a young girl who waits in vain for her breasts to grow. It’s simply a humorous and pleasurable read. The size of breasts is a big deal for women. If you’re a man, you may peek into the mind of a woman and learn many interesting things. If you’re a woman, maybe you’ll be able to relate and at last, be at peace with your bosom.

• Touch an interesting subject and establish a strong connection with the readers (in that case, women with small breasts). Let your personality shine through the written piece. If you are lighthearted, show it.
• Use hyphens to create an impression of real talk: “My house was full of apples and peaches and milk and homemade chocolate chip cookies – which were nice, and good for you, but-not-right-before-dinner-or-you’ll-spoil-your-appetite.”
• Use present tense when you tell a story to add more life to it.
• Share the pronounced, memorable traits of characters: “A previous girlfriend named Solange, who was famous throughout Beverly Hills High School for having no pigment in her right eyebrow, had knitted them for him (angora dice)”.

23. Carl Sagan – Does Truth Matter – Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization

Carl Sagan was one of the greatest proponents of skepticism, and an author of numerous books, including one of my all-time favorites – The Demon-Haunted World . He was also a renowned physicist and the host of the fantastic Cosmos: A Personal Voyage series, which inspired a whole generation to uncover the mysteries of the cosmos. He was also a dedicated weed smoker – clearly ahead of his time. The essay that you’re about to read is a crystallization of his views about true science, and why you should check the evidence before believing in UFOs or similar sorts of crap.

• Tell people the brutal truth they need to hear. Be the one who spells it out for them.
• Give a multitude of examples to prove your point. Giving hard facts helps to establish trust with the readers and show the veracity of your arguments.
• Recommend a good book that will change your reader’s minds – How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life

24. Paul Graham – How To Do What You Love

How To Do What You Love should be read by every college student and young adult. The Internet is flooded with a large number of articles and videos that are supposed to tell you what to do with your life. Most of them are worthless, but this one is different. It’s sincere, and there’s no hidden agenda behind it. There’s so much we take for granted – what we study, where we work, what we do in our free time… Surely we have another two hundred years to figure it out, right? Life’s too short to be so naïve. Please, read the essay and let it help you gain fulfillment from your work.

• Ask simple, yet thought-provoking questions (especially at the beginning of the paragraph) to engage the reader: “How much are you supposed to like what you do?”
• Let the readers question their basic assumptions: “Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like”.
• If you’re writing for a younger audience, you can act as a mentor. It’s beneficial for younger people to read a few words of advice from a person with experience.

25. John Jeremiah Sullivan – Mister Lytle

A young, aspiring writer is about to become a nurse of a fading writer – Mister Lytle (Andrew Nelson Lytle), and there will be trouble. This essay by Sullivan is probably my favorite one from the whole list. The amount of beautiful sentences it contains is just overwhelming. But that’s just a part of its charm. It also takes you to the Old South which has an incredible atmosphere. It’s grim and tawny but you want to stay there for a while.

• Short, distinct sentences are often the most powerful ones: “He had a deathbed, in other words. He didn’t go suddenly”.
• Stay consistent with the mood of the story. When reading Mister Lytle you are immersed in that southern, forsaken, gloomy world, and it’s a pleasure.
• The spectacular language that captures it all: “His French was superb, but his accent in English was best—that extinct mid-Southern, land-grant pioneer speech, with its tinges of the abandoned Celtic urban Northeast (“boned” for burned) and its raw gentility”.
• This essay is just too good. You have to read it.

26. Joan Didion – On Self Respect

Normally, with that title, you would expect some straightforward advice about how to improve your character and get on with your goddamn life – but not from Joan Didion. From the very beginning, you can feel the depth of her thinking, and the unmistakable style of a true woman who’s been hurt. You can learn more from this essay than from whole books about self-improvement . It reminds me of the scene from True Detective, where Frank Semyon tells Ray Velcoro to “own it” after he realizes he killed the wrong man all these years ago. I guess we all have to “own it”, recognize our mistakes, and move forward sometimes.

• Share your moral advice: “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs”.
• It’s worth exploring the subject further from a different angle. It doesn’t matter how many people have already written on self-respect or self-reliance – you can still write passionately about it.
• Whatever happens, you must take responsibility for it. Brave the storms of discontent.

27. Susan Sontag – Notes on Camp

I’ve never read anything so thorough and lucid about an artistic current. After reading this essay, you will know what camp is. But not only that – you will learn about so many artists you’ve never heard of. You will follow their traces and go to places where you’ve never been before. You will vastly increase your appreciation of art. It’s interesting how something written as a list could be so amazing. All the listicles we usually see on the web simply cannot compare with it.

• Talking about artistic sensibilities is a tough job. When you read the essay, you will see how much research, thought and raw intellect came into it. But that’s one of the reasons why people still read it today, even though it was written in 1964.
• You can choose an unorthodox way of expression in the medium for which you produce. For example, Notes on Camp is a listicle – one of the most popular content formats on the web. But in the olden days, it was uncommon to see it in print form.
• Just think about what is camp: “And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling”.

28. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance

That’s the oldest one from the lot. Written in 1841, it still inspires generations of people. It will let you understand what it means to be self-made. It contains some of the most memorable quotes of all time. I don’t know why, but this one especially touched me: “Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design, and posterity seems to follow his steps as a train of clients”. Now isn’t it purely individualistic, American thought? Emerson told me (and he will tell you) to do something amazing with my life. The language it contains is a bit archaic, but that just adds to the weight of the argument. You can consider it to be a meeting with a great philosopher who shaped the ethos of the modern United States.

• You can start with a powerful poem that will set the stage for your work.
• Be free in your creative flow. Do not wait for the approval of others: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness”.
• Use rhetorical questions to strengthen your argument: “I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly say a new and spontaneous word?”

29. David Foster Wallace – Consider The Lobster

When you want simple field notes about a food festival, you needn’t send there the formidable David Foster Wallace. He sees right through the hypocrisy and cruelty behind killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lobsters – by boiling them alive. This essay uncovers some of the worst traits of modern American people. There are no apologies or hedging one’s bets. There’s just plain truth that stabs you in the eye like a lobster claw. After reading this essay, you may reconsider the whole animal-eating business.

• When it’s important, say it plainly and stagger the reader: “[Lobsters] survive right up until they’re boiled. Most of us have been in supermarkets or restaurants that feature tanks of live lobster, from which you can pick out your supper while it watches you point”.
• In your writing, put exact quotes of the people you’ve been interviewing (including slang and grammatical errors). It makes it more vivid, and interesting.
• You can use humor in serious situations to make your story grotesque.
• Use captions to expound on interesting points of your essay.

30. David Foster Wallace – The Nature of the Fun

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

• Base your point on a chimerical analogy. Here, the writer’s unfinished work is a “hideously damaged infant”.
• Even in expository writing, you may share an interesting story to keep things lively.
• Share your true emotions (even when you think they won’t interest anyone). Often, that’s exactly what will interest the reader.
• Read the whole essay for marvelous advice on writing fiction.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

This is not an essay per se, but I included it on the list for the sake of variety. It was delivered as a commencement speech at The University of Toronto, and it’s about keeping the right attitude. Soon after leaving university, most graduates have to forget about safety, parties, and travel and start a new life – one filled with a painful routine that will last until they drop. Atwood says that you don’t have to accept that. You can choose how you react to everything that happens to you (and you don’t have to stay in that dead-end job for the rest of your days).

• At times, we are all too eager to persuade, but the strongest persuasion is not forceful. It’s subtle. It speaks to the heart. It affects you gradually.
• You may be tempted to talk about a subject by first stating what it is not, rather than what it is. Try to avoid that.
• Simple advice for writers (and life in general): “When faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it”.

32. Jo Ann Beard – The Fourth State of Matter

Read that one as soon as possible. It’s one of the most masterful and impactful essays you’ll ever read. It’s like a good horror – a slow build-up, and then your jaw drops to the ground. To summarize the story would be to spoil it, so I recommend that you just dig in and devour this essay in one sitting. It’s a perfect example of “show, don’t tell” writing, where the actions of characters are enough to create the right effect. No need for flowery adjectives here.

• The best story you will tell is going to come from your personal experience.
• Use mysteries that will nag the reader. For example, at the beginning of the essay, we learn about the “vanished husband” but there’s no explanation. We have to keep reading to get the answer.
• Explain it in simple terms: “You’ve got your solid, your liquid, your gas, and then your plasma”. Why complicate?

33. Terence McKenna – Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness

To me, Terence McKenna was one of the most interesting thinkers of the twentieth century. His many lectures (now available on YouTube) attracted millions of people who suspect that consciousness holds secrets yet to be unveiled. McKenna consumed psychedelic drugs for most of his life and it shows (in a positive way). Many people consider him a looney, and a hippie, but he was so much more than that. He dared to go into the abyss of his psyche and come back to tell the tale. He also wrote many books (the most famous being Food Of The Gods ), built a huge botanical garden in Hawaii , lived with shamans, and was a connoisseur of all things enigmatic and obscure. Take a look at this essay, and learn more about the explorations of the subconscious mind.

• Become the original thinker, but remember that it may require extraordinary measures: “I call myself an explorer rather than a scientist because the area that I’m looking at contains insufficient data to support even the dream of being a science”.
• Learn new words every day to make your thoughts lucid.
• Come up with the most outlandish ideas to push the envelope of what’s possible. Don’t take things for granted or become intellectually lazy. Question everything.

34. Eudora Welty – The Little Store

By reading this little-known essay, you will be transported into the world of the old American South. It’s a remembrance of trips to the little store in a little town. It’s warm and straightforward, and when you read it, you feel like a child once more. All these beautiful memories live inside of us. They lay somewhere deep in our minds, hidden from sight. The work by Eudora Welty is an attempt to uncover some of them and let you get reacquainted with some smells and tastes of the past.

• When you’re from the South, flaunt it. It’s still good old English but sometimes it sounds so foreign. I can hear the Southern accent too: “There were almost tangible smells – licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor, ammonia-loaded ice that had been hoisted from wet Croker sacks and slammed into the icebox with its sweet butter at the door, and perhaps the smell of still-untrapped mice”.
• Yet again, never forget your roots.
• Childhood stories can be the most powerful ones. You can write about how they shaped you.

35. John McPhee – The Search for Marvin Gardens

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

• There’s nothing like irony: “A sign- ‘Slow, Children at Play’- has been bent backward by an automobile”.
• Telling the story in apparently unrelated fragments is sometimes better than telling the whole thing in a logical order.
• Creativity is everything. The best writing may come just from connecting two ideas and mixing them to achieve a great effect. Shush! The muse is whispering.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

A dead body at the bottom of the well makes for a beautiful literary device. The first line of Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name Is Red delivers it perfectly: “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well”. There’s something creepy about the idea of the well. Just think about the “It puts the lotion in the basket” scene from The Silence of the Lambs. In the first paragraph of Kingston’s essay, we learn about a suicide committed by uncommon means of jumping into the well. But this time it’s a real story. Who was this woman? Why did she do it? Read the essay.

• Mysterious death always gets attention. The macabre details are like daiquiris on a hot day – you savor them – you don’t let them spill.
• One sentence can speak volumes: “But the rare urge west had fixed upon our family, and so my aunt crossed boundaries not delineated in space”.
• It’s interesting to write about cultural differences – especially if you have the relevant experience. Something normal for us is unthinkable for others. Show this different world.
• The subject of sex is never boring.

37. Joan Didion – On Keeping A Notebook

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is one of the most famous collections of essays of all time. In it, you will find a curious piece called On Keeping A Notebook. It’s not only a meditation about keeping a journal. It’s also Didion’s reconciliation with her past self. After reading it, you will seriously reconsider your life’s choices and look at your life from a wider perspective.

• When you write things down in your journal, be more specific – unless you want to write a deep essay about it years later.
• Use the beauty of the language to relate to the past: “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing ‘How High the Moon’ on the car radio”.
• Drop some brand names if you want to feel posh.

38. Joan Didion – Goodbye To All That

This one touched me because I also lived in New York City for a while. I don’t know why, but stories about life in NYC are so often full of charm and this eerie-melancholy-jazz feeling. They are powerful. They go like this: “There was a hard blizzard in NYC. As the sound of sirens faded, Tony descended into the dark world of hustlers and pimps.” That’s pulp literature but in the context of NYC, it always sounds cool. Anyway, this essay is amazing in too many ways. You just have to read it.

• Talk about New York City. They will read it.
• Talk about the human experience: “It did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young?”
• Look back at your life and reexamine it. Draw lessons from it.

39. George Orwell – Reflections on Gandhi

George Orwell could see things as they were. No exaggeration, no romanticism – just facts. He recognized totalitarianism and communism for what they were and shared his worries through books like 1984 and Animal Farm . He took the same sober approach when dealing with saints and sages. Today, we regard Gandhi as one of the greatest political leaders of the twentieth century – and rightfully so. But did you know that when asked about the Jews during World War II, Gandhi said that they should commit collective suicide and that it: “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” He also recommended utter pacifism in 1942, during the Japanese invasion, even though he knew it would cost millions of lives. But overall he was a good guy. Read the essay and broaden your perspective on the Bapu of the Indian Nation.

• Share a philosophical thought that stops the reader for a moment: “No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid”.
• Be straightforward in your writing – no mannerisms, no attempts to create ‘style’, and no invocations of the numinous – unless you feel the mystical vibe.

40. George Orwell – Politics and the English Language

Let Mr. Orwell give you some writing tips. Written in 1946, this essay is still one of the most helpful documents on writing in English. Orwell was probably the first person who exposed the deliberate vagueness of political language. He was very serious about it and I admire his efforts to slay all unclear sentences (including ones written by distinguished professors). But it’s good to make it humorous too from time to time. My favorite examples of that would be the immortal Soft Language sketch by George Carlin or the “Romans Go Home” scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Overall, it’s a great essay filled with examples from many written materials. It’s a must-read for any writer.

• Listen to the master: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose.” Do something about it.
• This essay is all about writing better, so go to the source if you want the goodies.

Other Essays You May Find Interesting

The list that I’ve prepared is by no means complete. The literary world is full of exciting essays and you’ll never know which one is going to change your life. I’ve found reading essays very rewarding because sometimes, a single one means more than reading a whole book. It’s almost like wandering around and peeking into the minds of the greatest writers and thinkers that ever lived. To make this list more comprehensive, below I included more essays you may find interesting.

Oliver Sacks – On Libraries

One of the greatest contributors to the knowledge about the human mind, Oliver Sacks meditates on the value of libraries and his love of books.

Noam Chomsky – The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Chomsky did probably more than anyone else to define the role of the intelligentsia in the modern world . There is a war of ideas over there – good and bad – intellectuals are going to be those who ought to be fighting for the former.

Sam Harris – The Riddle of The Gun

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

This piece was written as a blog post , but it’s worth your time. The author of the NYT bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek shares an emotional story about how he almost killed himself, and what can you do to save yourself or your friends from suicide.

Edward Said – Reflections on Exile

The life of Edward Said was a truly fascinating one. Born in Jerusalem, he lived between Palestine and Egypt and finally settled down in the United States, where he completed his most famous work – Orientalism. In this essay, he shares his thoughts about what it means to be in exile.

Richard Feynman – It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three…

Richard Feynman is one of the most interesting minds of the twentieth century. He was a brilliant physicist, but also an undeniably great communicator of science, an artist, and a traveler. By reading this essay, you can observe his thought process when he tries to figure out what affects our perception of time. It’s a truly fascinating read.

Rabindranath Tagore – The Religion of The Forest

I like to think about Tagore as my spiritual Friend. His poems are just marvelous. They are like some of the Persian verses that praise love, nature, and the unity of all things. By reading this short essay, you will learn a lot about Indian philosophy and its relation to its Western counterpart.

Richard Dawkins – Letter To His 10-Year-Old Daughter

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Each person requires a period of solitude – a period when one’s able to gather thoughts and make sense of life. There are many places where you may attempt to find quietude. Albert Camus tells about his favorite one.

Koty Neelis – 21 Incredible Life Lessons From Anthony Bourdain

I included it as the last one because it’s not really an essay, but I just had to put it somewhere. In this listicle, you’ll find the 21 most original thoughts of the high-profile cook, writer, and TV host, Anthony Bourdain. Some of them are shocking, others are funny, but they’re all worth checking out.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca – On the Shortness of Life

It’s similar to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam because it praises life. Seneca shares some of his stoic philosophy and tells you not to waste your time on stupidities. Drink! – for once dead you shall never return.

Bertrand Russell – In Praise of Idleness

This old essay is a must-read for modern humans. We are so preoccupied with our work, our phones, and all the media input we drown in our business. Bertrand Russell tells you to chill out a bit – maybe it will do you some good.

James Baldwin – Stranger in the Village

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The mission to improve my writing skills took me further than just going through the essays. I’ve come across some great books on writing too. I highly recommend you read them in their entirety. They’re written beautifully and contain lots of useful knowledge. Below you’ll find random (but useful) notes that I took from The Sense of Style and On Writing.

The Sense of Style – By Steven Pinker

• Style manuals are full of inconsistencies. Following their advice might not be the best idea. They might make your prose boring.
• Grammarians from all eras condemn students for not knowing grammar. But it just evolves. It cannot be rigid.
• “Nothing worth learning can be taught” – Oscar Wilde. It’s hard to learn to write from a manual – you have to read, write, and analyze.
• Good writing makes you imagine things and feel them for yourself – use word pictures.
• Don’t fear using voluptuous words.
• Phonesthetics – or how the words sound.
• Use parallel language (consistency of tense).
• Good writing finishes strong.
• Write to someone. Never write for no one in mind. Try to show people your view of the world.
• Don’t tell everything you are going to say in summary (signposting) – be logical, but be conversational.
• Don’t be pompous.
• Don’t use quotation marks where they don’t “belong”. Be confident about your style.
• Don’t hedge your claims (research first, and then tell it like it is).
• Avoid clichés and meta-concepts (concepts about concepts). Be more straightforward!
• Not prevention – but prevents or prevented – don’t use dead nouns.
• Be more vivid while using your mother tongue – don’t use passive where it’s not needed. Direct the reader’s gaze to something in the world.
• The curse of knowledge – the reader doesn’t know what you know – beware of that.
• Explain technical terms.
• Use examples when you explain a difficult term.
• If you ever say “I think I understand this” it probably means you don’t.
• It’s better to underestimate the lingo of your readers than to overestimate it.
• Functional fixedness – if we know some object (or idea) well, we tend to see it in terms of usage, not just as an object.
• Use concrete language instead of an abstraction.
• Show your work to people before you publish (get feedback!).
• Wait for a few days and then revise, revise, revise. Think about clarity and the sound of sentences. Then show it to someone. Then revise one more time. Then publish (if it’s to be serious work).
• Look at it from the perspective of other people.
• Omit needless words.
• Put the heaviest words at the end of the sentence.
• It’s good to use the passive, but only when appropriate.
• Check all text for cohesion. Make sure that the sentences flow gently.
• In expository work, go from general to more specific. But in journalism start from the big news and then give more details.
• Use the paragraph break to give the reader a moment to take a breath.
• Use the verb instead of a noun (make it more active) – not “cancellation”, but “canceled”. But after you introduce the action, you can refer to it with a noun.
• Avoid too many negations.
• If you write about why something is so, don’t spend too much time writing about why it is not.

On Writing Well – By William Zinsser

• Writing is a craft. You need to sit down every day and practice your craft.
• You should re-write and polish your prose a lot.
• Throw out all the clutter. Don’t keep it because you like it. Aim for readability.
• Look at the best examples of English literature . There’s hardly any needless garbage there.
• Use shorter expressions. Don’t add extra words that don’t bring any value to your work.
• Don’t use pompous language. Use simple language and say plainly what’s going on (“because” equals “because”).
• The media and politics are full of cluttered prose (because it helps them to cover up for their mistakes).
• You can’t add style to your work (and especially, don’t add fancy words to create an illusion of style). That will look fake. You need to develop a style.
• Write in the “I” mode. Write to a friend or just for yourself. Show your personality. There is a person behind the writing.
• Choose your words carefully. Use the dictionary to learn different shades of meaning.
• Remember about phonology. Make music with words .
• The lead is essential. Pull the reader in. Otherwise, your article is dead.
• You don’t have to make the final judgment on any topic. Just pick the right angle.
• Do your research. Not just obvious research, but a deep one.
• When it’s time to stop, stop. And finish strong. Think about the last sentence. Surprise them.
• Use quotations. Ask people. Get them talking.
• If you write about travel, it must be significant to the reader. Don’t bother with the obvious. Choose your words with special care. Avoid travel clichés at all costs. Don’t tell that the sand was white and there were rocks on the beach. Look for the right detail.
• If you want to learn how to write about art, travel, science, etc. – read the best examples available. Learn from the masters.
• Concentrate on one big idea (“Let’s not go peeing down both legs”).
• “The reader has to feel that the writer is feeling good.”
• One very helpful question: “What is the piece really about?” (Not just “What the piece is about?”)

Now immerse yourself in the world of essays

By reading the essays from the list above, you’ll become a better writer , a better reader, but also a better person. An essay is a special form of writing. It is the only literary form that I know of that is an absolute requirement for career or educational advancement. Nowadays, you can use an AI essay writer or an AI essay generator that will get the writing done for you, but if you have personal integrity and strong moral principles, avoid doing this at all costs. For me as a writer, the effect of these authors’ masterpieces is often deeply personal. You won’t be able to find the beautiful thoughts they contain in any other literary form. I hope you enjoy the read and that it will inspire you to do your writing. This list is only an attempt to share some of the best essays available online. Next up, you may want to check the list of magazines and websites that accept personal essays .

Digital marketing course: Join my full AI Marketing course, with over 6h and 30 minutes of video lessons and 5 bonuses and learn the skills necessary to thrive as a marketer in the digital era.

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Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

• 7 Books You Should Read To Improve Your English

• Posted on 11/03/2020
• Categories: Blog
• Tags: Reading , Resources to learn English

Reading is one of the best ways to practice English. It’s fun, relaxing and helps you improve your comprehension skills and vocabulary.

To help you pick out books, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite novels. The stories are full of adventures and exciting characters – and better yet, they are easy to read for language learners.

So here are our top 7 books to help you practise English at home.

1. One Day, by David Nicholls

One Day tells the story of Dexter and Emma who spend a night together after their university graduation. Each chapter revisits the lives of the protagonists on the same date for twenty years. Their relationship evolves over the years: sometimes they’re together, sometimes they’re chasing their individual dreams. It’s a funny, endearing and bittersweet tale of friendship and the unfairness of life.

If you love this easy-to-read novel, watch the 2011 film adaptation that stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess.

2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

This mystery novel – with a mysterious title – takes the reader on a journey into the mind of Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who sees the world and the people around him in a different way.

Christopher finds himself in the middle of an adventure after he discovers the dead body of the neighbour’s dog, speared by a garden fork. As the story unfolds, Christopher finds out the truth about his mother. He also travels to London alone and takes an A-level maths exam, all in a frenzy of excitement and fear.

We love this book – and the English level is perfect for intermediate learners .

3. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

Northern Lights – known as The Golden Compass in the US – is the first book in Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. It was published in 1995 and has since become a classic in the young-adult fantasy genre .

The novel tells the story of twelve-year-old Lyra Belacqua. She’s a brave and curious girl who lives in a world of mythical creatures and parallel universes. Like all humans in this world, she has a “daemon”, a talking spirit animal that constantly accompanies her. Together, they embark on a journey that is filled with danger and excitement.

If you’re looking for a thrilling but easy book to read in English, Northern Lights is a great place to start. You won’t be able to put it down!

4. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Published in 1961, The Phantom Tollbooth is still one of the best books for young adults and language learners.

The novel follows Milo, a young boy who goes on a fantasy adventure after receiving a mysterious package that contains a miniature tollbooth . He drives through the tollbooth in his toy car and finds himself in magical places where he meets all kinds of strange characters.

The text is littered with puns and wordplay, which make the book even more fun – and a great opportunity for language learners to practise their skills.

5. Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Wonder tells the story of August “Auggie” Pullman, a home-schooled fifth-grader living in Manhattan. He has a medical condition that has left his face disfigured . At the start of the novel, his parents decide to enrol him into a private middle school for the first time ever.

Throughout the school year, Auggie faces many challenges because of his appearance. He’s often bullied and beaten by other kids. Against all odds , the kind and courageous little boy manages to make friends.

Wonder made the New York Times bestseller list and was adapted into a hit movie starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as Auggie’s parents and Jacob Tremblay as Auggie.

6. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It uses a combination of drawings and text to tell the story of her childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

The novel begins in 1980 and focuses on the impact of war and extremist religious ideology on Iranian people, especially women. Marji witnesses unspeakable atrocities that change her life forever.

Persepolis was originally published in French and later translated into many languages, reaching worldwide audiences. It’s an easy read in terms of language, but difficult in terms of the subject matter.

The graphic novel was made into a beautiful and critically acclaimed adult animated film in 2007. The good news? You can watch it in Barcelona on the 12th of March in the Palacio Nacional de Montjuïc. Click here for more details!

7. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

A book that has had an impact on more than one generation of young adults, Roald Dahl’s Danny was first published in 1975. It centres on a young boy living in an old caravan with his father.

When Danny discovers that his father is a skilled poacher , he decides to accompany him on a mission, his most ambitious one yet: capturing 120 pheasants by feeding them sleeping pills. Their mischievous plan leads to all kinds of complications involving a wealthy businessman, Mr Hazell. Will Danny and his father come out triumphant?

Everyone should read this refreshingly sincere and entertaining book once in their lifetime. What better way to practice your English skills?

Can’t get enough of reading books in English? Check out our list of 7 graded readers for all levels .

Glossary for Language Learners

Find the following words in the article and then write down any new ones you didn’t know.

Round up (pv): to bring together.

Protagonist (n): the main character in a book or a film.

Endearing (adj): inspiring love or affection.

Spear (v): drive a spear or other pointed object into something.

Frenzy (n): a state of craziness.

Genre (n): a category of literature or music.

Embark on (v): begin.

Tollbooth (n): a kiosk by the side of the road where drivers pay a fee to use the road.

Disfigured (adj): ruined or spoilt, for example by a scar.

Against all odds (exp): despite something that seems unlikely or improbable.

Atrocity (n): an extremely cruel act.

Poacher (n): someone who hunts illegally.

Pheasant (n): a large, long-tailed bird.

Mischievous (adj): naughty.

pv = phrasal verb

adj = adjective

exp = expression

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Your Guide To Moving To The USA

• By: oxfordadmin
• Posted on 04/03/2020

Important Information - COVID 19

• Posted on 13/03/2020

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Reading Articles to Improve Your English

Looking for a quick way to increase your vocabulary? Try reading articles to improve your English! You’ll pick up the rhythms and grammar of English as well as new vocabulary.

The next few paragraphs give some reading hints & explain how I choose articles to recommend (for my newsletter readers.) Click here if you would like to go straight to the pages with article recommendations and links.

Of course, it’s important to choose articles that aren’t too far from your current English level, so you won’t get discouraged.

You should understand most of the article you are reading with a few dictionary checks or guesses.

If you’re just beginning in English, most articles will be too difficult. See Easy Reading for ESL Beginners for some suggestions. Online Reading has more ideas for beginners and intermediate English students.

But if you have been studying English for a while, you’ll be able to read most of the articles mentioned on this page.*

*I check how many words are common and how many are less so before choosing the articles, but their interest level and importance matter more. If there are less common words that occur several times in the articles, I'll usually explain them.

Why I Chose These Articles-- & How They Can Improve Your English

Since Dec. 2012 I’ve written the English Detective newsletter every 2-4 weeks for this same purpose. Each issue has links to 1-3 reading articles to improve English reading skills and vocabulary. (Issues also may link to TED talks. Most have transcripts so you can use them for reading and/or listening practice.)

The links in each issue are on the same subject to make learning easier due to common vocabulary and themes. Many issues also have had vocabulary practice activities.

You can find a link to those back issues at the very bottom of the page. (See the blue section with site information). A few years ago I switched email providers. The new provider no longer archives the back issues.

Several former English Detective subscribers have contacted me months after the transition. They’re getting it again now, but I wanted a place to refer them to so they could read the articles they missed. That’s why I created this page. 

Since then I've realized articles like these can be a great source of English reading and vocabulary practice even for those who don't subscribe to English Detective . (There is a real advantage to subscribing, since you get a few recommendations every month instead of a massive list to sort through!)

Each section below originally included the main content of one newsletter, from March 2020 (issue 143) on. There were brief descriptions of the articles and why I thought they’re worth reading, with links to each (or to the page the links are on, if there’s a page on the subject). Sometimes there are also vocabulary definitions or a link to an EnglishHints’ page with practice.

This page was getting too long, so I've moved the  English Detective articles and links to several other pages. (See the section below.)  They follow the same basic format: a short explanation of what's in each article and why it's worth reading, plus a link.

Most are fairly short and should not be hard if you can read this page. I've noted any that are long or more difficult-- and why I think you might want to read them anyway.

If interested, you can also subscribe to English Detective  below-- or check out  Building Vocabulary  for more information. That way you'll get notified about each new issue. You can read the articles that interest you and improve your English vocabulary a little every month.

(If once a month is not enough, bookmark this page and the pages linked below to find more-- in whatever subject sounds more interesting. I'll add new pages when I can after sending out new English Detective issues. So check for new pages (or new articles on the current pages, under new headings) every month or so.

EnglishHints pages with Articles to Improve Your English

      Some Interesting Articles in English (especially articles related to history, story-telling, and current events)

      Interesting Short Articles in English (on various subjects, from animal intelligence to technology to help with water conservation to the physics of baseball-- and more!)

      Articles to Improve English Communication  (links to articles on improving vocabulary and word choice, connotations, persuasion, metaphor use, etc.)

      Articles about Acts of Kindness has several inspiring articles and talks about people helping others.

      Secret Messages  (including spy stories and information on secret codes)

Related to science and research:

      Science Readings

      Communicating Science

Related to business or work skills:

      Characteristics of Good Leadership

     Useful Articles on Leadership and Management

      Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

      21st Century Jobs (several articles on important skills to teach, or for job seekers to learn, to be prepared for future jobs)

I hope you will find reading some of these articles both interesting and useful for improving your English!

It really is worth your time reading articles to improve your English vocabulary and fluency!

Home > Reading Articles to Improve English

Didn't find what you needed? Explain what you want in the search box below. (For example, cognates, past tense practice, or 'get along with.') Click to see the related pages on EnglishHints.

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What's New?-- site blog

Learn about new and updated pages on EnglishHints, with just enough information to decide if you want to read more.

Do you already use English in your profession or studies-- but realize you need more advanced English or communication skills in certain areas?

I can help-- with targeted suggestions & practice on EnglishHints or with coaching or specialized help for faster results. Let me know. I can suggest resources or we can arrange a call.

Vocabulary in Minutes a Month

Sign up for our free newsletter, English Detective .  In a few minutes twice a month you can: 

• Improve your reading fluency with  selected articles & talks on one subject (for repeated use of key words)
• Understand and practice those words using explanations, crosswords, and more 
• Feel more confident about your English reading and vocab. skills-- and more prepared for big tests & challenges

For information (and a free bonus), see Building Vocabulary 

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5 Ways Reading Improves English + Best Practices to Read

• Composition
• Updated on Nov 12, 2023

•   shares

Reading improves English.

If practiced correctly, reading books and novels suiting your level can accelerate vocabulary-building, improve grammar, and sharpen writing. Although reading doesn’t directly impact your spoken English, it can to some extent improve it through better vocabulary, reading out loud, and a deeper knowledge base.

Before we jump to how reading improves your English, let’s quickly cover three cardinal rules on how to get the most out of your reading:

How to get the most out of your reading?

1. slow down on a small sample of your reading (crawl method).

When you read, you typically breeze through paragraphs and pages, and not pay close attention to tidbits such as punctuation, grammar rules followed, grammar rules deliberately broken, style, how arguments are made and defended, and so on.

What if you pick a sample of your daily reading, say just 5 percent (2-3 pages if you read 50 pages of a book), and read it way too slower than your normal reading speed (I call this Crawl Method ), paying attention to the details mentioned in the previous paragraph. During this slow reading, notice the subtleties and think how all the rules you’ve painstakingly studied have been applied in a real writing. You may not understand some of the stuff, but that’s fine.

This is learning from the real world and if you can do it regularly, you’ll learn – especially written English – way too faster than others who aren’t deliberately slowing down. I can say this because I’ve done this myself especially when reading books.

The effectiveness of deliberate slowing down has an obvious, commonsensical scientific rationale – the power of attention. The more attention you pay while learning something, the better you learn . (Spending disproportionately more time on a sample of your reading implies greater attention.) To quote John Medina, a leading authority on brain study and founding director of two brain research institutes, from his book Brain Rules :

The more attention the brain pays to a given stimulus, the more elaborately the information will be encoded – that is, learned – and retained… Whether you are an eager preschooler or a bored-out-of-your-mind undergrad, better attention always equals better learning.

This is so obvious that it is often missed.

2. Start with stuff that matches your level and interest

If you aren’t into reading much and your vocabulary is average, don’t start with tough reads. Start with simpler stuff, say newspapers. Within a newspaper, start with topics that interest you. It could be sports. It could be entertainment. It could be even crime… depends on your interest. Bottom line, if the language is difficult to comprehend and topic not interesting, you’ll likely give up even before you form the habit.

And once you get regular at reading, broaden the range of your reading. Embrace topics you don’t understand intuitively, but are useful to you.

3. Read regularly. Read when you aren’t at your peak energy level

Read every day, even if it’s for 20-30 minutes. Make it a habit.

If you want to be productive with your time, you can schedule your reading when you’re at your lowest energy level in the day.

Because reading is a low-effort activity. Why not utilize the time in which you would otherwise not do anything significant?

With that done, let’s come to how reading improves your English.

1. Reading improves grammar and punctuation

American linguist Carol Chomsky says that children with exposure to written language have edge over those without :

The written language is potentially of a more complex nature than speech, both in vocabulary and syntax. The child who reads (or listens to) a variety of rich and complex materials benefits from a range of linguistic inputs that is unavailable to the non-literary child.

A study by Warwick B. Elley has even found that reading can help second language acquirers learn grammatical structures better than explicit instruction.

There are enough rules in grammar to mortify a beginner, aren’t there?

Prepositions such as at , in , and on alone can be used in multiple ways, which can look daunting to a beginner. And there are many prepositions… and there are many classes of grammar similar to prepositions. However, if you’re into reading (and listening), you’ll naturally learn which preposition fits in where. You’ll intuitively know that remind goes with of , prevent goes with from , dream goes with about and of , and so on.

Same goes for phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs are derived from a root verb, but their meaning can’t be inferred from the meaning of their root verb. For example, give up , give in , give away , and give out are all phrasal verbs of the root verb give . When you see phrasal verbs in context again and again while reading, you start to understand their meaning and use intuitively.

Reading is also one of the best ways to master punctuation, especially the innocuous-looking, but complicated, comma.

And many more things.

This is not to say that you should shun your grammar books. Get the basics from there and then build on them through reading and listening. Learning from the real stuff is better than solving standalone grammar exercises, although they have their place, especially in the beginning.

To cap this section, here is an example of someone who benefitted from reading. (The clip is 1:45 minutes long, ending at 6:00 timestamp.)

She mentions she started reading books at 15 when she should have started years before. She started with children’s books and soon ate, read, and slept books (that’s called immersive language learning ). As a result, gradually, ‘somehow voice in her head started forming grammatically correct sentences’. She started using words in the right context even though she didn’t know their meaning (that’s building vocabulary subconsciously).

That’s what regular reading can do.

2. Reading improves vocabulary

Do you pause for lack of appropriate words when speaking?

Do you sometimes make a winding explanation for want of a precise word?

If the answer is yes to any of the two (first – pauses – is more serious), you need to work on your vocabulary . However, a no to both the questions doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve a great vocabulary; it only means your vocabulary is good enough for sustaining pauseless conversations.

Any kind of reading will improve your vocabulary. Fiction, especially, will expose you to slangs and phrases used in spoken English because it contains lots of dialogues between different characters. And if you go above and beyond with additional steps (discussed in the next few paragraphs), you can improve your vocabulary by leaps and bounds. Here is how.

While reading, mark the words (by a pencil or marker) whose meaning or usage (how they’re used in sentences) you aren’t sure of. After you finish your reading session, refer an online dictionary to check the meaning and usage, both, of these words. Two of the best online dictionaries you can use are Cambridge English Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary .

Many, however, look only at the meaning and proceed to the next word. With meaning alone, your ability to use the word in speech and writing improves much less than it could with usage as well. The real magic is in the example sentences or usage that follow the meaning of the word. Here is a screenshot of meaning and example sentences of temerity from Oxford Dictionary:

Examples teach you how a word is used in sentences, and that’s what matters the most.

After you check the meaning and usage…

After you check the meaning and usage of a word, see if this word makes sense in the context where you marked it in your reading material. It’ll of course, but this exercise will solidify the meaning and usage you just learnt.

Participate in a short survey

If you’re a learner or teacher of English language, you can help improve website’s content for the visitors through a short survey.

You can take your vocabulary to the next level by…

You can take your vocabulary to the next level by adopting spaced repetition to retain more of what you’re learning and by practicing few vocabulary exercises. (Spaced repetition will work especially well for beginners who lack basic vocabulary and therefore pause too often in their speech.)

How do most people read, however?

They don’t explore the word in a dictionary. (BTW, exploring words on an online dictionary is much easier than physical dictionaries.) Nothing wrong with it. They’ll also improve their vocabulary, but the volume will be a trickle and the quality, mostly passive.

What does passive vocabulary mean?

People can understand passive vocabulary when reading, but they can rarely use it when speaking or writing. For example, many would understand the meaning of words such as deride and incisive when reading, but they would struggle to use them while speaking. (Most people’s spoken vocabulary is limited to common words such as go , take , eat , and drive .) In contrast, you can use words in your speech and writing if they form part of your active vocabulary. And exploring words in a dictionary and using them shifts them from your passive to active vocabulary. I’ve covered this topic in detail in this post .

3. Reading out loud improves your spoken fluency

Till now you read silently. Here you read out loud.

Reading out loud brings following benefits to improve your fluency:

• It brings clarity to your voice by exercising your vocal cords – lips, throat, and tongue – for multitude of sounds.
• It improves pronunciation.
• It can act as a practice ground for intonation, pauses, emphasis, and pace (of your speech).

4. Reading improves writing skills

Stephen King, whose books have sold more than 350 million copies, famously said :

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

Besides learning the very basics of writing such as grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary, you can also learn how popular writers transition their sentences and paragraphs, build and defend arguments, research their stories, break rules of written English, infuse personality and style into their writing, and so on.

Such learning from published authors is gold if you want to improve your written English . And if you want to improve fast, slow down on a sample (remember, crawl method we covered right in the beginning).

5. Reading improves your knowledge, makes you smarter

You would struggle to sustain conversations or write compellingly if you’re hollow on content, right?

Reading fills this gap.

This knowledge, however, benefits you way beyond the topic we’re covering in this post – English language skills.

Knowledge gained through reading helps you way beyond sustaining conversations

Every mistake that was to be made has been made and documented. Every hack and best practice have been tried, honed, and documented. Well, almost! If they’ve been done and documented, why not learn from others instead of reinventing the wheel and wasting months and years. Why do Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, and many other successful persons are or have been avid readers? Remember, their each hour is worth millions of dollars and yet they ‘waste’ few hours reading a book. For sure, they must be getting much more out of their reading.

Adam Gilmour founded Gilmour Space Technologies, a space company, in 2015. Guess what, he learnt the basics on rockets through reading lots of books and NASA publications . And we, of course, know the more famous example of Elon Musk who learnt the initial ropes of space technology through books before he founded SpaceX.

In nutshell, reading will not just equip you with the knowledge on variety of fields that can be so helpful to strike and sustain conversations on myriad topics, but also expose you to new ideas, lessons, and best practices, which can be crucial for you personally and professionally.

Anil is the person behind content on this website, which is visited by 3,000,000+ learners every year. He writes on most aspects of English Language Skills. More about him here:

Though tried n tested methods to learning n improving English, this reminder is incisive n serves as a breakthrough path….yo, I used ‘incisive’ from ur text.

Thanks a lot it is very useful to me… Today I have started reading

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How to Improve Your English Reading Skills: 22 Tips and Strategies

Reading comprehension, or your ability to understand what you read, is a key skill that should be trained to make sure that you understand the words on the pages whenever you read an English book.

While reading more is one way to work on your comprehension, there are tips and methods you can implement to make your reading more effective.

This article will help you improve your English reading skills with proven strategies for smarter, more efficient reading practice.

How to Improve Your English Reading Skills

1. make special time to read, 2. use a good dictionary, 3. use context clues, 4. learn to read english with the right books, 5. check the difficulty level, 6. do both intensive and extensive reading, 7. read more smoothly with sight words, 8. get familiar with english spelling conventions, 9. focus on repeated words, 10. remember vocabulary with flashcards, 11. make a language journal, 12. ask yourself questions , 13. look for clues to “get the gist”, 14. break up readings into chunks, 15. write a summary, 16. discuss the text, 17. reread short articles, 18. do reading comprehension exercises, 19. read many kinds of texts, 20. read and listen with subtitles, 21. check popular forums and blogs, 22. be consistent with reading, reading recommendations by level, beginner to intermediate, intermediate, intermediate to advanced, and one more thing....

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

If you’re reading to improve your comprehension, you need to focus and study.

This means making a special time for reading without risk of being interrupted. You should try to spend at least 30 minutes every day on focused reading. 

To turn your reading process into a ritual:

• Find a quiet, comfortable spot with bright lighting to sit.
• Get everything you might need ready before you sit down, such as a pen, notebook and something to drink. 
• Decide how long you will read.
• Put all your electronics on silent mode (or turn them off) and put them away.

If you have a specific process for reading practice, then your brain will know when you’re about to work on your comprehension. As a result, you’ll be more focused before you even start.

If you’re a beginner learner, choose an English dictionary that translates words into your native language. There are also learner’s dictionaries, which explain words using simple terms.

For more advanced learners, I recommend using a  monolingual  dictionary—one that has definitions only in English with no translations. Monolingual dictionaries force you to  think in English  rather than relying on your native language.

For a dictionary that translates English into multiple languages , check out  WordReference . It covers dozens of languages, such as French, German, Russian, Japanese and Dutch. WordReference also has a monolingual English dictionary.

For online content, you can use LingQ ‘s built-in translation features. LingQ allows you to choose unknown words in any text, get an automatic translation and then convert those words to flashcards.

Just because you find a good dictionary doesn’t mean you should look up every single new word! 

Using context clues means trying to understand a new word by looking at what’s around it. If you’re stuck on a word you don’t know, try looking at the whole sentence for a hint about what it means .

Don’t stop to look up every new word. It’s harder to focus on your reading if you keep interrupting it. You can write down the word and look it up later. Only look up a word if without it, you can’t understand what you’re reading.

When you’re choosing books (and other texts) to read, keep two things in mind:

1. What you’re interested in

2. Your reading level

Whenever you can, you should read things that you enjoy. You should also choose books that are at an English level just above the one you’re most comfortable with . You want to challenge yourself enough to learn new things, but not so much that you frustrated with your reading.

You can use this test from the British Council’s Learn English website to get a general idea of your reading level:

• Beginners should aim for texts specifically made for beginner learners . These include dialogues, short readings about common topics or children’s books.
• Intermediate learners can read longer texts, news articles and popular novels with simpler language. 
• Advanced learners  can read almost anything, but should approach some classic literature such as Shakespeare’s plays with caution.

Not sure where to start? There are lots of places online where you can find recommendations for books to learn English reading:

• Listopia on Goodreads is full of lists created by people just like you.
• What Should I Read Next? gives you book recommendations based on a book that you like or even a list of your favorites. 
• Jellybooks helps you discover new books and sample 10%, which means you can try the book and see if it’s a good fit for you.
• Whichbook is a very different kind of website—you choose the kinds of things you’re looking for in a book (happy/sad, beautiful/disgusting) and the website gives you suggestions based on that.

I’ve also added a detailed list of reading recommendations per level at the end of this post.

Once you’ve picked a book, double-check its difficulty level by making sure that it has no more than 10% unknown words .

Count the number of words on a page or paragraph, and then count the number of words you don’t recognize. Divide the number of unknown words by the number of total words, multiply by 100, and you’ll see what percentage of words you don’t know.

Here’s a rough guide: 

• 0-2% new words: The text is too easy for you.
• 4%-6% new words:  The text is just right.
• 8% new words:  This text might be too hard for you. (You might try it anyway if it’s something you really want to read.)
• 10% (or more) new words:  This text is too hard right now. Set it aside for later, when you’ve learned more English words.

There are two kinds of English reading that you have to practice: Intensive reading and extensive reading.  

Intensive reading is when you try to understand every word on the page . 

This is the kind of reading you do when you have some time to focus. Most of the tips below are about how to make the most out of intensive reading. 

When you practice intensive reading, pick a fairly short text that interests you. If you have a really long text—or you just don’t care about the topic—you might give up before you finish.

Aside from intensive reading, you also need to do extensive reading , which simply means casually reading anything you see in English . Don’t stress. Don’t worry about what every word means.

Read a new recipe. Read an email. Read a blog post.

Read billboards along the highway. Read newspaper headlines.

It doesn’t matter  what  you read—just read in English. Anything. Everything.

The more extensive reading you do, the more comfortable you’ll be with reading in English. 

Fluency is how smoothly you can read. When you read in your head, you should have a certain rhythm to the words, understanding full sentences rather than going one word at a time. The words should flow together naturally, like when somebody is talking. 

To improve your fluency, look out for “sight words.” These are words that you should know by sight and should not have to think about how to read them.

Find a good list of sight words, like this one , and take about a minute or two every day to read the words as fast as you can.

English spelling often doesn’t reflect the actual sounds of a word . When you read in English, the voice in your head can get stuck on new words that you don’t know how to pronounce.

Don’t be discouraged!

By learning common spelling conventions, that reading voice will maintain the flow of English and you’ll improve your overall reading ability:

• kn:  The  kn-  at the beginning of a word is pronounced as simply  n , as in the words “know” and “knife.”
• wh:  The  -h-  in  wh-  words such as “what” or “when” is silent and isn’t pronounced.
• c :  This letter typically sounds like  s  before the vowels  e, i  or  y, like in the word “city.” Otherwise, it typically sounds like  k,  like in the word “cat.”

It’s important to be smart about which words you look up as you read. I recommend looking up words that are repeated more than three times in a passage , or words that appear crucial to the meaning of a sentence.

In other words, don’t look up every single unknown word while you’re reading. Think about it—it’ll get boring and break up the flow of reading.

When you read a text for the first time, underline or highlight unknown words .

Once you’re done reading, go back and identify the repeated words and words that are crucial to understanding. Now you can look those up and write down translations or definitions.

Finally, read the text again with your word list and watch as you understand the text more fully.

A great way to build up your vocabulary and reading fluency is to create flashcards of important words. But don’t just stop there: Review these flashcards often .

While reading, keep your word lists or flashcards handy. You can refer to these if that word comes up again while reading for fast translation.

As you come across these words while reading new content, move them to the back of your flashcard pile. This counts as review, and you don’t need to review words if you feel you’ve already learned them!

Anki is a great app for creating your own digital flashcards and accessing them on the go. 

Aside from making flashcards, you can use a language journal (notebook) for practice.

In the pages of your journal, try writing sentences with your new English vocabulary . Make your own definition for each English word you’ve learned. Use colored pencils to draw pictures of what the words mean.

Every once in a while, look back at older pages in your language journal. Review words to keep your memories of them strong. And feel proud of how much you’ve learned!

Taking notes and asking yourself questions can help you really understand an English text. 

Before you read , here are a few questions you can ask yourself to prepare:

• Are there any words in bold or italics ?
• Are there titles or subtitles?
• What are some of the names mentioned?
• Is there a lot of dialogue?
• Are the paragraphs short or long?

While you’re reading , try asking these questions: 

• What’s happening now?
• Who’s speaking here?
• Why did he do that?
• What is she thinking?

After reading , the questions below can also get you think about what you did and did not understand:

• What was the text about?
• What are the most important things that happened in the text?
• Did anything confuse you?
• Did anything surprise you?
• Are there any parts you didn’t understand?

The  gist is the overall meaning. Practice using clues to get the gist of a text quickly and effectively. Use these tips to improve your overall understand of what you’re reading. 

For example:

• Use a highlighter to  identify important information or main ideas  in the text.
• Pay attention to verb tenses  so that you understand the timeline of the story. (Are past, present or future events being described?)
• Examine any images that accompany the text. These images often give vital information and can help your understanding. 

Reading can be tiring, so break it up into manageable chunks (pieces). Aim for between one and three paragraphs to start. As you build your skills, you can start reading with longer and longer chunks of text.

You can also simply break up your reading by time. In particular, I recommend trying the Pomodoro method . For every 25 minutes of reading, take a five-minute break to give your brain a rest.

After reading a text, you can write a short summary of what you’ve read. This can just be a   couple of sentences that present the main ideas .

Writing a summary is a great way to reinforce what the text was about as well as use new vocabulary in context. I like to write summaries down in my notebook and then underline the new vocabulary that I learned from reading the text.

Writing summaries will also help you notice any parts of the text that you didn’t fully understand, so you can go back and re-read. 

Call upon an English-speaking friend or conversation partner to help you understand what you read.

You can explain the text to them. Your friend could then ask you questions about what you’ve read.

By talking about what you’ve read with a fluent English speaker , you can make sure that you understood the text. Another bonus is that you’ll practice listening and speaking in English.

Sometimes reading a text just once isn’t enough to understand it. Rereading is great for finding things you might have missed the first time and reviewing new words. 

Try these out:

• Choose something that takes less than five minutes to read . This can be a story or a news article.
• Read the text at your own pace, then write down everything you can remember–every little detail, even parts of sentences if you remember them.
• Read the text again and write down what you can remember. Do you see how much more you remember the second time around?

Every time you read something, you understand more of it. When you want to get the most out of your reading, try reading three or more times:

• The first time, focus on understanding the words.
• The second time, focus on the meaning.
• The third time, you can start asking deeper questions like “what is the author really trying to say?” or “how does this news affect the rest of the world?”

For more structured practice, you can do reading comprehension exercises, which are designed to test how much you understand and improve your reading ability.

Generally, these exercises start with a short text. Then you have to answer multiple choice or fill-in-the-blanks questions, or even longer written responses about the text. 

Whatever your level, here are some useful places to find online reading comprehension exercises:

• AgendaWeb  offers texts for all levels of English as well as short stories and fairy tales that include audio.
• My English Pages has hundreds of exercises for various topics including science, history and biographies.
• The ESL Lounge also has exercises broken into four levels.

To find even more online, look up “ESL reading comprehension quiz.”

Today we don’t just read books and newspapers. We read blogs, emails, Tweets and chats. The more you read anything in English, the better you’ll get at the language.

Magazine Line is a good place to go to find digital or print magazines on just about any subject. They give you lower prices on magazine subscriptions, and you may be able to save even more if you’re a student .

You can also check out aggregators —websites that take news and interesting articles and put them together for you to look through. A couple of useful aggregators are Mix , which helps you find new websites based on your interests, and  Digg , which collects interesting stories from around the Internet onto one page.

It might seem strange, but another great way to practice reading is to watch English videos with subtitles or transcripts .

That way, you will read the words while hearing how a native speaker says them. Because English is not a phonetic language, the subtitles remind you how to spell a certain word, regardless of the sound.

Watching movies and videos is probably the most fun and interactive way of learning English. I don’t know about you, but I spent a lot of my younger years watching “Friends” and learned  a lot  of English from the TV show.

You can do similar things with  TED Talks or Netflix . 

FluentU videos also have full, accurate subtitles as well as transcripts. You can pick a video that you’re interested in to make this a more engaging experience.

Read the transcript before you watch the video, then read along with the subtitles as the video plays. Since you have to keep up with the speed of the video, you’ll be training your fluency this way.

Do you know that ChatGPT , the chatbot that is making waves all over the internet because of how well it can communicate, read Reddit threads to teach itself language?

Forums like  Reddit ,  Quora  and  Yahoo Answers contain English in its most natural forms, as it is all written casually by native speakers. Even if there are spelling and grammar mistakes, conversations are mostly enlightening, natural and full of everyday words. 

Aside from forums, you can add some personality and fun to your English reading practice with blogs in English . They discuss all kinds of topics in a lively and friendly way. You can even be part of the conversation—and practice your English writing skills—by leaving a comment now and then!

Perhaps the most important tip to learn English reading is to make sure you read consistently. Remember, a little bit of reading every day is better than reading a lot once a month. Aim to create a reading habit!

If you become frustrated or bored, I suggest changing your reading material. Reading things you’re interested in will improve your reading skills tremendously, and the best way to become better at reading English is to read what you enjoy.

Now that you know how to maximize your English reading, I’ll show you what kind of English texts would work well for you based on your level:

• Children’s picture books — These books have simple words and pictures, and they teach you basic English words so you can talk about the world around you. Some of them are funny and some of them are  touching (sweet or emotional).
• Easy fairy tales — These magical stories have been told for many, many years. They’re a part of cultures all over the world. Chance are, you probably know a few of them already—which will make it even easier for you to understand them.
• Simple short stories — Aside from fairy tales, many short stories are easy enough for beginning English learners because they use simple language to make you think about big, important ideas. 
• Graded readers – These are specially made for learners, with lots of different themes. There aren’t too many hard words, but you’ll still find new ones to learn. Some of the readers come with audio, so you can listen to the stories as you read them.
• Bilingual readers – In these special books , the text is in both English and your native language. You can focus on the English text and only look at the translation when you need a little help.
• Superhero comics – Superhero comic books are exciting, filled with colorful characters and illustrations  (drawings). You’ll recognize the characters, like Superman and Batman, from television and films.
• Popular books – Keep up with the crowd with these best-selling books. Find thrillers, suspense, romance and more. Popular books are some of the best books to learn English !
• Translated books from your own culture — You first read a book in your own language, from your own culture. Then you find an English translated version of it, read that through, and carefully compare the two versions. Some examples of books in a language pair are: “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo”  (French) —  “The Count of Monte Cristo, ” “Ngược dòng nước lũ” (Vietnamese) — “Against the Flood”  and “Cien años de soledad” (Spanish) — “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”  
• Short stories — Challenge yourself in just a few minutes a day with intermediate-level short stories in English that you can read quickly. You can even find some new English words to learn with these spooky  (scary)  ghost stories in English .
• Interactive Books — Get extra adventure with these books that let  you decide what happens . There are also text-based video games such as Zork that you can read like a book.
• Long reads — These are usually long articles that offers a wider and more complex perspective on contemporary issues. The quality of writing is high, so you can benefit from the best writing and best information. You can find long reads on websites such as Longreads and Reddit’s Longreads subreddit . My favorite source for long reads is  The Guardian  because the articles are also recorded and published as podcasts .
• Funny stories —  These books take humor to a more grown-up level, with parody that  pokes fun at (makes fun of) serious subjects and puns that play with English words. Humor can be hard to translate, so reading these will help you better understand English-speaking cultures.
• Fantasy and science fiction — These books often use imaginative ideas that take you beyond simple English words. Some fantastic reads for intermediate English learners are “Harry Potter” , “A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “The Martian Chronicles.”
• TV tie-in books and movie novelizations — Read novelizations (movies written as books) of your favorite films or choose stories with familiar characters from the television shows you love. There are series of novels related to popular shows, such as “A Game of Thrones,” “Star Trek,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and “Charmed.”
• Simple poems — Poems can say volumes in just a few short words. They often use words you won’t find in everyday English conversation, and they help you learn the rhythm of English. Try reading and studying a few poems perfect for learning English . You can also watch slam poetry performances with transcripts, like “A love poem for lonely prime numbers” and “If I should have a daughter…”
• Classic books — A book becomes “classic” because it stands the test of time. Reading the “classics”—important pieces of English literature—can help you better understand the culture of the English-speaking world. Most classic books are available for free to read online , on cool websites like  Project Gutenberg . Some of my favorites include  “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,”   “Emma” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
• Iconic plays — A lot of English-language plays have influenced (made their mark on) how people think about certain subjects. Try reading some of these well-known plays aloud, since they’re meant to be performed: “Our Town,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “A Raisin in the Sun.”
• Literary poems — Literary poems can be tricky to read even for native speakers! If you’re up for a challenge and want to read classic poems, study the works of Edgar Allan Poe ,  T.S. Eliot  or  Emily Dickinson . Another great source of literary poems is Poetry Foundation , which features a mix of classic and modern poems. 

Learning to read English might take time, but it pays off a lot because you’ll have so much fun, widen your cultural knowledge and improve other skills at the same time.

Pick the reading tips and resources that suit you best or try all of them out to bring your English to the highest level of fluency!

If you like learning English through movies and online media, you should also check out FluentU. FluentU lets you learn English from popular talk shows, catchy music videos and funny commercials , as you can see here:

If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.

The FluentU app and website makes it really easy to watch English videos. There are captions that are interactive. That means you can tap on any word to see an image, definition, and useful examples.

FluentU lets you learn engaging content with world famous celebrities.

For example, when you tap on the word "searching," you see this:

FluentU lets you tap to look up any word.

Learn all the vocabulary in any video with quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.

FluentU helps you learn fast with useful questions and multiple examples. Learn more.

The best part? FluentU remembers the vocabulary that you’re learning. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned. You have a truly personalized experience.

Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)

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Improve your English through Reading

Josef Essberger

Right now you are reading English. That means that you are using your brain in a very active way. Reading is a very active process. It is true that the writer does a lot of work, but the reader also has to work hard. When you read a text, you have to do some or all of these:

• imagine a scene in your head
• understand clearly what the writer is trying to say
• agree or disagree with the writer

Advantages of Reading

When you learn a language, listening, speaking and writing are important, but reading can also be very helpful. There are many advantages associated with reading, including:

Learning Vocabulary In Context

You will usually encounter new words when you read. If there are too many new words for you, then the level is too high and you should read something simpler. But if there are, say, a maximum of five new words per page, you will learn this vocabulary easily. You may not even need to use a dictionary because you can guess the meaning from the rest of the text (from the context). Not only do you learn new words, but you see them being used naturally.

A Model For Writing

When you read, it gives you a good example for writing. Texts that you read show you structures and expressions that you can use when you write.

Seeing "Correctly Structured" English

When people write, they usually use "correct" English with a proper grammatical structure. This is not always true when people speak. So, by reading you see and learn grammatical English naturally.

Working At Your Own Speed

You can read as fast or as slowly as you like. You can read ten pages in 30 minutes, or take one hour to explore just one page. It doesn't matter. The choice is yours. You cannot easily do this when speaking or listening. This is one of the big advantages of reading because different people work at different speeds.

Personal Interest

If you choose something to read that you like, it can actually be interesting and enjoyable. For example, if you like to read about football in your own language, why not read about football in English? You will get information about football and improve your English at the same time.

Five Tips for Reading

Try to read at the right level. Read something that you can (more or less) understand. If you need to stop every three words to look in a dictionary, it is not interesting for you and you will soon be discouraged.

Make a note of new vocabulary. If there are four or five new words on a page, write them in your vocabulary book. But you don't have to write them while you read. Instead, try to guess their meaning as you read; mark them with a pen; then come back when you have finished reading to check in a dictionary and add them to your vocabulary book.

Try to read regularly. For example, read for a short time once a day. Fifteen minutes every day is better than two hours every Sunday. Fix a time to read and keep to it. For example, you could read for fifteen minutes when you go to bed, or when you get up, or at lunchtime.

Be organised. Have everything ready:

• something to read
• a marker to highlight difficult words
• a dictionary
• your vocabulary book
• a pen to write down the new words

Read what interests YOU. Choose a magazine or book about a subject that you like.

Things to Read

You can find English-language newspapers in all large cities around the world. Newspapers are interesting because they are about real life and the news. BUT they are not easy to read. Try reading newspapers if your level is intermediate or above.

Some British newspapers:

• The Telegraph
• The Independent
• The Guardian
• The Financial Times (business)
• The Sunday Times

Some American newspapers:

• The International Herald Tribune
• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal (business)

Some magazines are published weekly, some monthly. You can find English-language magazines in many large cities around the world. If you cannot find the magazine you want in your town, you may be able to order it for delivery. Many magazines have pictures which can help your understanding. You will need an intermediate level for most magazines, but a pre-intermediate level may be ok for some magazines.

There are magazines on every subject:

Books are divided mainly into:

• Non-fiction (history, biography, travel, cooking etc)
• Fiction (stories and novels)

Some books are easier to read than others. It often depends on the author. Agatha Christie, for example, wrote in an easier style and with simpler vocabulary than Stephen King. You can buy books in specialised English-language bookshops in large cities around the world. You may also be able to find some English-language books in libraries. And if you have a British Council in your city, you can borrow many English-language books from their library.

Short Stories

Short stories can be a good choice when learning a language because they are...short. It's like reading a whole book in a few pages. You have all the excitement of a story in a book, but you only have to read 5,000 or 10,000 words. So you can quite quickly finish the story and feel that you have achieved something. Short stories are published in magazines, in books of short stories, and on the Internet. You can also find short stories at EnglishClub English Reading .

Readers are books that are specially published to be easy to read. They are short and with simple vocabulary. They are usually available at different levels, so you should be able to find the right level for you. Many readers are stories by famous authors in simple form. This is an excellent way for you to start practising reading.

Cornflakes Packets

By "Cornflakes Packets", we mean any product you can buy that has English writing on or with it. If you buy a box of chocolates, or a new camera, why not read the description or instructions in English? There are many such examples, and they all give you an opportunity to read real English:

• airline tickets
• cans or packets of food
• bottles of drink
• tapes and CDs
• user guides for videos, computers...

If you like poetry, try reading some English-language poems. They may not be easy to understand because of the style and vocabulary, but if you work at it you can usually get an idea - or a feeling - of what the poet is trying to say. You'll find some classic poems, with explanations of vocabulary, at EnglishClub English Reading .

Good luck with your reading. It will help you make a lot of Progress!

© 2010 Joe Essberger

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