12 Effective Methods to Improve Reading Skills
In this lesson, you’re going to learn “how to improve English reading skills” and it will help you to improve your understanding of the language and build your vocabulary.
Lots of people face the difficulties, particularly who want to learn “how to improve their English reading skills as a second language.” Although they work hard, but no result. Due to the lack of comprehensive guidelines, they can’t improve their reading comprehension or reading skills.
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How To Improve English Reading Skills
If you try a lot that how to improve your English reading skills but stuck. No worries! It is not the end of the world. As we know every difficulty has a solution only you need to try to look for the accurate answer. I would love to tell you that improving reading skills are not hard as you think.
If you are wondering how to improve reading skills. That’s precisely, I’ll discuss in this lesson. There are a lot of ways that you can use to improve your reading skills, but I’ll teach you 12 best and valuable methods that you can smartly use to enhance your reading skills.
Let’s discuss those methods that will be exceedingly helpful. Although you can use the methods (which are given below) to improve reading skills in any language.
12 Effective Methods to Improve English Reading Skills
The following steps or methods will help you to improve and develop your reading skills.
- Read newspapers, magazines, books, online articles, etc.
- Set time to read each day.
- Set reading goals.
- Expand vocabulary.
- Make notes while reading.
- Underline or mark the important & new words or sentences.
- Improve fluency.
- Self-observation.
- Develop thinking skills & group discussion skills.
- Enhance creative intelligence.
- Make your thinking powerful.
- Patience and happiness.
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Let’s discuss the above steps one by one:
1. Read Newspapers, Magazines, Books, Online Articles etc.
Reading materials are required to nourish one’s brain cells. Newspapers or magazines keep you updated with daily happening, which in turn redirect you to make your regular decision in a better way.
Reading good books give your brain the power of describing events and knowledges of past eminent personalities and help you adopt your personal moral value in life which are the foundation of a good society.
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“Reading is the gateway skill which makes all other learning possible.”
You can read the books in which you’re interested. Online articles are great platform to develop your reading skills too. Choose the best online articles according to your interest.
2. Set Time To Read Each Day
You must set a specific time to read each day and aim to read at least 1 hour to get more benefit. As we know that practice is one of the most effective ways to build skills whether it’s reading skills, writing skills, speaking skills, or any other skills. How you can improve your skills due to lack of practice.
“Time proves everything” & “The more you practice the better you get.”
Remember, your practice must be in right way. You can read novels, books, newspapers, short stories, biographies, online articles, or any sort of text that you like and then you can find meanings of unfamiliar words and write them down in your notebooks. If you follow it, I’m certain that you will get a good result as well as new conceptions.
3. Set Reading Goals
Setting goals are really crucial because they make task interesting. Goals help you to stay motivated and measure your progress. You can set reading goals to develop a wider vocabulary and gain a deeper understanding of the different texts.
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For instance, you might set a goal to learn different vocabulary related to a specific topic such as technology, business management or other subjects what you like.
“Set your goals high and don’t stop until you get there.”
Once you set the reading goals, you will see the big difference and your reading skills will be in the next level because when you set goals, your brain opens up a task list.
4. Expand Vocabulary
Vocabulary is essential to gain knowledge of reading comprehension in English, if you want to improve your reading skills. You must expand your vocabulary. You might be thinking that memorizing new words it’s arduous (difficult) for you, but don’t worry because you can make this task easy.
You can learn new words each day. One thing that you must keep in mind that learning new words it’s not a burden. Just enjoy it.
“Don’t underestimate the power of decent vocabulary.”
I’d tell you one simple and easy method that you can use to expand your vocabulary what I use personally to learn new words. So, the technique is the 3R method.
Actually, I’d learnt this method from online video and believe me! It works. That’s why I thought to share this method. Here is 3R which means 3 steps:
1.Read – Reading is secret to expand (build) vocabulary. There is no other better way. You must aim to read at least 1 hour each day. You can choose some topics (according to your interest) such as sports, movies, music, fitness, fashion, etc.
After that you can pick up some material to read like novels, magazines, short stories, online articles, etc. While reading, if you find difficult words and you can write them down.
2.Record –This is where you collect the new words to learn. Aim to collect 5 to 10 words each day.
3.Review – Learning new words is easy but the challenging is to bring them into your active vocabulary. You can only achieve it by reviewing them regularly. Set one day of the week as your review day and start reviewing words. Try to use new words in your own speech & writing.
If you follow the 3R method consistently, you’ll have a powerful vocabulary for sure.
5. Make Notes While Reading
This is another extremely effective method for improving your reading skills. It is a greatly powerful tool for learning. You must make notes while reading but in your own way. As we know that whenever we make notes of a particular topic in our own way, our thinking power increases. That’s why make notes in your own way.
“Don’t wait for the perfection, just start making notes.”
It will surely, help you to extend memories and develop your knowledge as well as understanding of a specific topic that you read. You can also use the notes for revision later.
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6. Underline or Mark the Important & New Words or Sentences
Underlining or marking the important and new words or sentences in the book it is an incredibly helpful to improving your reading skills as well as writing skills.
It will definitely help you to understand the book as you read it the first time and also to selectively pick out essential information of the book.
Underling or marking helps in extracting the gist of the book, to point out the informative out of lots of information.
“The newer words you know, the more clearly and powerfully, you’ll think and speak.”
The physical act of underling with eyes glued on the page places thoughts firmly into your brain cells. It will also save your time while going through the book next time. I always use this method while reading books and I love it a lot.
7. Improve Fluency
This is one of the best methods to improve reading skills. If you really want to learn more ideas in reading skills, you need to improve your fluency as it also plays a great role in understanding any comprehensive text effortlessly and you can only improve your fluency by speaking skills.
That’s why without wasting your time, try to improve your fluency more and more.
“Fluency in reading and speaking makes you more confident than before.”
I’ll discuss the speaking skills and how to improve it in more detail in another post.
8. Self-Observation
Self-observation is an awareness practice what you think, feel and do. In short, it is something when you observe your own mind. If we are learning any skills, we need to observe ourselves, but most of the time we forget it.
Self-observation is an essential part to learn any skills. You might be thinking “how to do self-observation.” I would say it’s not a big deal and every one can do it.
Everybody knows that “Self-observation helps us to refocus within to balance ourselves and to be in the present moment.”
If you want to observe yourself in reading skills, just try to determine what writers want to tell, what they want to give the messages through the stories or incidents that you read. One more thing, you can also find out your own mistakes and weaknesses.
9. Develop Thinking & Group Discussion Skills
You must develop your thinking and group discussion skills to feed the intelligence. If reading materials (such as books, newspapers, magazines, online articles, novels, etc.) are food for the brain cells, thinking and discussion are the digestive processes.
As we know, “The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
Thinking and discussion are compared with digestion; after the reading process there should be discussion or thinking over the topic whatever you read.
We get information from reading; while thinking and discussion process this information into knowledge or understanding that stays with us.
10. Enhance Creative Intelligence
You can put your knowledge to good use to enhance your creative intelligence by correlating facts and ideas you’ve gained with other things that you observe and experience.
“The creative mind is intelligence in action in the world.”
If you’re reading an article carefully with concentration, there is more possibility that you’ll get new ideas.
Whatever you read, you should keep at the back of your mind and link those with real life happenings, people and experiences to gain meaning as well as understand the “why” and “how” behind each one of those.
11. Make Your Thinking Powerful
Whatever knowledge you gain from reading will help you in making your thinking powerful and will shape your future. Whatever you read, you should keep at the back of your mind how it applies to or is linked with the different aspects of your life.
“Positive thinking is powerful thinking with efforts.”
Your knowledge gained from books will help you analyze and evaluate what you learnt from surrounding, school, college etc. knowledge will help you choose your career as per your interest, aptitude & need and it’ll also guide you throughout to make crucial decisions. Knowledge once gained last a lifetime.
12. Patience And Happiness
Patience and happiness both are the secret things to accomplish anything whether the big thing or small. That’s why both are the most essential things in my life. At times, you might lose your hope, patience and happiness while learning new skills and as a result, you fail to accomplish your goals.
Everyone has goals whether it’s related to learning English or any other field. We must learn every skill happily and patiently since patience make us stronger enough to face any sort of situation and happiness gives us new rays of hope.
“If you’re learning something patiently and happily, you can’t forget that thing easily.”
Conclusion
If you are really determined to improve your reading skills, follow those above all methods which I’ve mentioned and most importantly, focus on reading with patience and happiness. One more thing, you can also add your own methods or steps in the above list. keep learning!
