Reading is the main gateway to gaining knowledge about various things in any language. You cannot foresee future success in your field of study or profession that does not necessitate reading. Nevertheless, some learners, or people in general, struggle with this key language skill. But why is the reading skill so challenging, and how can we overcome the challenges of reading comprehension?
The answer lies in the way you approach reading in terms of the topic, complexity level, and the breadth of your vocabulary knowledge among other factors. You should read topics which match your interests whether it is sports, arts, or politics to stay motivated to keep turning pages. Additionally, you need to choose the materials based on your proficiency level. Too many new words slow you down and hamper your understanding of the text, resulting in no progress. Think big but start small; that is how you can take firm steps towards developing reading skills.
The challenges of English reading skill
Words consist of strings of letters, and when you want to read a text, a voice in your head tries to distinguish between the words, pronounce them and indicate their meanings. It’s a whole cognitive process beyond the scope of this article. What you need to know about this is that we call it the decoding process, which allows us to understand the meanings of the words in a text. Now, what happens when you encounter a word for the first time? That voice we talked about stumbles and prevents your eyes from moving to the next word, resulting in disruptions. It happens quite frequently for elementary-level English learners, and honestly, it is very overwhelming and demotivating for the students. It can result in learners associating reading with some negative feelings at the beginning stages of their learning process. If not treated, these feelings continue to tamper with students’ performances while reading a text.
Aside from the challenges of reading at the word level, there are other holistic challenges regarding reading a text. The words form a sentence, the sentences form a paragraph, and the paragraphs form the text. Wouldn’t it be great if it were as simple as that? The problem is that with each word you read, you learn new information, and you should relate it to what you already know. In other words, successful reading comprehension depends on understanding the connection between the sentences and then the paragraphs of a text. The connection between different parts of a text is not always straightforward, but the good news is that there are only a few types of texts, and by learning the structure of each text, you can understand the text more quickly.
Four main types of texts |
|
Text structure |
Details |
| Informative | It encompasses a wide range of texts that explain or describe a topic by giving factual information. |
| Argumentative | It is most common in scientific texts. They start with a claim expressed in the thesis statement, and each paragraph includes a piece of evidence supporting the thesis. |
| Persuasive | It includes a clear thesis statement fully supported by various evidence. It is intended to persuade the reader, and it is common in business and particularly in commercial contexts. |
| Narrative | The structure is used in fiction to tell a plot-based story, starting with an exposition that introduces the structures. Other components of the narrative structure include rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. |
You can find more information about the challenges of learning English in “Why is English hard to learn?” article.
10 Practical steps to improve English reading skills
The basic but effective approach to improving your reading skills is through reading itself. You need to immerse yourself in different English texts (extensive reading). If you are living in an English-speaking country, your job would be easier as all the texts you come across (catalogs, menus, ads, newspapers, magazines) are written in English. But if you are living in a non-English-speaking country, you should find diverse reading materials and read as much as you can. You can start with short texts like news excerpts, abstracts, abridgements, etc. As your fluency increases, you can switch to longer and more sophisticated texts. In the remainder of the text, I explain ten practical steps you can take to become a fluent reader.
1. Find out your current proficiency level
The first step is to understand your English proficiency level. It helps you decide which texts to read in terms of complexity. If you choose materials that are too hard or too easy, you will soon lose interest and quit your progress.
Some texts, especially published fiction whose audience is English learners, indicate the required proficiency for reading the text. If you cannot find information about the complexity of the text, you can do as follows. Pick a random page, count the number of all words, count the number of new words, divide the number of new words by the total number of words, and finally multiply it by 100. Then, you can interpret the yielded number according to the following table.
Reading Complexity Index |
|
Result |
Difficulty level |
| Less than 2% | Too easy |
| 2% to 4% | Easy |
| 4% to 6% | Moderate |
| 6% to 8% | Difficult |
| 8% to 10% | Very difficult |
| More than 10% | Too difficult |
You can also determine your language proficiency level by taking online free placement tests. The free online placements include EF SET, Cambridge General English Test, and British Council online English level test. You can also take part in the Duolingo English test if you do not mind paying a fee.
2. Set achievable goals
In a perfect world, improving your reading skills is the only thing you need to do during the day. But we are not living that life! So, jot down your daily tasks within a week and look for the best opportunities to leave everything (except a book and possibly a pencil) behind, go to a quiet place and start reading. In other words, you should not be idealistic when planning to improve your reading skills. Start small by reading 15 minutes a day for a week and then increase it to 20 minutes. As you make progress, you can spend more time reading more complex texts.
Achieving reading goals start with developing a reading habit like reading the headlines of news websites. You should then extend it to larger texts. A good start is to finish one book with a topic that interests you every four or three months and if you get into the habit you can even read two books within a month and set higher reading goals for yourself. Keep reading about “How to set and achieve your reading goals”
3. Develop reading techniques
All the words and sentences in a text are there for a reason, but they are not equally important. Some parts can give you information about the whole text and summarize it for you. By identifying the components of a text, you can extract the meaning more easily. Here are some techniques that help you go through a text and extract the meaning. You can choose each technique based on the text and your purpose for reading it.
Three Primary Reading Techniques |
|||
Technique |
How it works |
Purpose |
Example |
| Skimming | Move your eyes fast across the text, focusing on headings, first and last sentences of the paragraphs, first and last paragraphs, and bold or italic words. | Get the general idea of a text | Reading the headlines in a newspaper |
| Scanning | Move your eyes across the text for details. Tables or graphs usually provide the information you are looking for when scanning a text | Find specific information in the text | Finding a date or the name of a person |
| Active
Reading |
Involves pre-, while-, and post-reading activities. In active reading, you should make predictions about what happens next, take notes, connect different parts of the text, and reach a conclusion. | Deep understanding of the text | Identifying the author’s perspective on the topic of the text. |
4. Broaden your vocabulary knowledge
The most important cause of fluency problems is limited vocabulary. When you know most of the words in a text and do not need to interrupt your reading to look up the new words, reading becomes enjoyable. Fortunately, learning new vocabulary is much easier than working on your reading skills. There are many vocabulary-learning apps that can increase your vocabulary knowledge. The most popular free vocabulary learning apps are Memrise, WordUp, Vocabulary.com, and Quizlet.
5. Consider pre-reading activities
Pre-reading activities warm you up for reading the text. They activate your prior knowledge about the topic, and if you do not have any information about the topic, you can look it up or discuss it with a partner if available. Another pre-reading activity is raising questions about the topic and making conjectures about it.
Based on a study “The Use of Questioning Strategy to Improve Students’ Reading Comprehension” by Amalia and Devanti (2018), pre-reading questions stimulates students’ critical thinking and encourages them to actively participate in the reading task. You can also look at the headings and subheadings before starting to read as a pre-reading activity.
6. Do post-reading exercises
If you are studying books designed particularly to improve reading skills, you will find some comprehension questions after the text. These questions can be multiple-choice, true/false, or essay questions. Sometimes, scanning can quickly help you find the answer, but for harder questions, you will need active reading. These questions test your understanding of the text and maximize your intake of the text. Books like Select Readings, Inside Reading, Real Reading, and Strategic Reading are among the best self-study books that contain pre- and post-activities that maximize your reading ability. These books can broaden your vocabulary knowledge as well.
If you are reading a book or an article which is not followed by such questions, you can reread or summarize the text as a post-reading activity. These activities are fairly time-consuming, but they significantly improve your comprehension. Additionally, they improve your writing skills, which makes them even more worthwhile.
7. Get help from digital tools
We are surrounded by electronic gizmos and gadgets. These devices are double-edged swords; they can be a source of distraction, or they can be helpful tools to improve your reading skills. Printed reading materials are more expensive than e-books or other electronic reading materials. Additionally, you cannot carry a book or newspaper in your pocket. Therefore, you can use your smartphone or tablet to read various texts. There is virtually no limit to the topics you can read about on your cell phone.
Moreover, you can install useful apps like dictionaries and thesauruses to look up new words conveniently. On-touch Dictionary has a special feature that shows the meaning of a word on a PDF file. Once you touch and select it, you do not need to type the word in the dictionary or even copy it. It helps you save plenty of time and makes your reading experience smoother. In addition, you can install news apps like The Telegraph (British) or The New York Times (American) and read the news to increase your reading fluency.
A research article by Lavan Jiawook (2021) highlights the importance of screen reading and indicates how it has facilitated learning reading skills.
8. Track your reading progress
Keeping track of your progress is both enjoyable and inspiring. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and motivates you to keep getting better. You can even take notes on your cellphone about the interesting facts you find when reading a text or write down memorable quotes and make a collection of sentences. Apart from the improvement in reading skills, after a while you will realize that all you have read has changed who you are and enriched your perspective on life.
9. Develop a personalized reading habit
So far, we have established how challenging reading can be. One way to make it more appealing is by personalizing the experience. You should choose interesting topics. Engaging topics motivate you to keep up your progress. Remember, the primary goal is to develop reading skills and the things you learn are of secondary importance. You can read anything you like so long as it is written in standard English. If it’s distracting to look up new words as you encounter them, read the text once and then reread it, this time looking up the new words. A study “The Effects of Repeated Reading on the Fluency of Intermediate-Level English-as-a-Second-Language Learners” by Krista Carlene Rich (2019) on the impact of repeated reading on reading fluency has shown that there is a positive correlation between rereading and increasing reading fluency. Overall, There are no stone-carved rules for developing reading skills. In other words, your reading habit is effective as long as it matches your preferences.
- Intensive reading vs. extensive reading
I should note that you should not abandon topics that do not engage you. Perform intensive reading for topics you love and extensive reading for topics which are not exciting for you. Intensive reading requires more time and critical thinking on limited topics, while extensive reading involves rudimentary (general) knowledge of various topics. For instance, if you are crazy about literature and fiction but scientific texts drive you crazy, you should spend most of your time reading fictional texts and occasionally read non-fiction. It helps you understand a diversity of texts. In
10. Practice, practice, and then practice some more
All of the above steps are effective only if you are consistent in following them. It doesn’t matter if one day you read for 20 minutes and another for 10 minutes. What matters is that you commit yourself to working on your reading skills and keep doing it until you ace it. Remember that practice makes perfect and repetition makes it permanent. Even if you are not in the mood to read a new topic, reread the one you have already read. Just do it!
That is the extent of this article on development of reading skills. If you are looking for ways to improve your general English you can read our article on “How do I improve my English skills very fast?”
Improving reading skills for standard international exams
One of the many requirements of job and university applications in foreign countries is an adequate proficiency in the English language, particularly if English is the primary language in your target country. The university or the company requires the applicants to prove their English proficiency by taking internationally valid exams such as the IELTS or TOEFL exam.
Reading is one of the four components of the IELTS and TOEFL exams which tests your understanding of English texts. What makes the assessment tricky is the time limit within which you have to read the text and answer the questions. This means that you need to have acquired the necessary reading skills as well as the test taking strategies to ace the reading component of these exams. For instance, one technique which improves your reading score for the IELTS or TOEFL exam is finding the keywords and connecting them in order to understand the entirety of the text.
Master reading skills all in one place with Ostado
Does the above information seem overwhelming? Do you think it is too much and you could use a hand? You are right! And if you are Ostado’s client you are ALWAYS right! But, all jokes aside, developing resultful reading skills that are applicable to various topics and different purposes needs supervision. Despite the abundance of the many self-study books and online resources, you still need a reading expert to monitor your performance and give you relevant constructive feedback. An English tutor can teach you the reading tips and tricks in half the time you need if you want to learn the skills yourself. Furthermore, reading tutors can introduce resources appropriate to your level, need, and purpose. Ostado’s online reading tutors are ready to teach you personalized reading lessons that help you achieve your goals.
If you are not sure about which tutor to hire, read “How to find the right tutor?” to make the right decision and get the most out of your tutoring sessions.
Why use Ostado’s tutoring service
Ostado’s tutors come from different countries and time zones. It means that our online classes are available 24/7. Also, since our tutors speak at least two languages at the native level, you can choose the ones whose first language is the same as yours. Tutors who speak your mother tongue can teach you complex concepts more conveniently and explain the similarities and differences between English and your first language.
The next reason to hire an online reading tutor on Ostado is that they offer very reasonable prices. Right now, our online teachers charge between $5 and $40 an hour, and the average tuition fee is $14 an hour. Our online tutoring service is available and affordable for everyone. Book a session right now and check out the quality of our online reading classes.
The significance of reading skill; conclusion
Your personal development, academic success, and career advancement all rely on possessing reading skills. The reading skills are not as easy to learn as one might think and there are lots of challenges in the way of becoming a fluent reader. I explained the challenges of acquiring reading skills and mentioned 10 time-tested and practical steps that can turn you into a reading pro. However, if you think it is too much, you can always get help from a reading tutor. Ostado’s tutoring platform provides affordable high-quality tutoring service and our tutors are ready to help you develop your reading skills at any level or age.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to learn English reading skills?
It depends on your language proficiency level. Given that you already know the fundamentals of the English language and you commit yourself to developing reading skills, it takes about one year to become a fluent reader.
Is it normal to struggle to read?
Struggling to read is common at the early stages of learning to read but if the problem persists despite your efforts to be a fluent reader, you should consult a reading specialist.
How can I speed read?
Speed reading requires extensive and intensive reading and it is achievable in the long term. By following the steps mentioned in the article speed reading emerges automatically.
