When you read to improve your English, you want to read for pleasure. You want to choose something that’s easy and interesting, that allows you to “get lost” in what you’re reading and forget that it’s English. But sometimes you must read to learn, for example, on the TOEFL exam. What do you do then?

Reading to learn

Many students read to learn by focusing their attention on the words and ideas and trying to memorize them by reading their assignments several times. One of my students told me that she read every chapter in her textbook 7 or 8 times to try to be sure she could remember the information for the test. This kind of reading to learn, which depends on what we call rote memorization, isn’t very effective. In fact, it doesn’t work well at all, especially when you consider the time and hard work it demands.

There’s a much better way to read when you want, or need, to learn. It’s based on a simple but important research-based principle: “we learn by solving problems….” Learning comes as the result of finding answers to questions, not by trying to concentrate on the facts. The only time rote memorization works very well is when we need to memorize something like the multiplication tables in mathematics or periodic tables in chemistry.

Mortimer Adler, who wrote How to Read a Book wrote this: “A good reader is active in his [or her] efforts to understand. Any book is a problem, a puzzle. The reader’s attitude is that of a detective looking for clues to its basic ideas and alert for anything that will make them clearer.”

How to be an active reader

Let’s use a paragraph from a practice exercise in Barron’s TOEFL iBT (2007) to illustrate how you can be an active reader. Take a minute to read it.

Aboriginal People – Although the first inhabitants of Australia have been identified by physical characteristics, culture, language, and locale, none of these attributes truly establishes a person as a member of the Aboriginal People. Because the Aboriginal groups settled in various geographical areas and developed customs and lifestyles that reflected the resources available to them, there is great diversity among those groups, including more than 200 linguistic varieties. Probably the most striking comparison is that of the Aboriginal People who inhabit the desert terrain of the Australian Outback with those who live along the coast. Clearly, their societies have developed very different cultures. According to the Department of Education, the best way to establish identity as a member of the Aboriginal People is to be identified and accepted as such by the Aboriginal community.

If I had to read this paragraph, here’s what I’d do:

1. Pause a moment when I see the title to ask myself“what do I already know about the Aboriginals?” Asking that question and thinking about for only a few seconds helps focus my attention on what is coming.

2. Notice that the first sentence tells me that the traditional ways we identify groups of people – where they live, their culture, their language – don’t work with the Aboriginals.

3. Ask two questions: Why don’t the tradition methods work? What does work? Now I have questions to answer, or problems to solve, so I scan the text, look for answers, and quickly find them.

One of the reasons I can be confident doing this is that the first sentence of a paragraph – called the topic sentence – is like a thesis statement for the paragraph and gives us the main idea; the rest of the paragraph adds supporting ideas. I’m using what I know about writing to be a better reader.

4. Discover that the traditional ways we identify groups of people don’t work with the Aboriginals because they’re too diverse (middle of sentence 2).

5. Discover that the best way to identify someone as an Aboriginal is to ask other Aboriginals (last sentence): “…the best way to establish identity as a member of the Aboriginal People is to be identified and accepted as such by the Aboriginal community.”

By asking the two questions at the end of the first sentence and scanning the rest of the text for the answers, rather than trying to read every word in the paragraph, I quickly discover the three key ideas of the paragraph:

• The traditional ways of identifying groups of people don’t work with Aboriginals (main idea).
• They don’t work because Aboriginals are too diverse (supporting idea).
• One way that does work to identify someone as an Aboriginal is to ask other Aboriginals (supporting idea).

Final thoughts

You may need to practice a while to become comfortable reading this way. But if you take the time to learn how to read actively, you’ll discover that you learn more in less time and remember it better.

Warren Ediger

References: Adler (1972) How to read a book; Krashen (2003) Explorations in language acquisition and use.

What is reading? Very simply, reading is trying to make sense of a sentence, paragraph, essay, article, or book. It’s trying to understand what’s in the writer’s mind. And the key to making sense of what we read is in the chunks – groups of words – not individual words.

You read more than you know

We read – try to make sense of – many things in life. We do it automatically. We read people’s faces to see whether they’re happy or angry. We read situations so we know how to act: we act differently at the scene of an accident than we do when we walk into a party with friends or into a cathedral during a religious service.

Trying to make sense of things is natural. Unfortunately, many try to do it unnaturally when they read print because they reduce reading print to only recognizing words. Let me give you an example.

Last year I asked one of my students if he had any trouble reading an article we planned to discuss. He said “no.” He told me that he knew most of the words and had looked up the few that he didn’t know. However when I asked, he couldn’t tell me the main idea of the article. For him reading was recognizing words, not making sense of, or understanding, the article.

Making sense of what you read – it’s in the chunks

Good readers do not read word by word. Why? Because meaning comes in groups of words, sometimes called chunks. And if you want to make sense of what you’re reading, you need to read – to recognize and understand – the chunks.

Let me give you a simple example; look at this sentence:

I left my iPhone at home when I went to the doctor.

This sentence consists of three meaningful chunks:

I left my iPhone (what I did)

at home (where I did it)

when I went to the doctor. (when I did it)

If you want to understand the sentence, you have to understand each chunk and how it works together with the others to describe what I did. You can’t do that if you are simply trying to recognize words. You have to be able to read – make sense of – the chunks, quickly and smoothly.

Developing the chunking habit

There are two methods you can use to improve your ability to make sense of what you read – and what you hear – by paying attention to chunks and not just words.

1. Read very easy books, stories, or articles.

You cannot make sense of what you read if you read slowly, word by word. This is especially true if you have developed the habit of translating English words into your first language while you read.

The best way to correct this problem is to read things that are very easy – that you can understand in English without using your first language (or a dictionary). As your reading speeds up, slowly increase the difficulty of what you read.

2. Listen and read at the same time. If you hear and see the text at the same time, you’ll begin to develop a “feel” for chunking. Again, begin with easy.

Today there are many good sources for reading and listening at the same time. Here are a few suggestions:

• ESL Podcast – subscribe to the learning guide and read it while you listen to the dialogue and to Dr. McQuillan talk about it (intermediate).
• VOA Special English – read the stories and listen to the audio at the same time (intermediate).
• TED presentations – exciting presentations on many different subjects by great speakers. Listen to the presentation and read the interactive transcript. Warning: some speakers have strong accents; avoid them for now (advanced).
• Academic Earth – try Dr. Paul Bloom’s Introduction to Psychology class; listen to the video and read the transcript at the same time (advanced).

Some of my students have used audio books and listened to them while they read the print version of the book. You can find audio books at many different levels of difficulty. Here are some articles to help you get started:

• The power of reading and listening
• Finding books for intermediate readers
• Helping battered English learners

Be patient

Developing a new habit takes time. Changing your reading habits certainly will. So be patient. As you begin to read faster and more smoothly, slowly increase the difficulty of what you read. But don’t try to rush it; it won’t work.

Warren Ediger

References: Nishizawa, Yoshioka, Fukada (2009) The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program; Smith (2007) Reading FAQ.

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“So what is good English?” asks William Zinsser. “…it’s plain and it’s strong,” he answers. “It has a huge vocabulary of words that have a precise shade of meaning; there’s no subject however technical or complex, that can’t be made clear to the ordinary reader in good English – if it’s used right.”

Better writing starts in the middle

Writing in English is different than writing in your language. I’m sure you’ve discovered that. And you’ve probably been frustrated by it. But what can you do about it? Where’s the best place to begin if you want to turn your writing into good English?

Good writing begins to appear when you revise what you’ve written. Revising – improving your writing by rereading it and making changes – is the heart of the writing process. And revising is the best place to begin if you want to turn your writing into English that is – in Zinsser’s words – “clear, simple, brief, and human.”

A strategy for revising

To help my students revise their writing, I’ve borrowed several ideas from a strategy UCLA professor Richard Lanham recommends to make writing clear and understandable. His method helps them focus on what’s important for good writing. And after they use it for a while, many begin to automatically include his ideas in their writing. You could do the same. Let’s try it.

Here are two sample sentences from one of Lanham’s books. You won’t find any grammatical errors in them. But at the same time, you won’t find – or you’ll have trouble finding – the writer’s meaning.

The history of Western philosophical thought has long been dominated by philosophical considerations as to the nature of man. These notions have dictated corresponding considerations of the nature of the child within society, the practices by which children were to be raised, and the purposes of studying the child.

Lanham suggests marking all the prepositions and forms of the verb to be when you begin to revise a sentence. Why? If you use too many prepositional phrases and if you use to be too often, you lose the strength of good English – short strong nouns and active verbs – and your writing becomes foggy. When you mark them, you begin to see how often you use them, and it becomes easier to find what’s important in the sentence.

Here are the sentences with the prepositions and the verb to be marked:

The history of Western philosophical thought has long been dominated by philosophical considerations as to the nature of man. These notions have dictated corresponding considerations of the nature of the child within society, the practices by which children were to be raised, and the purposes of studying the child.

Next, to try to understand a sentence, Lanham asks three questions: (1) What’s the action? (2) Who or what does the action? (3) Who or what receives the action?

Take a minute to look at the first sentence and try to answer the questions.

In the first sentence:

• “[P]hilosophical considerations as to the nature of man” do the acting.
• Dominate is what they do.
• “The history of Western philosophical thought” is what they dominate.

This helps, but there’s still a problem: What are “philosophical considerations as to the nature of man”?

Take a moment to think about it. Philosophy asks questions and considers, or thinks about, their answers. So if philosophy is considering – asking and thinking about – the nature of man, it must be asking this question: “What is the nature of man?”

You can also simplify “the history of Western psychological thought.” Lanham points out that the idea of history is already contained in “Western psychological thought,” it refers to both past and present. That’s the way you should write it.

When you put all these ideas together and connect them with our active verb “dominate,” you get this:

One question has dominated Western psychological thought: What is the nature of man?

Much better! How did we do it?

• We found and simplified the actor – “one question.”
• We replaced the passive verb – “has been dominated by” – with an active verb – “has dominated.”
• We simplified the recipient of the action – “Western psychological thought.”
• We identified the question – “What is the nature of man?” – and put it where it would be most effective – at the end of the sentence.

It’s your turn

Try it for yourself. Find something you’ve written and see what happens when you use these steps to revise it.

Remember, when you write, one thing is more important than anything else: making your ideas clear and understandable to your readers. You may be writing to explain. Describe. Convince. Or tell a story. But you won’t succeed at any of them if your readers can’t understand what you’ve written.

Warren Ediger

Reference: Lanham (2007) Revising Prose; Zinsser (2009) Writing English as a Second Language.

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Every English learner would like to speak fluently. And some have to. Most of my coaching clients, for example, are people who need to speak English fluently for business, professional, and personal success. Unfortunately, fluent speaking is often the most frustrating goal for English learners, especially those who live where English isn’t spoken. Happily, there’s a good way to improve your speaking – a way that takes time, but that’s too enjoyable to be called work or study.

If I wanted to speak better English

If I wanted to speak better English, I’d try to spend time with native English speakers. If I could sit and listen to them, I’d find what I was looking for. New vocabulary. When to use one word rather than another. How to pronounce words I’m still having trouble with. When to use formal or informal language. I’d hear how they use their voices to emphasize important ideas. And how their voices change when they’re angry, excited, or in love. In short, I’d pick up almost everything I need to speak better English.

“But,” you say, “I can’t do it. There aren’t any native English speakers near me or, if there are, it’s impossible to spend time with them.”

Yes, you can!

The truth is, you can spend time with native speakers any time you want. And it’s much easier than you think. Here’s how: audio books. If I wanted to speak better English, I’d spend as much time as I could listening to English audio books.

Dr. Frank Smith writes that

…reading [and listening] is a particularly powerful kind of experience, because it engages us – our mind or our brain – in a fully focused manner. When a book grabs us, we leave the everyday world around us and enter the world of the book. We are caught up in it.

And when that book is an audio book that includes people speaking English – and, for a bonus, a narrator describing what’s going on in the book – there you are in the company of a group of English-speakers. And all you have to do is sit back, enjoy the story, and allow your brain to absorb the English speaking ability you’re looking for.

If this idea is new to you

If this idea is new to you, take a few minutes to read a couple of important articles: First, The power of reading and listening makes the important point that most of our fluency comes from what we read and hear, not from what we study. And second, Using popular fiction to improve your English describes the special benefits of reading popular fiction, the bestselling books that everyone seems to be reading and enjoying.

Getting started with audio books

In Using popular fiction to improve your English, I described how to use bestseller lists to find good books. Once you find one, or if you’d like to listen to a book you’re already familiar with or you’ve already read, there are at least three good places to find audio books:

• Audible.com – an Amazon company – is a good place to find books to listen to and the samples are long enough to get a good idea of what the book will be like.
• The iTunes store is another good place to find audio books. Their samples are short – only about 30 seconds – but the prices of the books are often less.
• You can also find audio books at Amazon.com.

The AudioFile magazine web site is all about audio books! You’ll find samples and reviews of audio books as well as samples of the work of the best audio book readers. Let me suggest a few starting points for you:

• Best of 2010 – the best audio book readers, and books, for 2010. Scroll down the page to find winners in fiction, children and family listening, mystery and historical fiction, and young adult fiction.
• If you want to explore the work of one of the best readers, visit Don Hill’s page. A special thanks to Adrian, one of my students, for telling me about Hill’s work.
• Take time to explore the entire AudioFile web site. You’ll find a lot of good listening ideas, like All Ears! Audiobooks for Family Listening.

Using audio books

Be sure to choose books that are easy to understand. If popular adult fiction is too difficult, try young adult. If young adult fiction is too difficult, try children’s. There are many interesting young adult and children’s books. If you want help finding easier books, read Finding books for intermediate readers.

There’s no benefit to listening to something you have trouble understanding. When you choose a book to read or listen to, it should be easy enough that you can get involved in the story – and forget that it’s in English.

Consider listening to books in English that you’ve read and enjoyed in your own language. The first reading, in your language, will help you understand the English version. Another way to take advantage of what you already know is to choose books about a subject you’re already familiar with. One of my students, a law professor, began with John Grisham’s novels because they’re all about attorneys. His knowledge of law helped him understand and enjoy Grisham’s books.

Consider reading and listening at the same time. If you do, be sure that you get an unabridged, or complete, audio book. Some audio books have been abridged, or shortened. Abridged books are fine for listening, but they won’t work for reading and listening at the same time because some parts have been left out.

Warren Ediger

Reference: Smith (2007) Reading: FAQ

One of the best ways to learn something is to watch a master at work. William Zinsser is a master. While his books will teach you a lot of what you need to know to write well, his writing will teach you more. He deserves to be read – and re-read – by anyone who wants to write. This article, reproduced from The American Scholar, is a good lesson in essay writing.

I once got a call from a woman who said she was the editor of a magazine called Endless Vacations. Endless vacations! The very name gave me a thrill: a vacation that never stopped. I could be seamlessly whisked from a safari in Kenya to a Club Med on the Riviera to a temple dance in Bali. When I calmed down I realized that what was endless was the number of vacations being recommended by the magazine, not the vacation itself. But I was hooked.

The editor explained that a regular feature of her magazine was a 300-word essay, on the back page, about an iconic American site. She had seen a review of my book American Places, a journey to 16 such sites, and she asked if I would write some 300-word icon pieces for her. I said that after two years of traveling and writing I was through with the icon business, but that she could buy any of my chapters and I would condense them into 300-word excerpts. I believe that anything can be cut to 300 words.

The editor agreed, and for a while we kept that gig going. After that she again asked if I would try writing a 300-word piece from scratch. By then I thought it might be an interesting exercise. I only insisted that the site be close to home; I didn’t want to fly to San Francisco to write 300 words about the Golden Gate Bridge. The site I chose was Ellis Island, a mere subway and ferry ride away.

My only preparation was arrange an interview with Ellis Island’s superintendent; places are only places until they are given meaning by the people who look after them. I just spent a day walking around the site, taking as many notes as I would for a 5,000-word article. Nonfiction writers should always gather far more material than they will use, never knowing which morsel will later exactly serve their needs.

Here’s Ellis Island in 300 words:

Of the two highly symbolic pieces of land in New York harbor, the more obvious icon is the Statue of Liberty; the lady embodies every immigrant’s dream of America. But I’ll take Ellis Island—that’s an icon with its feet in reality. Almost half the people now living in America can trace their ancestry to the 12 million men and women and children who entered the country there. mainly between 1892 and 1924. “It’s their Plymouth Rock,” says M. Ann Belkov, superintendent of the National Park Service’s Immigration Museum, which occupies the distinctive red brick building, now handsomely restored, where the immigrants were processed. “Tourists who come here are walking in their families’ footsteps,” Belkov told me. “Three of my four grandparents first stepped on land in the U.S.A. in this building.”

Unlike most museums, which preserve the dead past, Ellis Island feels almost alive, or at least within reach of living memory. People we all know made history–American history and their own history–in the vast Registry Room, where as many as 5,000 newcomers a day were examined by officials and doctors and were served meals that contained strange and wonderful foods. Many had never seen a banana. “The white bread was like cake already,” says one old man who came from Russia, his voice typical of the many oral recollections that animate the building, along with exhibits displaying the much-loved possessions that the immigrants brought from their own culture: clothes and linens and embroidery, ornaments and religious objects and musical instruments.

Strong faces stare out of innumerable photographs: men and women from every cranny of the world. The captions quote them eloquently on the poverty and persecution that impelled them to leave (“always there was the police”) and on the unbelievable freedoms that awaited them here. One of them says, “It was as if God’s great promise had been fulfilled.”

Is there anything more about Ellis Island that an ordinary reader needs to know? The first paragraph is packed with necessary facts about the site: its setting and historical importance. It also contains an ideal summarizing metaphor (“It was their Plymouth Rock”) and a tremendous fact about American possibility: in two generations the granddaughter of three of those immigrants had become superintendent of the place where they “first stepped on land in the U.S.A.” The second paragraph fills the long-empty buildings with people–old-world men and women marveling at white bread and bananas—and with the belongings they couldn’t bear to leave behind. The final paragraph tells what kind of people they were–what they looked and sounded like. It also explains why they left the oppression at home to seek a new life in America.

The language is highly compressed. Facts are crammed into one sentence that I would normally spread over three or four sentences, adding rhythm and grace and some agreeable details. But nothing fundamental has been lost; the grammar and the syntax are intact.

My students tell me that this 300-word piece is unusually helpful. They seem to be taken by surprise by its economy–that so much work can be accomplished just by tightening some screws. But the English language is endlessly supple. It will do anything you ask it to do, if you treat it well. Try it and see.

You can learn more about writing and America by reading Zinsser on Friday every week.

Warren Ediger

Related Reading: Learning to write (a four-part series; follow the links at the end of each article); Better writing (a two-part series; follow the link at the end of the first article)

Better writing, part 1 emphasized the importance of developing writing competence – a sense, or inner feeling, for what’s right when you write. Writing competence is what guides writers when they write, but it isn’t enough. You also need a reliable process for getting your ideas down on paper or into your computer.

In Learning to write – from start to finish, I outlined a simple process for effective writing. If you haven’t read it, take a few minutes to read it now. You’ll get more from this article if you do.

This article consists of two lists. The first, from writers and researchers, describes good writing-process habits. The second is a list of the most common writing-process suggestions I give my students. Hopefully the two lists will help you evaluate your writing process and identify what you need to work on to improve it.

Good writers . . .

. . . take time to plan what they’re going to write and how to organize it.

. . . have a clear idea of their subject, their purpose, and their readers and keep it in mind while they plan and write.

. . . write for specific readers. Good writers ask “What do my readers need to know; what will interest them; what effect do I want to have on them?” Students, respect your professors enough to treat them like real readers; it’s usually obvious when you try to impress.

. . . stop from time to time to read what they’re writing, to make sure they’re saying what they wanted to say, to revise what they’ve written, and to change their plans if necessary.

. . . focus on their content – what they’re trying to say – while they write.

. . . wait to edit – correct grammar, words, spelling, etc. – until they’re satisfied with their content.

Things I tell my students

Be flexible. Each writing task will be different in some way – different subject, different purpose, different readers – and must be approached differently.

Outlines or plans should be like the North Star – they should keep you going in the right general direction. But they do not have to include all the details. And you should not be afraid to make changes in them when new ideas come to you while you write.

Not every essay must have three main points and  five paragraphs. What you want to say determines the number of main points and paragraphs and may be different every time. The five-paragraph essay is simply a convenient teaching tool.

Writing formulas do not lead to good writing. Another teacher told one of my students that the introductory paragraph to a TOEFL essay should always follow this pattern (underlined):

It is a widely held understanding that the purpose of education is to lead students what they are expected to do when they grow up and become social members. Some people argue that high school education is enough for students to live a successful life in a modern society. However, it is clear that getting a university education opens up a whole new world to students in terms of getting more valuable jobs and learning more specialized education.

The teacher was wrong. When my student ignored the formulas he had been taught and began to think about his subject, purpose, and readers, he immediately became a much better writer.

Final thoughts

Your most basic goal as a writer is to say something that makes sense to your readers, to help them understand. To do that you need clear thinking and clear writing. Clear writing demands competence – a clear mental picture of what good writing looks like – and that comes by doing a lot of reading. You also need a good writing process – and that comes by writing and paying attention to what works best for you.

Warren Ediger

Related reading: Learning to write – a series of four articles beginning with Learning to write – introduction.

References: Krashen and Lee (n.d.) Competence in Foreign Language Writing: Progress and Lacunae; Krashen (1984) Writing: Research, Theory, and Application; Zinsser (2007) Writing to Learn.

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What can you do to become a better writer? First, you can improve your knowledge about writing; and second, you can increase your ability to use what you know when you write. This article explains what you need to know and how to acquire it.

Writing competence

It makes sense: if you want to be a good writer, you need to know what good writing is. One writer calls this knowledge “a feel for the look and texture of good writing.” Another writes about having mental “images of what a text should look like.” It’s knowledge of the common practices used by good writers. And it’s called writing “competence.”

Writing competence is a sense, or inner feeling, for what’s right when you write. According to many writers, teachers, and researchers, writing competence is where good writing begins.

But where can you get this inner feeling for good writing? Fifty years ago, David Lambuth, one of America’s great writing teachers, wrote that the inner feeling for good writing comes from only once source: “wide reading.” He also wrote that “nobody has ever yet learned to write well by memorizing rules or trying consciously to write by them,” only by reading.

Brain Clark, a successful Internet writer says that he “learned how to write by reading obsessively.” Good writers know from experience what the research tells us: good writing comes from large amounts of reading, reading texts you choose because they interest you or give you pleasure. When you read, you informally pick up the knowledge you need to write better.

All good writers have done a large amount of pleasure reading. If you want to become a better writer, you’ll want to do the same. You can’t avoid it. You need to read enough to pick up, or acquire, that sense or feel for good writing. And if you want to continue to improve, continue to read.

Reading for better writing

Here are some things for you to keep in mind as you read:

• You acquire most of your writing competence the same way you acquire other aspects of fluency, by comprehensible input – interesting, easy-to-understand reading.
• Acquisition of writing competence happens subconsciously; you won’t be aware of it while you are reading or even after it happens. It will gradually show up in your writing.
• Improving your writing competency may require a lot of reading. The amount of reading and the amount of time it requires will be different for different people. Be patient.
• When you read, focus on the story or the ideas of the text. You acquire more when you forget that you are reading another language.
• Expect success. If you do, you will continue to acquire, and improve, as long as you continue to read.
• Think of yourself as becoming a member the group of people that includes the writers you read. Think of yourself as a writer or future writer. When you do, you will automatically begin to write the way good writers do for the same reason that children speak like their friends or favorite entertainers.

Writing in a second language – what about errors?

What about errors? How much should you worry about them? Many of your errors will be similar to the errors made by all language acquirers. They’re part of the process of acquiring a new language. Most of them will gradually disappear as you continue to read. Be patient. Keep reading.

Next time – using what you know

Good writers use good writing habits to put their writing competence to work. Next time I’ll describe some practical things you can do to take advantage of your new competence.

Warren Ediger

Related reading: Better writing, part 2; Learning to write (a four-part series; follow the links at the end of the articles);

References: Clark (2007) Five grammatical errors…; Krashen (1984) Writing: Research, Theory, and Applications; Lambuth (1963) The Golden Book on Writing; Zinsser (2006) On Writing Well.

MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology – a leading American university, has just introduced a new resource that will help students who want to improve their academic English.

Academic language development

Language development happens when you read or listen to language that you understand. So it should not be surprising to learn that academic language development happens when you read or listen to academic language that you can understand.

One of the best ways to make academic language understandable is to read or listen to academic content you are already familiar with. For example, if you studied introductory physics in your own language, what you already know about physics will help you understand an introductory physics class in English. If you listen to English physics lectures or read English articles related to introductory physics, and understand them, you will automatically pick up, or acquire, new academic English.

If you want more details about using this strategy, read the Related Reading articles listed at the end of this article.

MIT’s OCW Scholar

MIT has introduced a new series of courses – in a program called OCW (OpenCourseWare) Scholar – that makes this strategy even more attractive. Five courses are already available and more will be added in the months ahead. The OCW Scholar courses, which are free, are being created so people can study and learn from a leading university without going to the university.

You can’t earn academic credit by completing an OCW Scholar class, but the university provides everything you’ll need to complete each course and learn from it. For example, the Physics 1 class includes:

• a set of video lectures from popular MIT physics professor Walter Lewin
• a set of course notes
• a set of class slides (PowerPoint)
• homework problems
• homework help videos by Dr. Lewin to help learners solve the homework problems
• links to related materials on the Internet
• an online study group – called OpenStudy – where you can connect with other independent learners.

MIT OCW plans to publish 20 OCW Scholar courses over the next three years – introductory college-level courses in science, math, engineering, and other subject areas. The five courses that have been released include Physics I and II, Calculus I and II, and Introduction to Solid State Chemistry.

If you want to be informed about new classes when they are released, subscribe to the OCW Scholar RSS feed.

Don’t walk, run!

It is impossible to over-emphasize the value of resources like this and those described in the articles below for academic language development. If you hope to study in a university where classes are taught in English, you should begin to take advantage of them as soon as possible.

Warren Ediger

Related Reading: Prepare for the TOEFL at iTunes U; Better English for medical – and other – students and professionals; How to learn something (including academic English) for nothing.

Reference: New MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative Aims to Improve Independent Online Learning (NY Times).

The best writing teachers are writers who draw you into the worlds they create, worlds filled with the most important writing lessons you’ll ever learn. Joseph Mitchell is that kind of writer and teacher.

Not too long ago, I wrote that writing can’t be taught, but it can be learned. And it is learned – vicariously – when we follow good writers into their worlds and watch them at work.

Joseph Mitchell is a writer worth following. And if you follow him, you’re sure to learn a lot about good writing. Mitchell wrote for the New Yorker for more than 25 years – from 1938 to 1965. Even though the world he wrote about is largely gone today, you can still learn much about writing from Mitchell’s “effortless style, his organization of enjoyable information, his humor and his humanity (Zinsser).” And as a bonus you’ll learn about people and places in New York City that you’ve probably never heard of.

William Zinsser’s tribute to Mitchell contains several samples from Up in the Old Hotel, a recent collection of Mitchell’s works. Let’s begin with an early-morning walk through New York’s Fulton Fish Market. Notice Mitchell’s simple declarative sentences and the way he slowly points out one detail after another while walking through the market. Nothing fancy here, just good writing:

Every now and then, seeking to rid my thoughts of death and doom, I get up early and go down to Fulton Fish Market. I usually arrive around five-thirty, and take a walk through the two huge open-fronted market sheds, the Old Market and the New Market, whose fronts rest on South Street and whose backs rest on piles in the East River. At that time, a little while before the trading begins, the stands to the sheds are heaped high and spilling over with forty to sixty kinds of finfish and shellfish from the East Coast, the West Coast, the Gulf Coast and half a dozen foreign countries. The smoky riverbank dawn, the racket the fishmongers make, the seaweedy smell, and the sight of this plentifulness always give me a feeling of well-being, and sometimes they elate me. I wander among the stands for an hour or so. Then I go into a cheerful market restaurant named Sloppy Louie’s and eat a big, inexpensive, invigorating breakfast—a kippered herring and scrambled eggs, or a shad-roe omelet, or spilt sea scallops and bacon, or some other breakfast specialty of the place.

In The Bottom of the Harbor, Mitchell takes us on a party boat out into Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay to fish among the hundreds of sunken ships lying on the bottom of the bay:

Furthermore, [the hulls] are coated, inside and out, with a lush, furry growth made up of algae, sea moss, tube worms, barnacles, horse mussels, sea anemones, sea squirts, sea mice, sea snails, and scores of other organisms, all of which are food for the fish. The most popular party boats are those whose captains can locate the fishiest wrecks and bridle them. Bridling is a maneuver in which, say the wreck lies north and south, the party boat goes in athwart it and drops one anchor to the east of it and another to the west of it, so that the party boat and wreck lie crisscross. Held thus, the party boat can’t be skewed about by the wind and tide, and the passengers fishing over both rails can always be sure that they are dropping their bait on the wreck, or inside it. Good party-boat captains, by taking bearings on landmarks and lightships and buoys, can locate and bridle anywhere from ten to thirty wrecks. A number of the wrecks are quite old; they disintegrate slowly. Three old ones, all sailing ships, lie close to each other near the riprap jetty at Rockaway Point, in the mouth of the harbor. The oldest of the three, the Black Warrior Wreck, which shelters tons of sea bass from June until November, went down in 1859. The name of the next oldest has been forgotten and she is called the Snow Wreck; a snow is a kind of square-rigged ship similar to a brig; she sank in 1886 or 1887. The third one is an Italian ship that sank in 1890 with a cargo of marble slabs. Her name has also been forgotten and she is called the Tombstone Wreck, the Granite Wreck, or the Italian Wreck…. Several of these wrecks have been fished steadily for generations, and party-boat captains like to say that they would be worth salvaging just to get the metal in the hooks and sinkers that have been snagged on them.

That’s good writing! Simple declarative sentences. Adjectives that help us see, smell, hear, taste, and feel. Explanations or enough clues in the context to help us understand bridle and athwart. Like all accomplished writers, Mitchell takes good care of his readers.

Mitchell writes about a time and people that have past, but his writing is timeless. He will always have much to teach the would-be non-fiction writer who will walk with him through mid-20^th century New York. I strongly urge you to join him.

Warren Ediger

Reference: William Zinsser, Journeys with Joseph Mitchell (1993)

If you’re a mathematics, economics, or science student and want to improve your academic English, the Kahn Academy can help you.

Improving your academic English

It’s still true:

• The best way to improve your English is to read and listen to as much English as possible at your present level of understanding, or just a little higher.
• The best way to improve your academic English is to read and listen to as much academic English as possible at your present level of level of understanding, or just a little higher.

And it’s also true that one of the best ways to make academic English more understandable – and increase your ability to acquire, or pick up, more – is to read or listen to subject matter that you studied in your own language. Your knowledge of the subject matter will help you understand the English and, as a result, acquire new academic English.

What is the Khan Academy?

The Khan Academy is a collection of more than 1800 online videos produced by Sal Kahn. The videos cover a broad range of subjects, including algebra, basic arithmetic, banking and money, biology, calculus, geometry, chemistry, financial credit, economics, differential equations, finance, linear algebra, organic chemistry, physics, probability, statistics, and trigonometry.

CNN describes Kahn’s videos as “low-tech, conversational tutorials — Khan’s face never appears, and viewers see only his unadorned (simple) step-by-step doodles and diagrams on an electronic blackboard….” Each simple, hand-illustrated video covers a single idea or mathematical operation.

Kahn got the idea for creating the videos after a cousin living in New Orleans asked him to help her with some math problems. Other relatives asked for help, and Kahn soon decided that YouTube videos would be the best way to help more people. The videos became popular with many people – more than 70,000 people watch them every day – and Khan now spends most of his time preparing new videos.

Khan is the son of immigrants from India and Bangladesh. He earned a BS degree in mathematics and a BS and MA degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He also earned an MBA from Harvard University.

The Kahn Academy videos

Here are two places you can find the Khan Academy videos:

• The Khan Academy web site
• The Khan Academy on iTunes U

Warren Ediger

Related reading:

• How to learn something (including academic English) for nothing
• Better English for medical – and other – students and professionals
• Spotlight – great ideas and academic English delivered to your desktop