Lessons for better English is a collection of Successful English articles – organized like a textbook or course outline – for English students and teachers. Its goal – to help you improve your English by helping you understand and practice successful language acquisition.

Someone once told me that you need to know three things to successfully complete a project. You need to know:

• What to do;
• Why it’s important to do that; and
• How to effectively use the resources or tools you have to get the job done.

This collection of readings from Successful English explain the what, why, and how of language acquisition. And, as a bonus, I’ve added three stories that tell how different people have successfully used these ideas to acquire, or pick up, English and other languages.

   I. What you need to do

If you only read one article in Successful English, it should be The power of reading and listening. It clearly describes what you need to do to improve all aspects of your English – reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

 II. Why that’s important

Successful teaching and learning need a solid foundation. There must be good reasons for what teachers and students do. The basics, a series of short essays, briefly explains the theory and research behind the ideas you find in Successful English – why they’re important and why they work.

III. How to work effectively and solve problems

Even when you know what to do and why it’s important, you may still have questions. Here are answers to some of them:

• How does reading or listening to popular fiction help improve my English?
• How can I get the greatest benefit from my reading?
• Does correcting mistakes help me improve?
• How can I tell if my English is getting better?
• How to fight negative feelings about yourself and your English.
• Is working hard the answer to better English?
• What should I do when I see a word I don’t know?
• Why is English so difficult?
• How can I learn to speak better?
• I’ve worked hard to improve my English, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. What can I do?

 IV. Success stories

Case histories – the experiences of people or companies – are popular in many university management programs. Here are three case histories to encourage you and give you more ideas for improving your English:

• A group of Korean women
• A Brazilian teacher – part 1, part 2, part 3
• An American language teacher

Warren Ediger

There’s strong agreement among the writers, teachers, and researchers I know best: good writing comes from reading. Many students, however, have trouble accepting this fact. In this article – a case study – I describe the effect that reading has had on one student’s writing.

The path to better writing

Most of the students who ask me to help them improve their writing assume that I will teach them grammar, give them writing assignments, and correct the mistakes they make. They are surprised when I begin by talking to them about the relationship between reading and writing and insist that they set up a regular reading schedule. The writing assignments come later.

During the last year or so, I’ve written several articles about the important relationship between reading and writing. If this idea is new to you, I encourage you to read some of them. Here are three links to help you get started:

• The power of reading and listening - Describes the relationship between reading (and listening) and better English – a good place to start.
• Learning to write – introduction - Four articles that provide a good overview for those who want to become better writers; links at the end of each article take you to the next.
• Better writing, part 1 – Two articles about improving your writing ability and developing a good process for writing; a link at the end of the first article will take you to the second.

A case study: the effect of reading on one student’s writing

A case study – one student’s experience – does not prove a theory. But a case study can effectively illustrate a theory that’s already supported by a significant amount of research and the experiences of a large number of writers and teachers.

This case study describes the writing improvement of a student I’ve worked with since February 2010. A few days ago, he showed me an email he recently wrote to an American professor. In it he wrote about their first meeting and shared some ideas about academic research and publication. It was immediately obvious that the writing in this email was much better than his earlier writing.

I found an email he had written to me shortly after I began working with him and compared it with the one he wrote last week. They are similar: both are longer than most emails and the style is a little more formal, more like academic writing than the casual writing style you usually find in emails.

I marked the errors in both emails, counted them, and put them into three categories:

• Incorrect verb forms – correct verb, incorrect form or tense: for example, “Then I register(ed) myself at a regular English course for adults….”
• Missing words – for example, “For me (it) was really uncomfortable.”
• Incorrect word choice – for example, “I was studying to make (take) a test.”

In 2010 he made 1 error for every 12 words; in 2011 he made 1 error for every 21 words – almost 50% fewer errors. In 2011 he had 85% fewer verb-related errors (2 compared to 12) and made almost 60% fewer incorrect word choices (7 compared to 17) than he did in 2010.

In 2010, almost 25% of the errors gave his writing a native-language accent. They were errors that language learners make when they aren’t sure what to do in English, so they borrow from their first language (for more about this, see It’s not broken!.) There were none of these errors in last week’s email.

Finally, his recent writing was more sophisticated – it ranked higher on a common scale (Flesch-Kincaid) that measures the complexity and difficulty of academic writing.

What’s the point?

Since I met him in 2010, this student has never studied grammar, never practiced writing, and no one has corrected any of his mistakes. I’m sure of that because I’m the only English user he has regular contact with. He and I meet once a week to talk about articles and books that he has read and other interesting topics. We also talk a lot about how language is acquired, or picked up, and what he can do to improve his English acquisition. He has become very knowledgeable about language acquisition and uses this knowledge to improve his efforts.

Two things set this student apart from many other students. First, he reads almost every day and he reads (and listens) a lot – often two or more hours a day. Second, he thinks of English as his language and takes great delight in the time he spends in it even though his personal and professional lives are spent almost totally in two other languages.

When I sent him an early version of this article, he wrote back with two important observations: first, that reading and listening have helped him begin to feel very comfortable with English. Second, he writes: “…I’ve been writing without thinking too much about the words that I use; in that sense I am more focused on the message….” Doing the same things he does could help you significantly improve your English – and your writing.

Warren Ediger

Alex teaches English at an American university. He’s also the director of the university’s TESL program, where students learn how to teach English as a second language. When he wanted to learn Spanish, he began as many English learners do. And failed. He experienced success, though, when he applied a simple principle and found some creative ways to make it work.

Alex’s story

When talking about his early experience with Spanish, Alex describes himself as an “eager yet unsuccessful language learner.” He studied Spanish intensely for two years – learning grammar rules, memorizing vocabulary, being corrected by his teachers. But, as he writes, this kind of study leads to “knowledge about the language rather than the ability to appropriately use it.”

Alex says that this kind of instruction had a disastrous effect on his early attempts to learn Spanish. After all his work, he was unable to use Spanish and became very anxious about his lack of Spanish ability.

Alex’s efforts to acquire, or pick up, Spanish turned in a new direction when he learned that you acquire new language when you understand messages being communicated in the new language, not when you focus on rules.

He also concluded that his frustration with Spanish came from his anxiety, not from his lack of ability or failure to study. He came to understand that stressful teaching methods and learning conditions can make language acquisition difficult. And that anxiety can decrease your confidence and your desire to keep studying the language.

For Alex, success came when he began to apply this simple principle:

You acquire a language when you are exposed to input, or language, that you can understand. This input should consist mostly of language you already know. That way you can pick up new language from the context. If the language you read and listen to is too difficult, it increases your anxiety and makes it harder to acquire new language.

What Alex did

Since Alex loves to read the newspaper, he began the habit of reading an English newspaper in the morning so he could become familiar with the news of the day. Later in the day he read the news in a Spanish newspaper. Since he was already familiar with most of the stories from reading them in English, they were easier to understand when he read them in Spanish. You could do the same thing by first reading or listening to news stories in your language, then reading or listening to them in English.

Alex found most of his Spanish input in English books – books that he had already read – that had been translated into Spanish. He also read graphic novel versions of the same books. Since he had read the books in English – and seen all the movies many times – he was able to understand the Spanish versions of the books.

With everything he reads or listens to, Alex has a simple rule: if it’s not interesting, or understandable, stop! Find something that is.

Alex received oral – spoken – input from his mother-in-law, a native speaker of Spanish. He asked her about familiar topics, such as food, her childhood, politics, and the family farm. She was patient and willing to repeat herself and answer questions. Since she couldn’t speak English, all the input Alex received was in Spanish, the language he wanted to acquire.

What you can do

At the end of Alex’s story, he writes: “I have a life in Spanish that is almost as rich as my life in English. Although I have received little formal instruction, I have managed to acquire quite a bit of Spanish on my own … and I have enjoyed myself in the process. My hope is that … foreign language teachers and students will realize that second language acquisition can simultaneously be enjoyable and fruitful.”

Everything Alex did to acquire Spanish can help you acquire English. Even if you don’t have an English-speaking mother-in-law, you might be able to find someone who’s native language is English – a student or business person. Make a weekly appointment with them. Offer to buy them coffee or lunch and ask them the kinds of questions Alex asked his wife’s mother.

Warren Ediger

Related Reading: Frustration to success; Better English at Sweet Valley High

Reference: Poole (2011) The Monitor Model and Me: A story of successful adult foreign language acquisition. The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 7.1.

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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One of my students – let’s call him Bryan – recently asked me, “How can I be sure that what I’m reading (or listening to) is good for me?” Bryan wants to improve his English as quickly as possible, and he’s worried about wasting time.

A simple guideline

Bryan understands that reading and listening are the keys to better English. He’s been doing a lot of reading, and his English is improving. But he wants to be sure that he always makes good choices.

I gave him a simple guideline, or general rule, for choosing what to read or listen to; you can use it, too:

Read (and listen to) things that are easy enough for you to enjoy without stopping to look up words in a dictionary.

This guideline summarizes several important characteristics of reading or listening material that will help you acquire, or pick up, more English:

• You have very little trouble understanding what you read or listen to. It’s easy to comprehend, and that’s essential for language development.

• You read fast enough to pay attention to ideas, not just the words – you don’t stop to think about words, translate them in your mind, or look them up (unless they’re absolutely necessary for understanding).

• You enjoy what you read or listen to. It’s interesting, you’re relaxed, you get involved with it, and you always want more.

One more question

Bryan had one other question, one that is asked by many students: “What do I do about the words I don’t know?” My answer, in general, is to ignore them. You rarely need to know 100% of the words to understand what you’re reading or listening to. If there are too many unfamiliar words, it’s possible that you’re trying to read something that’s too difficult.

There’s another possibility. Many English learners allow themselves to become so distracted by unfamiliar words – they pay too much attention to them – that they miss the story or the real content of the article they’re reading. When someone does that, we might say that “He couldn’t see the forest because of all the trees.” Concentrate on the story or the content of the article, not the individual words. If you have to know an unfamiliar word to understand what you’re reading, look it up. Otherwise, keep reading!

Remember, every time you see a word, your brain accumulates a little more information about it. After you see it several times in the context of a story or article, you’ll be able to say, “I know it!”

If you follow the simple guideline I gave Bryan, your reading and listening choices will always be good, and everything you read or listen to will contribute to better English. Also, if you follow this guideline, you’ll automatically choose more difficult material as your English gets better, and your English will continue to improve – for the rest of your life!

Warren Ediger

Students at a well-known Japanese college of technology were frustrated. They had studied English for several years, but their English still wasn’t good. The school tried using native English-speaking teachers, language laboratories, and computer-assisted learning, but nothing seemed to help. To make things worse, students were bored with studying grammar and translating texts. Then the school introduced a program that changed everything.

Helping battered English learners

Battered learners are students who have had bad experiences in their second language classes. They haven’t improved as much as they had hoped. And they’ve been bored and frustrated by their class experiences even though they may have received high grades. When Dr. Jeff McQuillan introduced me to this concept a few months ago, he pointed out that these students need time to heal, to feel success, before moving on.

This is what Professor Nishizawa and his associates faced with their students. And they helped their students find healing and discover success by introducing a recreational reading program. This program, reported in a recent study, led to significant English improvement and helped students discover the joy and satisfaction of language acquisition.

Learning from the Japanese experience

We can learn a number of lessons from the Nishizawa study and other research on reading and language development:

1. Pleasure reading is the most effective, and certainly the most enjoyable, way to acquire language.

2. You have to be exposed to a certain amount of English, before the benefits of reading begin to have an affect. It takes time for reading (or listening) to work. In Nishizawa’s study, test scores began to improve after students had read about 300,000 words.

How much is 300,00 words? Two intermediate-level books that have been very popular with my students are Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor) and Kite Runner (Hosseini). Roll of Thunder contains about 65,000 words; Kite Runner contains about 110,000. You could read 300,000 words by reading 3-5 books.

How long will it take you to read that much? If you read for 30 minutes five days a week @100 words per minute, you will read 780,000 words per year. If you read 20 minutes a day, you’ll read 520,000 words per year.

Remember, the more you read, the more your English will improve.

3. Many students develop the habit of quickly translating between their first language and English when they read (or speak). This often happens, for example, when you have memorized definitions of English words in your first language. This habit makes reading (and speaking) difficult and robs you of much of the pleasure. It also inhibits, or works against, the process of language acquisition.

To break this habit, begin by reading very easy texts, texts that are almost 100% understandable without depending on your first language or using a dictionary. They should be easy enough that you can read 100 words per minute or even faster. After you break the habit of switching back and forth between English and your first language, slowly increase the difficulty of what you read.

Some students in the Nishizawa study began by reading picture books for English-speaking children, then moved up to storybooks for children and books for young adults. After that, popular adult fiction would be a good choice.

4. Another effective way to break the translation habit – and a good way to acquire English even if you don’t have the translation habit – is to listen and read at the same time. Try the ESL Podcast and learning guide, VOA American Short Stories, or VOA News. More advanced learners could use young adult or popular adult fiction along with audio books.

5. Remember that natural language development takes place subconsciously: you don’t notice it while it is happening. And you often don’t notice it for some time after it happens. Often you become aware of it only when someone says, “Wow, your English has really improved!”

Also remember that there will be flat times in your English development, times when you feel like nothing is happening. There will be other times when your improvement is more obvious.

Do you feel like a battered English learner? If you do, learn from the Japanese students. Find something easy to read. Read for fun. Read every day if you can. Read as much as possible. And let reading become a habit, a permanent part of your life.

Warren Ediger

Related reading: The power of reading and listening; Finding books for intermediate readers

References: Krashen (2004) The Power of Reading; personal correspondence from Dr. Jeff McQuillan; Nishizawa et al (2010) The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program.

It’s often helpful – when you’re trying something new – to hear how others have done the same thing. You pick up new ideas. You’re encouraged by their experiences and successes. And you learn that you’re not alone; others are trying to do the same thing you are. I hope these stories – about success speaking a new language – will do all of that for you.

Armando’s story

Armando is a young Mexican who works at a Jewish restaurant in Los Angeles. Armando speaks English well but, according to a Los Angeles Times writer, he speaks Hebrew even better.

How good is Armando’s Hebrew? The owner of the restaurant says that Armando “speaks Hebrew like an Israeli.” And four other native Hebrew speakers who listened to Armando’s conversational Hebrew described him as a fluent, comfortable Hebrew-speaker. Two of them thought he might have been born in Israel.

What’s most interesting is how Armando became so fluent in Hebrew. He did it by “observing and listening to co-workers and friends” from the restaurant. And that’s what we’d predict: Armando’s fluent Hebrew developed as the result of a large amount of comprehensible input – understandable Hebrew – in a relaxed environment.

Armando said that he had never learned to read Hebrew, never studied Hebrew grammar, and didn’t think about grammar when he was speaking. While he was acquiring Hebrew, he said that his friends at the restaurant helped him with vocabulary about five times a day, but not grammar.

Stories from Africa

Historically, many Africans have spoken several languages – their own tribal language, a European language, like French, and languages from neighboring tribes. A number of years ago, Eugene Nida, an American linguist, asked some of them how they did it. The answer was always the same: they listened.

Nida writes that “instead of trying hard to learn the language, they seemed to just take it for granted that after listening to the language for long enough, they would find that they could ‘hear’ it.” They were confident that their “ears and brain would take in the language” and that they would be able to understand and to speak sooner than they had imagined.

One more thing: they never worried about mistakes. They believed that their language would improve simply by more listening.

Adrian’s story

Four years ago Adrian, a Brazilian law professor, decided to learn English. He signed up for an adult English class but quit after a few months because he wasn’t getting anywhere. A Google search led him to discover the fact that changed his English experience: If I want to speak English, I need to experience it naturally, to listen to as much understandable English as possible.

Last year Adrian wrote that eight or nine months after he started listening, he met a friend from the class that he had quit. Without thinking Adrian said, “Hi, man! How are you doing? Long time no see.” They spoke in English for a minute or two, and then his friend asked him where he was studying. Adrian told him he was studying alone, just listening. His friend replied, in Portuguese, “I don’t believe you. Try another!”

As Adrian walked away from the conversation, he thought, “Wow! I talked in English without thinking about it!” And as he continued to walk home, he made a new resolution – to listen even more.

For more than two years Adrian listened without trying to speak. The first time he tried a lengthy conversation – with me – I was impressed. His overall fluency was very natural and he was able to easily move back and forth between formal and informal English. I was also impressed with his accent. His English had very little evidence that Portuguese was his first language.

Adrian’s story doesn’t stop with English. Since he began English in 2007, he has also acquired Spanish the same way – by listening and reading. His Spanish is good enough today that he has taken a leave of absence from the university in Brazil to teach at a university in Spain.

Your first story

Remember learning to speak your first language? Probably not. I wasn’t there, but I think I can describe what happened.

You began to speak your first language by saying … nothing. Remember that? From the time you were born you were surrounded by spoken language. But for a long time you said nothing. And everyone considered that normal.

When your parents and others spoke to you, they made the language as simple as possible. They used objects, pictures, and actions to help you understand what they were saying. And as they did, you absorbed – or acquired – more and more of your first language.

One day you did it! You said your first word. And everyone got excited. After that your parents probably talked to you more and more. They “fed” you as much language as possible. And as your language ability increased, they slowly increased the difficulty of the language – adding new words, more complicated sentences, and faster speech.

What your parents did to help you acquire your first language was to take advantage of your brain’s natural language ability – the ability to acquire new language from spoken language that you understood. And they gave you time to acquire the language you needed before you spoke.

Your next story

In each of these stories, there’s something that will help you find success speaking English. Let me summarize the lessons from the stories this way:

The only way to acquire the ability to speak English well is to listen to English. To listen to things that are interesting enough and easy enough that you forget that you’re listening to English – my first choice would be fiction. And to listen to as much as you can.

Warren Ediger

Related reading: If I wanted to speak better English

References: Krashen (2000) What does it take to acquire language? Nida (1982) Learning by listening.

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