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

The Chronicles of Narnia, according to one writer, is one of the few sets of books that everyone should read three times – in childhood, in early adulthood, and late in life. Many of my students have enjoyed the Chronicles, written by C.S. Lewis. They’re enjoyable and easy to understand for both intermediate and advanced English learners. And now an audio version of the Chronicles is available – free!

C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles

C.S. Lewis, an Oxford University professor, was one of the best writers of the 20^th century. Though he wrote many serious works, he is probably best-known for The Chronicles of Narnia – seven books written for children but often read and enjoyed by adults!

The Chronicles tell the story of several children who crawl into a wardrobe (similar to a closet) and discover the door to another world, called Narnia. In Narnia, animals talk, magic is common, and good fights evil. The seven books tell the history of Narnia, from its creation to its destruction.

In addition to the books, some of The Chronicles are available in movie form and, now, in a free audio version.

Free audio version of The Chronicles

An audio version of The Chronicles is now available free on the Internet. The audio files were recently released by Ancient Faith Radio for online listening or downloading as mp3 files.

They are read by Chrissi Hart, a British author and psychologist who lives in the United States. Even though she has a light British accent, the stories are very easy to understand.

I strongly encourage English learners to listen to – and even download – all of the books. There are 101 episodes, or segments, each about 25 minutes long. That’s more than 40 hours of great English listening!

Some Suggestions

Some people disagree about which of the books should be read first. I believe that reading or listening to them in this order is best – and most interesting:

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Silver Chair
5. The Horse and His Boy
6. The Magician’s Nephew
7. The Last Battle

Consider buying the books and reading the stories while you listen to them.

If you are a lower intermediate English learner, and the books or audio version are too difficult for you, see if you can find them in your language. If you read them first in your language, the English versions will be easier for you to understand.

See you in Narnia!

Warren Ediger

Welcome to the 2011 holiday edition of Something to read! Two of my favorite sources for online reading have just published their end-of-2011 reading lists, and I want to share them with you.

A reminder

If you’re a regular visitor to Successful English, you know that most of our fluency comes from what we read, so reading is the most important thing you can do to improve all aspects of your English.

To get the greatest benefit from your reading, find articles and stories that are easy enough for you to enjoy without stopping to look at a dictionary. You may not know all the words, but that’s not important. Keep reading, and let your brain do what it does so well – acquire more English.

Both of these lists are made up of longer non-fiction articles about fascinating people, events, and ideas. They will be most appropriate for upper intermediate and advanced English learners.

Give Me Something to Read’s 2011 Highlights

Every year, the editor and readers of Give Me Something to Read choose what they believes to be the best articles of the year. The 2011 Highlights includes more than 20 articles that were published in 2011.

If you want more, look at their Highlights from 2010 and the 2011 Greatest Hits lists!

Longform’s Best of 2011

Longform’s Best of 2011 list includes their editors’ choices of the top 20 articles from 2011 as well as the top ten articles in categories such as arts and culture, crime, media, money, politics, science, and technology.

Happy reading!

If you’ve been looking for something new and interesting to read, Give Me Something to Read and Longform’s 2011 year’s end lists are a great place to start – easily more than 100 articles. That’s enough to keep you busy well into 2012!

Warren Ediger

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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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Something to read – more than news, different than fiction

Most of our fluency comes from what we read, so reading is the most important thing you can do to improve your English.

To get the greatest benefit from your reading, find articles and stories that are easy enough for you to enjoy without stopping to look at a dictionary. You may not know all the words, but that’s not important. Keep reading, and let your brain do what it does so well – acquire more English.

Something to read is a monthly collection of articles and essays for high intermediate and advanced readers. They are more than news, different than fiction – longer, in-depth articles and essays about fascinating people, events, and ideas.

Something to read during August 2011

Not So Fast (The New Yorker) – Scientific management started as a way to work. How did it become a way of life?

Don’t Panic About the Stock Market (Wall Street Journal) – Investors who resist the urge to get out during rough times like this will be glad they did.

Origins of the debt showdown (Washington Post) – A history of the debt ceiling vote.

The man who stole the Mona Lisa (Guardian)

A Holocaust survivor raised a fist to death (Los Angeles Times) – Leon Weinstein survived the Warwas Ghetto. But it is the story of the little girl he wants to tell.

Mastering the Art of American Eating (The Morning News)

Greece in panic as it faces change of Homeric proportions (Guardian) – How much can a country change?

The 30-foot Jump (Sports Illustrated) – Will this record ever be broken?

Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952-73 (CIA) – The CIA’s declassified account of the two decades young officers spent as captives after being shot down over China during the Korean War.

Murdoch Hacked Us Too (New York Magazine) – News Corp. scandal already exposed just how thoroughly the company had corrupted Britain. Now it’s time to look on this side of the pond.

The Science and Magic of Beer (Guardian)

How to make a perfect lemon sorbet (Guardian)

Life on the Line (between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico) (New York Times)

What Were They Thinking (The New York Review of Books) – Why did America’s leaders decide to do what they did when they raised the debt ceiling?

The Cuban Grapevine (More Intelligent Life) – James Scudamore, a regular visitor, goes back to see how Havana is changing….

Train to the Roof of the World (Wired) – China’s new 1,200-mile railway crosses some of the harshest terrain on the planet. Plug in your oxygen supply. All aboard the Tibet express.

How One Man Hacked His Way Into the Slot-Machine Industry (Wired) – Rodolfo Rodriguez Cabrera didn’t set out to mastermind a global counterfeiting ring. All he wanted was to earn a decent living doing what he loves most: playing with electronics.

Los 33: Chilean miners face up to a strange new world (Guardian) – The triumphant rescue of the Chilean miners was shared with the world. But the transition back to normal life is proving difficult.

The Woman Who Fell To Earth: A Love Story (Stanford Medicine Magazine) – When Deborah Shurson stepped out of the Cessna 206 in 1982, her parachute failed to open and her family watched in terror as she fell to the earth. This is the story of the miracles that followed.

My Father Is an African Immigrant and My Mother Is a White Girl from Kansas and I Am Not the President of the United States (The Stranger) – The writer speaks to his Nigerian father for the first – and last – time.

What does the final shuttle flight mean for space exploration? (Guardian) – Two veterans of the flights talk about the thrill of takeoff, the view from above, and the next step for mankind in space.

Meltdown (Foreign Policy) – For the first time, Boris Yeltsin’s right-hand man tells the inside story of the coup that killed glasnost – and changed the world.

When Country Was King (Los Angeles Times Magazine) – Before Nashville was Nashville – the home of country music – Southern California served as ground ero for good old honky-tonk.

These articles have been selected from articles listed in The Long Good Read, Longreads.com, Give Me Something to Read, and longform.org.

Happy reading!

Warren Ediger

Practice (verb) – to do an activity, often regularly, in order to improve a skill or prepare for a test. “I need more practice” may be the most frequent statement I receive from English learners. How concerned should they be about practice?

Practice makes perfect … sometimes

What’s the truth about practice? If you do something often enough – especially if someone tells you when you’re right or wrong – will you eventually be able to get it right all the time? Or at least most of the time?

Well, yes, that works for some things. It works for learning mathematical operations:

• 2×2=4, 2×3=6, 2×4=8, etc.

It works for learning the periodic table in chemistry:

• H=hydrogen, Li=lithium, Na=sodium, etc.

It works for learning the presidents of the United States:

• George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, etc.

It works when I want to learn a new song. It worked when I wanted to become a better baseball or basketball player. It works, in fact, for many things. But does it work for language learning?

It might work if  language learning was the result of memorizing as many vocabulary words as possible.  And memorizing rules for putting the words together to make long, short, simple, complex, formal, and informal sentences.  And then practicing – using the rules to make sentences with the words until you get them right – especially if someone, like a teacher, helps by telling you when you’re right and when you’re wrong. But that’s not the way language works.

Using a language doesn’t depend on finding words and rules in our memory and using them to make sentences. Language is more complex than that. And the way our brains process language is significantly different than that. Some time ago I wrote a brief article – part science, part fantasy – called Inside the brain, that illustrates how our brains might process language.

A practice that works

Practice, the verb, has only limited benefit for English learners. Practice, the noun, in contrast, can make a significant difference in your English ability. Practice, the noun, refers to something you do often or a particular way of doing something. And there is an effective, efficient practice that will lead to better English – better reading, better listening, better speaking, and better writing.

The practice that works is what one researcher calls “natural experience with the language.” We acquire, or pick up, language, he writes, “as a by-product [result] of reading or listening that is done simply for pleasure.” In other words, the most important practice English learners can develop is the practice of reading and listening for pleasure. It is the one practice that we know works.

Conversation as practice

Most students who tell me they “need more practice” are talking about speaking, about finding more opportunities for conversation. Speaking itself might not make your English better. But participating in conversations can help. Here’s how.

Conversation will help most if you listen more than you speak. Remember, new language comes from input – what you hear and what you read. Conversation can be an important source of input.

When you converse with other English users, especially if they are native speakers, make it a real conversation. Talk about everyday subjects – family, daily activities, where they live, what they do at work, and things like that. You’ll pick up a lot of good English and you’ll learn how we talk about common subjects. Whatever you do, don’t ask them to correct your mistakes.

In addition to helping you pick up more English, conversation with another English user, at your current level of ability, provides other important benefits. It helps you become more comfortable and increases your confidence. Perhaps most importantly, it helps you begin to think of yourself as a successful English-user.

Final thoughts

More input, not more practice, is the key to better English. From time to time students write to tell me that reading and listening have prepared them to successfully use English without practicing the way we usually think of it. One recently wrote: [As a result of reading and listening] “when I’m in a face-to-face conversation with a native English speaker, words come out of my mouth automatically, and I don’t need to stop to think about which one I should say any more!” This is exactly what we would expect. The practice of reading and listening for pleasure have prepared him to use English with confidence.

Warren Ediger

Related reading: Speaking success | If I wanted to speak better English

References:  Krashen, Explorations in Second Language Acquisition; Truscott, Unconscious Second Language Acquisition: Alive and Well.