The problem of vocabulary in your reading-part 1

Gary (Presenter):
Hello. I don't know if you remember the moment you first realised you could read - I can't - but for the Argentinian writer, Alberto Manguel, it was a dramatic event.

One day, from the window of a car I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight couldn't have lasted very long, just perhaps long enough for me to see large and looming, shapes similar to those in my story book, but shapes that I had never seen before. And yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were, I heard them in my head. They metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid, sonorous, meaningful reality. Since I could turn bare lines into living reality I was all-powerful - I could read.

Gary: From Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading. This book is a wonderful
account of our love affair with written words, from the first known writing -marks made in tiny clay tablets over six thousand years ago in the Middle East -to today's electronic media.

The enjoyment of reading is the subject of this series, in particular, the enjoyment of reading books in English as a second or foreign language. We'll also offer strategies for improving your reading, and we’ll give details of how to contact us at the end of each programme.

Gary: We begin today with a discussion about what it feels like for students to read in English and how to deal with some of the difficulties. Annemarit van der Made is from the Netherlands where she graduated recently from the University of Technology in Delft. Hello

Annemarit: Hello. One of my earliest memories of books date back to my first school days, coming home, having a cup of tea while my mother was reading me a book.

Gary: Adrian Sack is a journalist from Argentina. Hello.

Adrian: Hello …I’m working here in London as a freelance reporter for one of
Argentina’s newspapers, La Nation. I’m also writing a history book in Spanish.

Gary: And our third guest is Jeremy Page.

Jeremy: Hello …I’m the Director of Studies at International House, a language school in London. I’ve written several English language teaching course books and I’ve also published poetry and short stories.

Gary: Adrian and Annemarit, questions for you first. What kind of books do you enjoy reading in English?

Annemarit: I enjoy several kinds of books. I like romances, crime, fiction and short stories. I recently read Joanna Harris books. They are novels and I think she is very good at describing scenery and personal behavior. When something very exciting happens I really feel like telling the character, don't do this or don't do that. I can be swallowed by the book.

Gary: What about some of the problems of reading in a different language? Adrian.

Adrian: Well, the two main problems are the lack of vocabulary and the trend to lose the concentration when I read for long due to the extra effort I have to make when I read.

Annemarit: Well, I agree with Adrian that it's more difficult to stay focussed on a book for example when you're tired and I am reading an English book it's more difficult to stay focused, and apart from that some writers use slang that I'm not familiar with, and when I read Jane Eyre - I read it recently - this book has been written 150 years ago and sometimes they put the words in a different order so that was interesting but it was confusing at times.

Gary: Let’s bring Jeremy into the conversation now. Jeremy, in your experience, do you find that what Annemarit and Adrian have described are typical problems for learners of English when reading in English?

Jeremy: Very much so, yes. The key problems that most readers experience are to do with unknown vocabulary and the length of the text. The critical issues are
selection of text in the first place - I think for most readers it makes no sense to choose something that you would never dream of reading in your own language, and secondly length is a critical issue as well, that it can be difficult to maintain focus and motivation. Generally speaking, texts up to 200 pages are fine, but texts longer than that require a degree of commitment that can be quite difficult to sustain.

Gary: What advice do you have for students for dealing with unknown vocabulary?

Jeremy: It's interesting that should be raised because at the moment I’m going through something similar with my son who is nine - who’s reading Harry Potter. He is coming across a lot of vocabulary unknown to him and what I’ve been suggesting that he do is try to make a judgement about vocabulary - words that he really needs to know, words that would be helpful for him to know and words that he doesn’t really need to worry about. For students of English, typically they will be accustomed to being told by teachers 'You don't need to understand every word.' In my experience students often look a bit sceptical when they’re told "you don’t need to understand every word" in the classroom.
When you are reading a text on your own, in isolation it can be difficult to come across a large number of words completely unfamiliar to you - but I would say
if you feel constantly in need of checking words in dictionaries the selection of text has been wrong in the first place. The text is too challenging it's too difficult. Going to the dictionary all the time, destroys the pleasure of reading.

Gary: Thank you. I’ll be asking you for some more advice later, Jeremy.
Now before this series began, we asked users of the BBC’s Learning English website to share their views on reading. And what stands out in their messages is that classic books - especially those written in the 19th Century - such as
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte and “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens
- are especially difficult because of the style and complex plots!
This view is echoed by readers in Moscow, where we go now.
Reading Group reporter Dasha Pushkova has been to the planning meeting of
an English language newspaper, published in the Russian capital. The editorial
team are discussing an issue about reading books in English.