Reading To Improve Your English and What To Read

Why Should I Read In English?

Why should we read a book anyway? Shouldn't we be doing grammar exercises instead? Basically, no.

Reading is actually more powerful than studying grammar, this is because books contain grammar anyway! We can't use language without grammar and when you read or listen to correct English in context, your brain is studying grammar and vocabulary without you even realizing it! Reading is like a shower or a firehose of vocabulary and grammar hitting your mind and being practiced over and over.

The best thing to do is just to read without being anxious about looking up every single word in a dictionary, just get to the end of the book and then get another book! You should ideally understand 50-80% of what you read, if you understand 100% then the book is too basic for you, not understanding is actually a good thing because it means that you are acquiring more grammar and vocabulary.

Book Recommendations

Beginner/Elementary A1

You're starting to learn English, great! Children's books are what you need to read. But children's books are not long, they are short! So you should read as many as possible, at least 100. Try to find them for free on Youtube or online.

Children's books don't have to be boring, they can be very funny and creative. Here are three that I recommend to start you off.

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

This book consists of very simple sentences and has a very simple story, I recommend reading it out loud and trying to memorize some of the sentences by heart. I love this book, it's very funny, even if the ending is a little bit shocking. It's basically about a bear who has lost his hat, and he's trying to find it! Jon Klassen's other books are very good as well!

The Boring Book by Shinsuke Yoshitake

So this book Isn't really boring at all, it's all about what is boring and what makes us feel bored. If you read this, you will be one step ahead of my more advanced students who confuse -ed and -ing adjectives and learn the difference between bored vs. boring. Check out all the books by this author, Shinsuke Yoshitake.

How to Make Friends with a Ghost by Rebecca Green

This book is the most complex of the three and is an instruction book about ghosts! It has excellent illustrations and it's really fun to read. If you want to make friends with a ghost then try and find this book.

Remember, read as many children's books as you can, and try and memorize sentences from the books that you loved the best.

Pre-Intermediate A2-B1

For pre-intermediate learners I recommend any book by Roald Dahl!

When I was about 6 or 7 years old I didn't read anything except for books by Roald Dahl and there are enough to keep you busy for a long time. You could start with James and The Giant Peach which is an absolutely crazy story about a boy called James who grows a giant peach to escape his terrible Aunts.

You could move on to Matilda which is about a very smart young girl whose parents make her feel stupid. It's such a wonderful book and when you are finished you can watch the movie which is also good to get your listening practice.

Other great Roald Dahl books include: The Witches, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Danny The Champion of the World.

For more inspiration go to Amazon or Goodreads and type in 'young adult fiction'. Books written for kids who are about 6-10 years old are books that you want to be reading. I used to read a lot of Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine at that age.

Intermediate B1-B2

At the intermediate level you could also read a lot of Young Adult Fiction but increase the age range a lille bit and look for books written for kids older than 11 years.

If you're looking for something a bit different then I recommend graphic novels. The most popular graphic novel written in English is probably MAUS by Art Spiegelman. This book is amazing. The author's father was in a holocaust survivor and the book is about his father, who is now a slightly grumpy old man living in New York City, and his absolutely remarkable and tragic life.

The book depicts all the holocaust victims as mice and all of the Nazi German soldiers as cats and despite the format and the animal theme it can be very intense and sad but it is also a surprisingly funny book. The graphic novel, or comic, format will help you follow along with the story if you don't understand some of the vocabulary. It's the ultimate reading in context experience.

And as intermediate is a tricky stage involving people with different strengths in different skills, you might enjoy something easier from the previous section or something more advanced from the following 'Upper-intermediate' section.

Upper-intermediate B2-C1

At this level you have a lot of options for things to read. Something that I think is a great idea is to read an autobiography!

Autobiographies are great because they are usually written in an anecdotal format and, if it's a good autobiography you really get the feeling of listening to a person talking to you, as if that person is right next to telling you stories from their life! And they are usually written in a style that really suits your level of English, simple and clear, but not too simple.

An autobiography that I am reading at the moment is Dave Grohl's, the drummer from Nirvana and singer from Foo Fighters, I am interested in Dave Grohl. If you can find the autobiography of someone that you are personally interested in then this would be ideal.

Advanced C1-C2

Well, at this stage, you could read basically anything that you want!!

But if you really want a recommendation from me then I recommend 'A Confederacy of Dunces' I read this when I was at university and I learnt so much great vocabulary from it! It's about a guy called 'Ignatius J. Reilly' and his reluctance effort to try to fit into a world that he is just not made for. He's one of the greatest characters of all time and I absolutely love him. Pick this one up, but make sure you have a dictionary on hand and a notepad to write down any of the hilarious things Ignatius says, for instance: “I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

Final Thoughts

There's obviously a lot of stuff out there to read. I think one of the most important things is to pick a book that you enjoy and hopefully this video gave you some new ideas of where you can look for new material!! Some of my students like to read scientific articles and research papers, which is great. But I do recommend also reading the kind of books I mentioned in this article because they contain more natural language, closer to the way that people speak.

My tiktok subscribers recommended the following and I will try to organize them by level as well:

Pre-Intermediate

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Intermediate

Manga!

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Books by Colleen Hoover

The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Upper-Intermediate

The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Born A Crime by Trevor Noah

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Advanced

From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

Reading is key to becoming an advanced students, remember, teachers and students alike, we cannot get better at a language by only studying its rules, we need to experience the language in context as much as possible!