Reading Tips

1.  Don’t read every word. Just the important nouns and verbs.

2.  Try to guess the meaning of some words from the surrounding words , pictures  and graphs etc.

3.   Know that the main topic/points  of an article  are in the starting sentences and last      paragraphs. and mostly at the start of each paragraph.

4.  Read all kinds of writing as in last post.

5.  Try to think what you can  infer from the text and what the author implies . ( more abt that later. It’s also called reading between the lines.)

6.  Don’t translate every word

7.  Don’t believe in everything that is written /  published /in a book or newspaper.

    Think of the author’s purpose of writing that piece. Does she or he want you to believe in something that is against common sense ? or giving you true or verifiable facts or just opinions ? or stating half-truths or total lies?  or trying to manipulate you in any way  ?

Lots of stuff that is written ( and said ) looks good and logical on the first read but read it a few more times and  it can turn out to be a lot of rubbish. Don’t make me give examples !  LOL LOL LOL .

8. Think how you can use the information read and how it affects you, your family ,your  country and the world.

9.   Read silently not aloud 

10. Try to put what the author writes into your own words.

11. Start from a reading level of difficulty that you are comfortable with. Not something too difficult or too easy.

12. Read what you like ,what you are interested in.

 

Some Books For Students To Read

Here is a list of books to read and enjoy . You can either buy them or go borrow them from a library  .

The list is rather eclectic which means it includes a lot of genres ( types) of writing,literature and topics.

If the original book is a bit too difficult for you , try to read an abridged version first or even one rewritten as a graded reader ( Lots of those graded readers at the British Council  reading centre in Mandalay)

Even though I am a teacher, I sometimes enjoy graded readers too because I can find out about the plot ( storyline ) very quickly.

Enjoy !

1.  Little Men ( Louisa May Alcott )

 Review :www.buildingrainbows.com/bookreview/reviewid/18

2. Lost Horizon ( James Hilton)

Review : http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/hilton.html

3. All of the Harry Potter books

www.harrypotter.warnerbros.com

4. The Adventures of Tin Tin   comics  ( Herge )

5. The Horse Whisperer ( Nicholas Evans )

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Whisperer

6. How to make friends and Influence people

( Dale Carnegie )

7. Brigdet Jones Diary   ( Helen Fielding )

8. The Da Vinci Code   ( Dan Brown )

9.  Anawrahta of Burma  ( Khin Myo Chit )

10. The Thirty Carat Diamond and other stories

    ( Khin Myo Chit )

11. Julius Caesar ( William Shakespeare)

12. Kim ( Rudyard Kipling )

13. The Jungle Book ( Rudyard Kipling)

Kipling also wrote the poem ” ( On the Road to) Mandalay”and made this city’s  name known all over the world as it has been taught in schools in many English speaking countries. .The words of the poem : http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mandalay.

 And please notice that Kipling is talking about Mawlamyaing ( Moulmein) not Mandalay . And the writer was a real to-the-core imperialist.The bugger probably never was in Mandalay.

14. The Old Man and the Sea ( Ernest Hemingway )

15. The Happy Prince  ( Oscar Wilde)

16. 20,000 leagues under the sea ( Jules Verne )

17. Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie )No abridged or graded reader version of this

18. The God of Small Things ( Arundhati Roy) 

19. The Lonely  Planet  Travel Guides

20.  Norwegian Woods ( Haruki Marukami )

21. Murder on the Nile ( Agatha Christie  ) Actually all the books are entertaining ! 

22. A Christmas Carol ( Charles Dickens )

23. The Burman ( Shway Yoe )

24.   She was a queen  ( Maurice Collis )

25.   7 Habits of highly effective people ( Steven Covey )

26.   7 Habits of highly effective teenagers ( Sean Covey )

27.    Reform and the Reformers / Herald of Freedom

          ( Henry David Thoreau)

28.   Empire of the Sun   ( J.G Ballard )

29.   Burmese Days ( George Orwell )

30.   Dracula         ( Bram Stoker )

31.   Original Short Stories   ( Guy de Maupassant )

32.   Memoirs of a Geisha     ( Arthur Golden  )

34.   Rendezvous with Rama  ( Arthur C Clarke )

Please write and tell us about any good books you’ve read lately.

But remember, you can also read anything and everything ,labels , signboards, menus, schedules, catalogues,brochures,magazines, manuals,newspapers,advertisements ,websites online  and even what’s written on T-shirts although most of it is meaningless ( I mean the stuff on T-shirts but you have to be careful about the rest too) 

Read in Burmese too. Buy books and have your own little library. Visit a bookshop buy the books first . Remember you don’t need to read them immediately. Read them when you’ve got the flu, plain bored,can’t go out for some reason. Books don’t need electricity to be read either. LOL LOL LOL.

These kind of books/topics  benefit everyone too .

(1)Management

(2) Psychology 

(3) History

(4) Travel

(5) General Knowledge

(6) Marketing

(7) Sociology.

( Biographies of famous people.

 (9) Collections of Detective / Mystery/ Horror stories

(10) Books and Articles About Myanmar ( Your own country ! ) 

(11)  Culture /Religion /Philosophy

OR ANYTHING THAT INTERESTS YOU !!!

Don’t buy textbooks that you will never read or more than one dictionary. If you need a dictionary, get one with a thesaurus (lots of similar meanings in it )

A language Activator like the one from Longman publishers is good too.   

 Make a list of all the things you want to read or find out about 

AND

if you can’t buy a book on a subject/topic that interests  that you , find that topic in Wikipedia ,print it out and read it later. Keep a file of everything too.

You know, I once read this somewhere :

” A person who doesn’t read is no better than a person who can’t read “

I think that is true

So,  if you are too LAZY to read anything else , you are always welcome to READ the posts in THIS BLOG regularly.

USL