Well,if you have decided to spend more time reading to improve your language proficiency, I would like to suggest a few tips to help you get there:

Selective Reading:

Choose topics that help you find out more about what you already know. This way, you will only need to refer to the dictionary for the meaning of words rather than translating them first to your native language. When you are able to understand the meaning of the word without translation, your will to read is empowered.

Fluent Reading Means Reading At Your Level Of Language Proficiency:

Choose books that are written according to your level of proficiency. If you are not into literature or novels, it is perfectly alright. Many successful people in today’s society cannot even recite a verse from Romeo and Juliet. If they did, they might only have used the same verse over and over again just to impress their audience that they are well read. If you are interested in astronomy or wildlife; choose books that can feed and augment your knowledge not based on how bombastic the language is but how simply written they are to help you build your vocabulary faster and more effectively.  Work or read within your level of reading experience.

Practical Knowledge

If you wish to build vocabulary, surely the best way is to put into action the word itself. For instance, if I read the word ‘bake’, surely I can understand what it means by referring to the dictionary. But if I actually go all out to start baking, I will understand more of what the word does when it is put to practice. It would involve cooking food in an oven. You may also understand that how to bake all kinds of cakes and cookies. Taking one practical baking exercise to help you understand what ‘bake’ means is far more valuable than learning a string of words from a dictionary that explains what the word means.

For the sake of argument or further elaboration on how I see this tip really works, let’s look at a child 3 years of age. He can understand perfectly the difference between ‘sit’ and ‘walk’ without being shown how these words are spelt or written. When they start running around playfully in a classroom, the teacher tells them to sit down quietly. Perhaps it is the tone of the teacher’s voice or they might have heard the word ‘sit’ so often at home when their parents tell them to sit down for dinner. The thing is, we do not know all these vocabulary by reading alone. These words come alive by us working with them. Before we have learned to read, we have heard about them somewhere or use them somehow.

Read Simple Books Written In Plain English

Why choose to read novels when you can’t get past the first sentence? The famous martial arts Chinese actor turned Hollywood superstar Jackie Chan certainly did not improve his English reading Shakespeare’s novels or the American history. But they are knowledgeable in the sense that they did not stop reading about the topic they are already good at and build upon those knowledge to improve their language skills. The simpler the books you choose to read, the more books you will read.

Pay Attention To Pattern

Pay attention to how the words are used in sentences and what gives the words meaning in other sentences. In sentence like “The girl is interested in going to the movies with her parents.” Notice how certain words are used together like “with her parents”, “The girl is”, “interested in”. Work with patterns and groups of words, picking out the context and how the grammar is used. “The girl is” versus “The girls are’, singular versus plural. The sentence is simple but the knowledge is plenty.

Give The Dictionary A Break

Try not to use the dictionary as it may interfere with the joy of reading. If a book is well written, you can find clues to the meaning of the unfamiliar words as the story unfolds. Once you have finished a page and you are still not able to understand the first few words in the first paragraph, then you have picked a book which is not suited to your level of reading proficiency. Choose another book. Reading becomes less enjoyable if you have to be challenged to understand what every word means.

Read Continuously

Keep track of the story without having to stop and look up words in the dictionary will also help you enjoy reading. I have learned to ask myself this question when I come across a difficult word, “Do I need to know its meaning?” If I have to stop for just one word, I might end up not reading the entire book or finish that page. How important is that word with regard to helping me understand the rest of the story I am about to read?

‘Story’ and ‘Word’; I want to finish the story, I can look up the word later when I am done with the story.

Let’s compare this to watching a movie called ‘Narnia’. Unless you have heard about the story of Narnia, it is very hard to understand from the title what the movie is all about or what Narnia means. Yet for many of us, not understanding what the word means does not stop us from watching the movie from start to finish. In the middle of the story, mystical characters come to live. You are brought to a different dimension in time and place. The subtitles give no meaning to the word Narnia but by the end of the movie, you finally understand Narnia is a fantasy kingdom. Sometimes, it helps not to stop at an unknown word to find out what the whole story is all about.

Discuss The Words

There are many books written to suit an individual’s level of language proficiency. Books about gardening, cooking, health, language and travel are available for new and advanced English learners. Speak or chat with people about these topics in plain English and use this exercise to build your vocabulary naturally through your discussions. You will be surprised at how deep you can go with a few words by discussing them  with like-minded individuals rather than looking them up in a dictionary

“Would you come with me please?”

“Would you like to come with me please?

“Would you like to come with me to the work area?”

“Would you like to follow me to the work area?”

I find that I get the same response whether or not I use the word ‘Please’. In fact, if I drop the word please, it goes unnoticed and then child will respond just as well.

I watch children educational programmes Dora The Explorer, Diego, Hi-5, Barney or Blues Clues. There are no deliberate attempts to use the word ‘Please’ to get the viewers to stay tuned to the programmes. All the characters used in the programmes manipulates the psychology of the mind with speech modulations, articulations, graphics, songs and drama to edutain (educate-entertain) the child. There is no need to use the word ‘Please’ to get them to dance, sing along or play pretend. The power to move the child does not rest on this one so called magic word.

Would you like to try some? Please??

YET, when a child forgets to use the word ‘Please’, they get a quick reminder to rephrase and repeat. It happens all the time to children. Let me highlight 2 things relating to the real life experiences between a child and the adult:

You don’t always get what you want even after using ‘please’. My daughter wants to watch television after dinner at 6 p.m. and has asked me permission. My response has been “No dear, you have homework to do and school in the morning.” She wants to drink coca cola with her McDonald’s meal, she doesn’t get it. I saw a 3 year old boy who struggled with his mother who refused to let him sip his apple juice before he takes a bite off this burger. He stared at his mother who talked down at him, “Say please first.”

You don’t earn your respect from a child just because you say please. Some children are just boisterous and need a lot of room to express themselves.

“I want to eat now,” says the boy.

“How do you say it?” asks the mother.

“May I eat now?” asks the boy.

“No how do you say it politely,” the mother asks.

“May I eat now please.”

“That is better.”

There is nothing wrong with ‘May I eat now?” The boy knows no difference between saying please and not saying it. However, adults are apt to stretch children’s psychological development so much so they become egocentric at teaching a child to use the word ‘please’ in his request for favours. The child who has been rejected once or twice whilst he has used the word ‘PLEASE’ can no longer understand why he should serve the selfish desire of his parent to feel respected before receiving a harmonious response.

I used to think ‘Please’ is a magic word. I think it is probably only a word that reconstructs the psychological freedom path the child is walking on. If the child asks, ‘May I eat now?’ in a soft, comfortable polite tone, he should already be rewarded for his effort to express his wish in proper correct sentence. Anything more to correct it, will only lead him to question its relevance and the paradox becomes greater and more confusing.

Do you wish to build your vocabulary of foreign words in a matter of days or weeks? Here is a great tip.

When I showed kids candies before class began, they would wait in great anticipation. To get them to speak their first Mandarin words, I said, “我要。” as I held a candy in front of them. I only give it to them when they repeat the words correctly. It always work. In a matter of days, I encouraged them to start using “I want” for pencil, toilet, drink, sleep, ice cream and cartoon. In Mandarin, the word ‘to’ is redundant to express a want. In fact, ‘to’ has no English translation.

The Fear Of Saying “I Want” Will Not Get What You Want.

As we get older, we learn to use the word ‘to’ in different ways. We add the word ‘to’ and our sentences become “I want to eat’, “I want to play”, “I want to go out” etc. The number of wants escalates so quickly that we sometimes forget what we want in the first place.

Have you wanted to get back together with your girlfriend or boyfriend who has broken up with you? When you want to win your love back so badly, do you say, “I want you back.”? Or do you stare into the eyes of the man or woman of your love and whispered, “I want you.” You get the point. When you say, “I want you.”, it hits home a romantic note. Period. It is ‘you’ I want not anyone else.

Go For Your Goals, Raising Happy Kids.

Forget about ‘to’.

If you want to speak your first foreign word quickly, drop the word ‘to’. When you speak to a sales assistant in Chinatown, you may say to her, “I want to buy a necklace.” What do you think the lady is going to hear? You guessed it. “Necklace.” Not the word ‘to’. What do you want the sales assistant to hear anyway? Of course, “necklace” not ‘to’. No matter how you try to speak formally and rephrase you sentence, you still will want to make sure she understands you meant “necklace” not a ring.

How many times have we told ourselves that we want to cut a bad habit and never actually do it because we keep using the article ‘to’. I want to stop smoking. I need to lose weight. I want to go on a holiday. I want to sing. Does it always happen immediately or much later?

Lesson Learned

When I taught children to speak 3 languages by dropping the word ‘to’, they immediately become connected with the subject or object of their desire. It was easier to introduce new words. When they were shown a turtle, they pushed one another to get to the front row or stretched their necks to catch a glimpse. When they could not see, they would say “I cannot see,” instead of saying “I want to see.” Their actions speak louder than words. They pushed, jostled and stretched their bodies to show “They want to….see.”

“I want” followed by the names of things or activities automatically build up a list of vocabulary of words. If you do this for a week with a minimum of 5 things you want a day, you are guranteed to learn 20 foreign words in a week. Just by using these two words, “I want.”

Will this method work for learning all languages?

Yes. Just replace the “I want” + “name of things you want” with the foreign word.

Go For Your Goals, Raising Happy Kids.

If you turn to any page in a Chinese dictionary for names in Mandarin, you may not come across a name like Sugiarto or Gunawan. Honestly, it may not even matter to you now because you will never come across them in your part of the world, say the United States of America or Ghana.

There are many Chinese people around the world that are recognised by their races and faces that they are Chinese. Yet their names certainly do not sound anything Chinese. In fact, you might think they are adopted! For instance, the Chinese surname Lim is spelt as ‘Liem’ amongst Indonesian Chinese. This had been the case for many years when the Dutch administrators had tried using the Dutch spelling and pronunciation conventions to translate Chinese names. So you might have heard of the famous Liem Siew Leong, Liem Siew King and Kwik Kian Gee (Indonesian coordinating minister of economics and finance 1999-2000; minister of national development planning 2001-2004).

Do you know that David Beckham has Chinese characters inscribed on his body?

To be recognised as Chinese and not having a Chinese name can be a big deal for people in Asia. Those in Indonesia had never been allowed to speak, study or even display Chinese characters, cultures or traditions in public or even within their own private dwellings during the dictatorship of ex-president Suharto,. So from this group, emerged generations of Chinese Indonesians, who neither speak nor read Mandarin. To a certain extent, they have become quite creative with their names so it can be spelt and easily pronounced with the English alphabets.

Do you know that David Beckham has Chinese characters inscribed on his body?

It might also interest you that Chinese people who have embraced religions such as Christianity and Islam, have also adopted either Christian and Muslim names. John, Richard, Rickie, Anthony, or Desmond will be followed by the Chinese surnames. Or Mohammad Amin Teo or Azhar Tan. In Singapore, these Muslim converts are registered with the Majlis Ugama Islam and they carry with them an identity card bearing their Muslim names. So don’t be surprised when you meet a Chinese person who introduces himself as Mohammad Hassan or David Setiawan.

Conversely, many non-Chinese who are studying Mandarin, married to Chinese or have interest in learning the language, have the urge or need to translate their names to Chinese writing. At kindergarten, my teacher had already given me a Chinese name which I continued to use for more than 16 years throughout my education. The name was inscribed in awards and certificates wherever it was related to Chinese, like the Chinese Chamber of Commerce Singapore. My Mandarin name was also used in a newspaper article.

It is not as easy to translate names into Chinese names. There are millions of Chinese characters and each has a meaning and meaning is value. If you pick the wrong one, you might end up being mocked and misunderstood. After many years of using the same Chinese name, I realised mine is a funny one. See the first character of my Chinese is ‘Ha’ which literally means laugh. Students started calling me Ha Lao Shi which means Laughing Teacher or Teacher who laughs (like a lot.) It is nice, I get lots of laugh everyday thinking about it. I have started using a different though as they couldn’t pay attention in class everytime they have addressed me. Well these are pre-school kids, and I have lots of fun teaching them.