Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 103 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great and I'm really excited for today's episode.
It's going to be a little bit of a special episode.
We're going to be talking about reading in English, and I chose this topic in particular because I also wanted to announce that I just published my first book, which is a collection of three short mystery stories.
And this book is meant for Spanish speakers who want to practice their reading in English.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about my new book And then I'll talk about some of the different benefits of reading in English.
So this should be a great topic for all of you.
And before we get started, remember that if you want my advanced podcast episodes, then you can become a Listening Time family member and you'll receive two new episodes every month.
And if you want to ask me your questions regarding English or language learning, then sign up to become a Listening Time VIP and you'll be able to ask me your questions every week and I'll answer them in a weekly QA session.
So the link to sign up is in the episode description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And of course, you also have the transcript available in the episode description.
So click on that if you need it.
And please remember to give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review, if you haven't done so already, and share it with anyone else you know who's learning English.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time!
Okay, so let's talk about my book and about reading in English.
So, as I already mentioned, I wrote a book which is a collection of three short mystery stories, and I wrote this book in English.
I wrote each story in English, of course, and then I translated each of these stories to Spanish.
And the way that the book is formatted, or the way that it's organized, is that each story is divided into small parts and you have the English part first and then, below that, you have the Spanish translation.
So, for example, there might be one paragraph in English and then below that you have the Spanish translation of that paragraph.
And so you can easily look at the Spanish translation underneath the English paragraph.
If you can't understand some new word or phrase, or if the grammar doesn't make sense to you, you can easily look down at the Spanish translation and see what it means.
So that should be very helpful, because normally it's a little bit annoying to have to use a dictionary or a translator and stop reading and then open up your phone or another tab on your computer or something like that and then look up every new word that you don't understand.
That can be a little bit tiring or not very fun when you're reading in a foreign language.
So in this way, with the way that I formatted this book, you don't have to do that.
There might be a few instances where you still need to look up the definition of a word or a phrase or something.
But for the most part, you won't need to do that.
You'll just look down at the translation and see what the word means, and then you can just keep on reading.
That's why I wanted to write the book in this way, so that you can easily read it, even if there are a lot of new words or phrases.
It won't be quite as difficult because you won't have to use a translator or a dictionary as much.
So I think that that will help you out.
And of course, I wrote these stories just by myself from my own imagination.
And I hope that you find them interesting.
I haven't published any stories like this before, so this is new for me.
But I hope that you find them interesting, like I said.
And I hope that, if you're a Spanish speaker and you've never read any fiction in English, that this could be a good tool to help you start on that journey.
I know that reading in a foreign language sounds very daunting.
In English, the word daunting means something sounds very intimidating.
It's a little bit scary because of how big or difficult that it is.
I know that reading in a foreign language might sound daunting to you, But I think that this is something that we should all want to do as language learners.
It's a great goal for us to have to start reading in our foreign language that we're learning.
And so I hope that this book can provide you with that entrance into the world of reading in English.
And of course I'm going to include the link to my book in the episode description below this episode.
And I forgot to mention that this is an e-book.
It's an electronic book.
It's not a physical book.
So you won't get anything delivered to you physically.
It's a book that you can read on a device like a Kindle, or maybe on your phone, if you have the Kindle app, so that you can read it there electronically.
This book is being sold on Amazon online.
So it's being sold through Amazon, Kindle.
I don't know if you've ever read any books with a Kindle before, but if you haven't, then this is a good first opportunity to do so.
So if you're a Spanish speaker and you're interested in that, make sure to click on that link in the episode description.
And if you're not a Spanish speaker, I'm sorry that I don't have this book translated into other languages yet, but maybe in the future I'll be able to translate it and have it available in other languages besides Spanish.
I'll definitely let you know about that.
All right, let's talk a little more about the benefits of reading in English.
So the first benefit I want to talk about is that reading in English is an input exercise.
So you might remember from some of my older episodes where I talk about language learning and input.
That input in the context of learning a foreign language refers to listening or reading in that language.
When the English or the language that you're learning comes to you someone else is speaking to you or you're reading something the language is coming to you.
This is input.
And the reason that I'm saying that this is a benefit of reading in English is that input, in my opinion, is the way that we actually acquire languages.
In my opinion, based on the research that I've done, based on other people's research and studies, and based on my experience as a learner and as a teacher, I can confidently say that input is the way that we actually acquire language.
We acquire language because we absorb it from sources, from listening or reading, and over time we become more and more familiar with the different elements of that language in a natural way, from what we listen to and what we read.
This isn't to say that speaking and writing aren't important, but those have a different function when it comes to language learning and language acquisition, primarily in my opinion.
We acquire languages for the most part from what we are listening to and reading.
So books and reading in English or whatever language that you're learning, actually help this process of acquiring the language.
It helps your brain absorb language. the language and become more familiar with it.
It helps you absorb new vocabulary, grammar, structures, all that kind of stuff.
And in particular, I'm talking about reading something that you understand.
So when you read something that you don't understand at all, it's really really hard for you.
Then you don't really get this benefit.
But when you read something that is comprehensible, it's understandable, even if it's a little bit challenging for you.
As long as you understand it, you're going to be acquiring knowledge, the language as you read.
So this is a really big benefit when it comes to reading in a foreign language.
As you all know, I'm a big proponent of spending a lot of time listening.
In English, the word proponent refers to someone who supports something.
So I support the idea of doing a lot of listening.
I'm a proponent of this idea.
I listen when I do my language learning and this is my main activity.
However, I'm also a proponent of reading.
So both of these two activities are extremely useful in the language acquisition process.
So specifically, let me talk about vocabulary.
So when you read something in your foreign language, that is understandable for you, but there are some new words mixed in.
This is a perfect opportunity for your brain to start to acquire this new vocabulary.
So one cool thing about reading books is that books often have a wider range of vocabulary.
You've probably noticed this.
When you read fiction or nonfiction, you might see a lot of new words that you're not familiar with.
And this is because when we write something if you've ever written a story or whatever you are focused on describing things in a more careful way than when you're speaking.
You're actually planning sentences, you're rewriting your sentences and changing words.
You're actually planning every word that you write down, and so, of course, we're gonna choose different words to describe things in different ways.
We're gonna choose a from a wider range of vocabulary to give more interesting descriptions and write more interesting and precise sentences for our readers.
So this is one cool thing about reading.
It exposes you to a lot of vocabulary.
And you might think that you already know a ton of vocabulary in a foreign language.
But when you read a book in that language, you usually realize that there are a lot of other words that you still don't know.
And you have the opportunity to learn them when you read these books.
So that's really cool.
And another thing in terms of vocabulary is that when you're reading a, you can easily re-read words and sentences to help you understand them better.
So, for example, let's say you're reading a book in English and then you come across a sentence that's hard for you to understand.
Well, you can pause right there and then you can read that sentence again.
By the way, the phrasal verb come across means when you encounter something.
So in this context I'm saying, you sometimes encounter a new word or phrase or something in a sentence and you can't understand it.
And then you reread it and maybe look up the translation of a certain word or phrase in that sentence until you can understand it again.
So when you're listening you tend not to do this as much, because it's harder to pause the video and then rewind it and think, find the sentence again and then pause the video and then look it up, look up the new word or whatever.
When you're watching a video or listening to a podcast.
This is a little bit more time-consuming to do that.
However, when you're reading, you just simply stop reading after that sentence and then go back and read it again.
It's really easy.
It's a lot faster to reread a sentence than it is to pause and rewind a video or a podcast or whatever, and then listen to it again.
So reading gives you that opportunity to easily repeat new words and sentences And, for example, with my book, you actually have the translation underneath the Spanish translation, of course.
And so you probably won't even need to stop and look up some new word with a translator.
You can just look down to the Spanish part, the Spanish translation, and see what the word is in Spanish.
And then you'll know what it is in English and you can continue on.
So when you read, you have the opportunity to repeat words and repeat phrases more easily.
And that's a big advantage when it comes to learning new vocabulary.
And another benefit of reading is that it helps your writing.
You might have noticed this that even in a person's native language, when they do a lot of reading, they tend to be better writers.
This isn't true 100% of the time.
However, this is generally true.
When people read a lot, they can write better. better than someone who doesn't read at all.
And that makes sense, because when you see a lot of sentences structured with correct formatting and everything, you absorb this and you can produce this on your own.
It makes sense, right?
So writing and speaking are different skills.
So you can be a great speaker and, but you might not necessarily write well and you might not necessarily know how to spell words well and use correct punctuation and syntax and all of that.
You might not be able to do that in written form, especially if you haven't done a lot of reading.
However, when you read a lot, you'll be able to acquire more of this.
You'll see the correct spelling of words.
You'll see the different punctuation, the different syntax, all of that.
And this is true for your own language and any foreign languages that you learn.
So when you read in English, it will also help you write better in English.
And as you might know, English is a difficult language when it comes to spelling.
And so this can be especially important when it comes to learning English, because I see with my own students that spelling is a very complicated thing for them.
So if you can start reading in English and do this consistently, spelling will become easier for you.
So that's another added benefit.
So overall reading helps your writing when it comes to reading in English or reading in your native language.
And one other great benefit of reading in English is that it opens up your world.
What do I mean by that?
Well, the world of the Internet is generally in English.
Of course not 100 but the majority of the information available to us in this world, when it comes to online information, is in English.
So if you need to read information on the Internet in English, if you need to learn something by reading articles on the Internet, or whatever it might be, it will be very beneficial for you if you already have experience reading in English.
This will make it easier for you to learn things online, read things, read comments on videos and things like that, even things that aren't quite as important.
You'll be able to do these things a lot more easily if you've practiced reading in English.
So it opens up your world to all of this information on the Internet that you can read, and not only on the Internet, but you can also read many different books if you can read in English, because So many books are written in English.
A lot of books that you might be interested in were originally written in English by American authors or British authors or authors from other English-speaking countries, and you'll be able to read these books in their original language if you can read in English.
So that's really cool as well.
And so your world will be opened to different books, information on the internet, all kinds of things, if you're able to read in English.
So that's another really cool benefit.
Alright, before I end, I just want to remind you that if you want my book, my collection of three short mystery stories, to help you practice reading in English, then you can click on the link in the episode description below this episode.
We'll be right back.
And if you like the book, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a review for the book on the Amazon page.
That would really help me out.
That helps the book reach more people.
So if you like the book, please consider leaving a review on the Amazon page.
That would be really helpful for me.
So I really hope that you guys like this book and that it's helpful for you and that it can be a good introduction for you to the world of reading in English.
And, of course, if you want my advanced episodes, then become a Listening Time family member and you'll receive two new episodes every month.
And if you want to ask me questions regarding English or language learning, then become a Listening Time VIP and you'll have access to my weekly QA sessions.
All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
