13 Proven Tips to Improve Your Reading Skills in English

Wondering how you can improve your reading skills in English? What if we told you that you could improve your English reading all by yourself.

You don't believe us, do you?

Follow these tips and you'll see. Let's get started. Check out our 13 proven tips to boost your English reading skills.

Don't Rush It

The first and most important thing about reading is not to rush it. It doesn't matter whether you're able to read two or six pages in an hour.

What matters is that you understand what you read. If you don't understand it clearly, read it once more or twice. If you think you don't have the concentration, take a break.

Use Audiobooks

Reading a book along with its audiobook can be quite helpful.

Read along with the narrator.

Depending on the book, if you read along with the speaker, perhaps you will have to read a little faster than you're used to. It can be a great way to improve your language skills.

Pay Attention to Common Words

If you are familiar with common words, you’ll find it easier to read anything.

The reason is simple. These words are often found in texts so you can revise them. 

Your reading will be faster and you will be able to understand the whole sentence, even if you don’t know every single word.

Focus on The Bigger Picture

You’ve surely had the experience of reading one sentence over and over again but still not understanding its meaning.

Instead of focusing on every word and trying to understand them individually, try another approach.

Focus on entire phrases. You don't have to know the meaning of every single word but to understand what those words mean together. It can even be more difficult for you because you are trying to learn every word's meaning.

In case that you can’t understand the sentence even this way, it is perhaps a sign that you’ve chosen a more challenging book and that you should consider finding the easier one.

Let The Context Help You

As we’ve already mentioned, knowing every single word from the text isn't proof that you are brilliant in reading and vocabulary. 

More important is to understand the whole context of what you are reading.

In this case, context can be your best friend and helping tool. Look at the words that are before or after the word you already know. You don’t have to know the exact meaning of the unfamiliar word but to pretty much have a clue what that means, especially in that particular context.

Don’t Translate; Imagine

Reading in English is challenging because, accidentally or not, you translate phrases to your native language in your head.

Don’t do that. Not only that it won’t help you learn new words, but it can also make more problems in understanding the text.

Instead, try to use your imagination. Let your brain picture vividly what you’ve read.

Think About Reading

When you finish reading, stop for a second, take a breath and think about what you’ve read. You can just think about that or you can explain to yourself (or the others) what you’ve just read.

This way, you’ll realize if you really understand the text and the whole point, or you need to read it once more to understand it better.

If you can’t explain what you’ve read, it means that you didn’t understand the text or there were too many unfamiliar words and phrases you couldn’t connect and understand from the context.

Practice Makes Perfect

It is simple. If you want to improve your reading skills in English, you have to read...a lot. Read anything near you. Books, newspapers, blogs.

Be Realistic About Your Goals

Before you start working on your reading fluency, you have to set realistic goals for yourself.

Being fast in reading doesn’t mean that you can only read quickly, but also that even if you read fast, you can understand what you’ve read.

So, how fast do you want to read? Can you understand what you’ve read?

Set particular goals by answering these questions and you’ll have your particular goals.

Use A Finger Or A Pen

Don’t think that only kids use fingers or pen when they read, nor that show that you are a slow reader.

It’s quite the opposite, actually. With the help of your finger or pen, you can read faster.

It can guide your eyes and help them focus on the part you are currently reading. Then, step by step, you’ll start reading faster and faster.

Compete With Time

How many words can you read in a minute? Or five minutes?

Set the time and start reading so that you can see how fast you can read. Compete with time and compete with yourself.

Set the time for two or three pages of the text. Then take a look at how many minutes it took you to read the text. But, don’t hurry. Remember, the point is to read and understand the context, not only to rush reading.

Don’t Aim Attention At Every Single Word

You don’t have to focus on basically every word in the text you are reading. 

During the reading, our eyes can catch several words at the moment. So, let your eyes do that. Let them catch even more words. Those are mainly some familiar, common words you know, words that are around you everywhere, even when you’re not reading, so don’t worry if you think that you might not understand them.

Don’t Read In Your Head

You probably know that feeling when you’re reading and the voice in your head reads along with you. But that voice isn’t as fast as your brain, so stop him.

Don’t vocalize, because the voice is much slower than your brain and it can slow you down a lot.

Give your best to tell that voice to stop. It may sound easy, but it isn’t. So, silence that voice so that you can read faster in a piece.

Reading is fun. You can learn and find out so many amazing things. 

And not only will you improve your reading skills, but you’ll also expand your vocabulary, understand grammar better, and be more confident while practicing speaking skills with English tutors.

So, don’t forget. Just practice. Read, read, and again, read.

Read anything that you find entertaining.

Follow these tips and you’ll improve your English reading in no time.