How to Improve Your Reading Comprehension Skills in a Language

There is no doubt that one of the most important skills to have in order to become an intermediate, or an advanced learner of a language is knowing how to read efficiently and well. Without going into too much detail about which classes I am currently taking this semester, I want to mention that I have had to read three novels in three different languages these past few weeks (in Spanish, Italian, and French). This has been one of the most challenging, yet most rewarding tasks that I have ever been assigned to do, but will admit that I was terrified when I first came to a realization that I would have to do so for more than five weeks straight.

Before this semester, I had never been asked to read more than sixty or so pages in any of my French or Italian classrooms, and had not read a novel in Spanish for over eight years. Could I truly understand the plots, the characters, and the action of three novels? Would I get them confused? Would I have enough time to look up all of the unknown words with which I had never come across? These were only some of the obstacles that I knew that I would face. In this post, I will give you three tips that will hopefully help you improve your efficiency and productivity when reading a simple paragraph, or challenging material in your target language.


1. Look up unknown words

A tip of which I cannot stress enough its importance is being willing to look up any unknown words, or phrases that you come across when reading. This; however, does not mean that you should look up every single unknown word, because that could ultimately lead to frustration, or to a lack of productivity. Instead, you should look up words that you have never seen before, or that you constantly see come up in your readings, but that you cannot remember their meanings. Once you constantly do this, you will start to see some of these words frequently pop up, allowing you to read faster and without having to pause after every other word.

When you look up new words, or phrases, I would highly recommend writing them down on a sheet of paper, or writing down their translations in your books (if you happen to read a book instead of reading something online, or that you cannot print out, or write on). If you own books, then you will have the freedom to write on them as much as you would like, so do not be afraid to take advantage of that. Many scientists have proven that the more times that you write something down, the better you will retain the information that you are trying to learn. I have found that writing, and rewriting words has helped me remember more words, and, in many cases, instantly. (Feel free to read my post titled “Using Google Translate for Language Learning” if you want to get tips on how to use Google Translate to help facilitate reading in other languages).


2. Read Out Loud

As the video above says, one of the easiest ways to improve your pronunciation in a language, and your reading comprehension skills is by reading a text out loud. Despite the fact that you cannot do this at at every hour of the day (especially if you are a college student like me and have a roommate), there is bound to be at least an hour throughout the day in which you are in your bedroom, or in another room alone and are undisturbed by others. When this is a case, you can practice this skill by making sure that you are enunciating and pronouncing vowels and syllables well, and by stopping yourself and rereading sentences when you are confused. This process oftentimes gives you more immediate feedback on how you are doing than simply reading in your head, because you are forcing yourself to stop, pause, and try to comprehend about what you are reading.


3. Start off easily and work your way up

The last tip that I have for you is to start off by reading easy, or beginner material, and to then slowly start transitioning to harder reading material as you feel more comfortable with a language. I would recommend to start off by reading baby or children’s books. I have found this to be extremely helpful, because that is the process through which I went when I first started learning English. As I got older, I started to read lengthier children’s books, then shorter chapter books, then more complex chapter books, and, finally, novels. It is most natural to start off with basic reading material, even if you feel that it is too easy, because it can more easily give you a confidence booster that you are capable of understanding little kids. Once you feel confident understanding basic topics, such as family, food, and colors, you can start finding more difficult material to read.

You should not forget to read material that is enjoyable and that you would find interesting in your native language when you have the choice to read for pleasure. I know that it can be hard to read something that is supposedly “easy” instead of trying to read about Einstein’s life in German, but, realistically, most of us are not capable of diving into difficult material without going through the motions, and slowly, but surely starting to read lengthier and more complex material.

As you can tell, there are many ways to improve your reading comprehension skills that are not very time-consuming and that are efficient. If you take anything from this post, try to remind yourself to read as frequently and as much as possible about a wide array of topics as early as you can. The earlier you start to consistently read, the more comfortable you will feel when you are asked to read novels like “Don Quixote” in Spanish.

Using Google Translate for Language Learning

As many of you know, I am currently a college student who is hoping to study three languages at the college level, which is a huge undertaking. There are times in which I wonder whether or not I will be able to understand a passage well, or read an entire novel in a foreign language without stumbling across too many unknown words. Thankfully, Google has a feature called Google Translate that has helped me make this transition much smoother and easier.

Before I explain how I specifically use Google Translate, I want to mention that it is by no means an application on which you should always rely. It will not always give you correct translations and sometimes creates more communication barriers and confusion than it will help you. On that note, if you keep this in mind and know how to use it wisely, it can be very useful throughout your language-learning journey. In my experience, Google Translate has been most accurate in Romance languages, specifically in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and has been very inaccurate in German. In most cases, when I use it for Russian, I can get an overall gist of what a paragraph or sentences mean.

How exactly do I use Google Translate to help me learn languages? This semester, I have used it to look up individual words, idiomatic expressions, and to type up full sentences to try and decipher overall meanings. If you need to look up words, it will give you most translations of them in bold, along with their synonyms. If you are wise and look at all of the words below the bolded words, you can easily tell which translation is the one that conveys the meaning closest to the word of you which you are thinking. Keep in my that online dictionaries that are made in the countries of your target languages will most likely be more accurate; however, Google Translate will help you in this regard most of the time.

Not all idiomatic expressions will be translated with this application, but most of the commonly used, everyday expressions will be translated correctly (I can testify to this because I am a native Spanish speaker, and have been impressed by its ability to provide you with correct translations of expressions that cannot and should not be directly translated from one language to another). Using Google Translate to translate full sentences or paragraphs can get messy, but it is possible. This semester, I have already had to translate many sentences from French, Italian, and Russian to English, and have found it a lifesaver. I often use this application to double-check the general meanings of sections of readings and to make sure that I am understanding the majority of what I read, as opposed to guessing and solely relying on my memory for comprehension.

Another important question to ask is: When do you know when you can trust Google Translate as opposed to when it causes you more harm than good? Generally speaking, you should have a good enough grasp on a language to know what sounds and is grammatically correct. Whenever I am in doubt, I type a sentence on Google in quotes to verify if it exists and if it used in my target language. For example, if I want to know how to say “thank you for your help” in Spanish, Google Translate translates it as “gracias por tu ayuda.” If you type up “gracias por tu ayuda” in quotes, many results will show up on Google in a matter of seconds, which confirms that it is correctly translated. If you know that a translation is incorrect, or is far from the actual translation by simply reading the translation that it provides, try looking up individual words or phrases by using trusted online language dictionaries, or by using the above method.

After reading this post, I hope that you learned how to effectively use a free application that Google provides for anyone who owns a computer, or a cellphone. Do not forget to download the application onto your phone if you think that you will need it, or benefit from it.