lollazzo Newbie Italy Joined 4490 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Studies: English
| Message 1 of 12 17 September 2012 at 2:50pm | IP Logged |
I want to read something in English.
Could you reccomend something to read and improve my English?
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5274 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 2 of 12 17 September 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
You need to tell us what your level of English is. Without knowing what your base is, it's difficult to advise you.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6609 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 3 of 12 17 September 2012 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
There are various types of reading, experiment with that.
As for specific books, my favourite way to choose one is just to come to a bookstore and read a bit to see if it's not too difficult. You can also simply choose what you've read in translation and would like to read in the original, avoid some difficult books at first though (like The Silmarillion :D).
In my experience, a book written in the first person, for example a biography, is a good choice. I've started a thread about that here, but unfortunately nobody's commented so far...
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lollazzo Newbie Italy Joined 4490 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Studies: English
| Message 4 of 12 18 September 2012 at 9:13am | IP Logged |
I have the PET certificate, level B1
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5274 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 5 of 12 18 September 2012 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
I recommend starting with something simple first. Grimm's Fairytales from Librivox.org for listening and reading. The language is not too difficult. The stories should be familiar.
For other reading I would also suggest The Jungle Book for Intermediate Students. It has notes and definitions of unfamiliar words. The Little Prince is also a good book for your level. The English audio and text can be found online as well as the Italian version Il piccolo principe.
As a native English speaker I am probably not the best person to advise you on this. One thing that I have learned through my learning of Spanish and Portuguese as second languages is that it can be difficult to search for things when you don't know the right words to enter into google. Here are the results I got by searching for "intermediate books for English learning"
Hopefully, someone who has successfully learned English as a second language can give you better advice.
Good luck with your studies.
Edited by iguanamon on 21 September 2012 at 4:32am
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Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4440 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin
| Message 6 of 12 12 March 2013 at 6:13am | IP Logged |
Someone's mentioned that the Hunger Games is an easy book to read in your TL because the majority of it is told in
first person singular... I'm still waiting for the Italian version to be shipped to my local library though.
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Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4651 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian
| Message 7 of 12 12 March 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged |
If you like detective stories, Agatha Christie's novels are written in clear, simple language, and they are relatively short. I would also recommend reading non-ficition, e.g. articles in newspapers and magazines like the Economist, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph etc. The most important thing is to read something you enjoy or find interesting. Whatever your hobbies are, there should be plenty of material out there in English about it.
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dgroves1522 Newbie United States Joined 4463 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 8 of 12 12 June 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
Kurt Vonnegut is perfect. He's one of the greatest English writers of all time, and he
is known for very simple prose, written as if he were speaking to you. His books are
simultaneously deep and funny.
The Slaughterhause-Five first. It's about an American soldier in WWII who comes unstuck
from time and travels back and forth along his live, cutting from one time to the next.
At one point he is abducted by aliens.
Cat's Cradle is his second-most famous book. It's about a scientist who creates a
crystal called Ice-9 which, when put into water, causes it to instantly freeze, and
which will destroy the world.
They're amazing books.
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