In my first article I wrote about all four skills but in a too concise way. Today I want to tell you about reading and how to do it really efficiently.
Before we start I want you to do the next (in English, of course):
1. What is the last book you read? Take a sheet of paper and write down the summary of that book.
2. Retell on a sheet of paper the last movie you watched.
3. Retell the last book, its chapter or article on a sheet of paper.
You have problems with it - this article is for you. You have no problem - you can stop reading right now.
To be honest, reading is my favorite skill since my childhood, when I read in my native language. Why? Well, when I read a book nobody can make me see the content as he sees it, even the author himself. An author can only offer me to walk through his world. How to see it and how to perceive things of his world I decide by myself. My inner world is rich and during the reading a world of a book's author and my world are mixing. This mixing process produces the characters' appearances, the music and some views... Author can't describe his world in a very detailed way, he have to offer us, readers, to turn on our imaginations to see what we want to see. When you read Harry Potter there's such sentences in the beginning: "A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes narrowed." You read them and see... You don't see some cat on the black background and you don't see just a man, behind whom is the emptiness. Your imagination searches for more appropriate picture for these situations and draws them immediately. I see (no matter what the author saw here) the bushes behind the cat and even small rocks on the ground. Over the bushes I can see a part of Dursleys' house, which my Imagination painted in a comfortable stile for me. There are a dark blue color and a white line beneath its roof. If you watched a movie you see what a film director decided you have to see. With books such thing is impossible.
You can say that if you read a book after you saw a movie based on this book your imagination won't create your own views but will take it from that movie. Yes, it is true but not the whole true. Your imagination will be taking only those parts of movie which you want. The parts you didn't like much will be replaced with your own pictures.
You can like reading due to other reasons, of course. Maybe you don't like reading at all, but I wonder then why are you still here? What pushes you to read my article then, if you even don't spend your time with Joanne Rowling or Anne Rice, for example. Well, I think I can consider you as a lover of reading. At least articles' reader. For me and for improving you English it doesn't matter what you like to read, actually. It matters only that you can read and most importantly do it.
Now, how can we read to improve our English? The first and the most famous way - just read what you want and how you want. Most of us do this thing and don't change their attitude to this question, and I understand them very well. Let's see on this method of just reading, without any difficulties like retelling or discussion what you read. You read, your brain does some analysis, he sees some patterns, finds some grammar rules. Maybe, you even don't notice the work your brain does during the reading. Maybe, on the contrary, you understand that your brain does some analysis, but you don't believe in the results, because you can't see them. Well, I can only say that my brother never learned grammar rules of our native language, but he has always spoken and written correctly. He loved reading from early years and learned how to write correctly without learning itself. Thanks to the old norms, we were reading only correctly typed books. I have read in English for about two years and it helps me to write now without any dictionaries. So, be patient and know that the results of even just reading will make you happy.
If it is so easy why do we have to practice so-called efficient reading? Of course, we don't have to but we should try practicing this method anyway.
I noticed that my friends and coworkers have a lot of problems with such simple thing as just retelling the movie plot they have watched last weekend. This situation happened to me many times in my conversations with my fellows. My friend or coworker asks me if I watched a movie named "..." , I reply not and ask him to tell me what this movie is about. What I hear from them isn't a plot or a retelling - it's just a set of words without any sense. A lot of people can't retell or summarize even in their native language. Moreover, today I asked one of my good fellows about a movie he had mentioned. He reads a lot but he failed to answer this simple question. Yeah, he told me about this movie, but it wasn't a good explanation. I understood that I know this movie and if I really didn't watch it before I wouldn't understand what he talks about. That's why I am sure that it is so important to start read efficiently since now if you have the same problems with explaining things.
The efficient reading means a whole complex of acts you are supposed to accomplish before, during and after reading.
Before reading you can ask yourself: "Why did I choose this book or article?", "What do I want to find here?" If you read a book for a few days already you can ask yourself "Why am I going to read this book today?" Just talk to yourself a little, because you aren't a computer programmed to read and read and read. You have some specific reasons to do this activity. For example, I've finished The perks of being a wallflower today. When I got to the moment where Charlie meets Sam I was wondering would they date or not. This question pushed me to read slowly, with expectation, with hope for a happy end where Charlie and Sam stay together. All we have our own expectations, you should not hide them deep inside. Let them be opened and you'll see how it is more interesting to read a book with your own conjectures. It helps you to be patient and pay more attention to the details.
That's where your dialogue with author and yourself starts, when you ask questions. If you ask them and what is more important give answers to yourself, you are ready to focus on reading. You see more details, you pay attention to these details, you try to figure out why this character did this and don't want to do this. Your brain works.
To make your brain work better you can remind yourself before reading that you're going to discuss it after you'll finish a book. That you want to talk about your reading to somebody or to yourself. This reminding helps you to pay more attention to what is inside the book. You will notice more details and interesting moments. You will find facts and opinions you think are really exciting and interesting to discuss.
When you know that you will retell a story or a chapter to someone and nobody is forcing you to do that, you start feeling an urge to tell your interlocutor a little more. You want to tell him your own feelings and opinion about characters' behavior. You keep searching for some moments your friend will be interested in, as you think.
You can write out some phrases and sentences to search then their meanings, examples of usage and etymology.
If you answer these questions, if you remind yourself about the upcoming discussion or retelling, if you write out some sentences you will read more efficiently. You will remember more details, you will have more themes to discuss or retell. All this work with a text helps you to dive deeper in it and what is more important to extract more interesting moments for a good conversation. This method helps you to train your concentration and participation.
After you finished today's reading you have to do the most difficult thing of this method. You have to retell what you have read. Actually you have three options here and you can interchange them during the week. The first one is the holy Retelling itself. The second is the important in any studyings and jobs Summarizing. The last one is the Discussion with a friend or with yourself since we speak about learning on our own. This is the most difficult part of your reading because it is something you don't have to do. It is something nobody forces you to do, you decides to cover this part by yourself. It is something that makes your brain work but we know that the brain is the most lazy organ of our body. He resists anything that can be considering as a work. That's why you have to accomplish this last part to say: "I am done with this method for today." If you have a limited time you can refuse the work before and during the reading but you can't ignore the last part.
If you managed to make it you habit you are a really tough person. Just keep improving the efficient reading and you'll notice how English becomes your second language. It is inevitable result, just don't give up. Don't say: "This method doesn't work." Try it for one hundred days to a row and then if it doesn't work for you immediately start a new method. It is called "My daily efforts". It means that you have to do your efforts every day without any stops. If something goes wrong, doesn't work, if there is something you hate to do you can replace it with something else. But keep going and don't forget that the Laziness can impersonate anything. You can think that you are tired but it is Laziness. You can think that some methods don't work or aren't so important but it is Laziness. You can think that you have no time for this method, but then you turn on the TV or watch YouTube or scroll VK for hours... And what do you think it is? Yep, it's Laziness.
So, be careful and have a critical, clear thinking on your learning way. Just try this method for a couple of months at least and then you'll be able to say if it suits you or not. You can't blame the method, you can only decide if it is good for you or not. But to understand it you have to try it for a while because as it was said by one of my friends: "Only a practitioner can understand."