The maestro’s Monday spotlight
Welcome to your Monday feature in which you get a different topic each week, in the following order:
- Week One: All about reading (tips, interesting paragraphs to read and recommendations about books)
- Week Two: Vocabulary Blasts (word of the month, it’s meaning and phrases that we associate with it)
- Week Three: Pronuncation 101 (all about syllables, stress, long and short vowel sounds)
- Week Four: Grammar 101 (from rules to explanations)
This month: Read it as quickly as you can …
I’ve been studying Spanish so last year, for my birthday, a friend gave me a book – in Spanish. It was called ‘Eva Luna’ by Isabelle Allende . Unfortunately, the book she gave me was really difficult for me to read because the vocabulary was beyond my level. After the first two pages I was ready to give up – on the book and on Spanish – but I plucked up my courage and managed to read it in just over two weeks. I used a skill called ’speed reading.’
Speed reading courses teach you ultra-rapid skim-reading techniques. This may be useful for absorbing information at a superficial level. It’s not really suitable for understanding and retaining information. It’s unlikely to help if you are engaged in studying. BUT, if you’ve bought a book in English and think it’s too difficult for you, read it quickly and finish it.
Keep in mind the Woody Allen joke:
“I went on a speed reading course last week – and it worked! Yesterday I read War and Peace in an hour … It’s about some Russians.”
Here is the first paragraph of ‘Eva Luna.’ How quickly can you read it?
“My name is Eva, which means “life,” according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of these things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory…“,
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