Unlocking the Mystery of Poor English Reading Skills (Part 1)

<h2>Unlocking the Mystery of Poor English Reading Skills (Part 1)</h2><p>As an English teacher, the questions I hear most often from students and parents revolve around how to improve a student's English reading or writing proficiency.</p><p>"Teacher, how can I get my children to read more English books?"</p><p>"What is the secret to writing?"</p><p>"English is so difficult. I'm afraid of reading English books and don't know how to improve."</p><p>There are over a hundred ways to answer these questions, and I believe many people have heard responses similar to this:</p><p>"Actually, learning English is not difficult. As long as you are exposed to more English, such as watching English programs and reading English books, your English will naturally improve over time."</p><p>I have reservations about this statement, as I believe it is a rather generalized answer. Why?</p><h3>Common Misconceptions</h3><p>Just think, if you say to a child who refuses to eat vegetables, "Eat more! Vegetables are very beneficial and great for your skin and health!" do you think they will obediently comply and start loving vegetables? Or, for a K-pop fan who doesn't know any Korean, will they learn fluent Korean just by watching Korean dramas every night (in the original language rather than dubbed)? For someone who doesn't know Japanese, the Japanese characters in a book are like an alien language; no matter how many books they read—one hundred or one thousand—if they don't understand it, they simply don't understand it. Reading only becomes effective for those who already have a grasp of the foreign language's structure. Reading is input, and writing is output; if the input is incorrect, no matter how hard you try, you cannot output the correct information. Therefore, directly linking a person's reading or writing ability to the volume of reading or writing is inappropriate. We must distinguish whether a learner is capable of reading and identify what their difficulties are. Otherwise, it is just empty talk and will never lead to improvement.</p><h3>The Source of Reading Difficulties</h3><p>Reading is about comprehending an article, but people often overlook one of the reasons for reading difficulties: how exactly does the author behind the text write? Authors who publish books or articles in newspapers are, for the most part, authorities with specialized knowledge. How could they possibly use simple sentence structures or vocabulary? When the English proficiency levels of the reader and the writer are mismatched, conflict naturally arises. If you have a habit of reading newspapers, you will find that many paragraphs consist of a single, very long sentence. In other words, to improve reading skills, one must first understand how experienced writers use different sentence structures to express meaning; one must start with sentence patterns.</p><p>I have explained this many times in this column: English and Chinese differ in many ways. If students do not understand the true sentence structure of English, at best they can only mimic it like a parrot, appearing as though they understand while being unable to use it with ease. In the next issue, I will continue to uncover the various types of reading difficulties.</p><table><tr><td><p><strong>Teacher Rowena</strong></p><ul><li>25 years of experience teaching English to adults, A-Level students, and various student groups</li><li>Founder of the Double R Amalgam Method www.doubleramalgam.com</li><li>Author of the Penguin Buddies and Double R Kids-Professions series</li><li>Provided after-school support programs for secondary schools and developed senior primary grammar curricula using the Double R Amalgam Method materials from 2017-2019</li></ul></td></tr></table><p>EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION</p><p>15</p>