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Usenet Posted 21 years ago
Learning

Improving my English

What must I be reading in order to improve my written english? On occassion, and my temperament willing, I do pick up the dailies. More frequently, I resort to a thorough study of word meanings from the dictionary. This happens when I come accross a word that is new to my vocabulary from a source such as television or random reading.

So, I do read some stuff, but I am keen on speeding up my progress. What are you guys reading, never to miss a beat?
Also, is it really important to read the newspapers? I find the language in the newspapers a bit modern for my taste, besides finding the news particularly boring and artificial. I've read Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and lots of poetry and seem to chime with the old school english. Regular attendance on online forums has rubbed off some Americanisms too, on my prose. I really want to pick up the best of both the worlds and evolve my own style.
Thanks for reading.
  

Top answer

[nq:1]What must I be reading in order to improve my written english? . [/nq] Few newspapers are good models for style, and almost as few worth reading for sheer pleasure.

  • [nq:1]What must I be reading in order to improve my written english?
  • .
  • [/nq] Few newspapers are good models for style, and almost as few worth reading for sheer pleasure.
  • The fastest route for the ESL student seems to be to find a class of literature he either enjoys or wants to read for professional reasons, whatever the language.
  • g.
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18 Answers
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[nq:1]What must I be reading in order to improve my written english? . . . Also, is it really important to read the newspapers?[/nq]
Few newspapers are good models for style, and
almost as few worth reading for sheer pleasure.
The fastest route for the ESL student seems to be
to find a class of literature he either enjoys or wants to read for professional reasons, whatever the lang
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[nq:2]What must I be reading in order to improve my written english? . . . Also, is it really important to read the newspapers?[/nq]
[nq:1]Few newspapers are good models for style, and almost as few worth reading for sheer pleasure. The fastest route for ... P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh are models of style. If he likes history, Simon Schama and Barbara Tuchman are models.[/nq]
Recommend
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[nq:1]Wodehouse and Waugh use some construction that is now considered archaic or dated.[/nq]
Such as?
[nq:1]I think I'd go with recommending non-fiction, and possibly in the biography or political areas. Less jargon, less slang, and usually rather vanilla style. Unknown references are usually easy to Google.[/nq]
I recommend Roundabouts of Britain by Kevin Beresford. Easily googlable
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[nq:1]The fastest route for the ESL student seems to be to find a class of literature he either enjoys or wants to read for professional reasons, whatever the language.[/nq]
As a non-native English speaker, I found "The British Museum Is Falling Down" by David Lodge rather easy and funny.
Bye, FB

Domanda: "Era il figlio di Iside e Osiride".
Risposta: "Thor".
(quiz televisi
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[nq:2]Wodehouse and Waugh use some construction that is now considered archaic or dated.[/nq]
[nq:1]Such as?[/nq]
Do you not accept the premise and expect me to search out examples as support, or are you just inquiring if I might know of examples off-hand?
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[nq:2]Such as?[/nq]
[nq:1]Do you not accept the premise and expect me to search out examples as support, or are you just inquiring if I might know of examples off-hand?[/nq]
I assumed that you already had a couple of examples in mind when you posted your advice. (I mean, if you didn't have any particular construction(s) in mind, why on earth would you make such a pronouncement?) Have you f
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[nq:1]I assumed that you already had a couple of examples in mind when you posted your advice. (I mean, if ... occasional racism, but the construction(s), like what you originally mentioned. But if you were just blathering again, I forgive you.[/nq]
OK, first paragraph of the first Wodehouse bit I turned up:

"It was Harold who first made us acquainted, when I was dining one night at t
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[nq:1]OK, first paragraph of the first Wodehouse bit I turned up:[/nq]
(snip)
[nq:1]My point is that this is not what I think is best recommended to an English learner that wants to improve his conversational English.[/nq]
In which case, your point is entirely irrelevant. If you look back a few posts, you will see that the question was:
[nq:1]What must I be reading in order to impr
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I dunno about "completely irrelevant". Change what I said to "written English" and the poster would have the same problems applying Wodehouse to what he might write. You would expect the poster to want to be able to write business and personal letters, and there's little he would gain from Wodehouse in this respect. Little, that is, compared to a more vanilla form of writing such as we see in non-
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[nq:1]McBain's books contain police jargon that can be misleading to the English learner. McBain's characters refer to their police station as the "One-six" instead of the sixteenth, for example. The uninformed reader might think we use that style for all numbers.[/nq]
I thought Carella and Meyer Meyer and those guys were in the eight seven?

John Dean
Oxford

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