Reading practice

How can you improve your reading skills? Here are some tips that may help you:


1. News in Levels website: http://www.newsinlevels.com/

News in Levels updates two or three times a week. Each text refers to a news story. There are three levels. Level 1 is the easiest and level 3 is native-speaker. There are no questions. So what can you do with it?
a. You can listen to the story in level 2 or 3. How much did you understand? Write down what you can remember. Then check by reading the story. Check your spelling and your punctuation.
b. You can read one of the texts and copy it. You can copy it and remove the punctuation. Come back in five minutes and put the punctuation back: this will improve your writing skills. You can copy the text with some words missing. Come back in five minutes and put the words back: this will improve your reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation skills.
c. You can read level 1 and then listen to/read level 3. How much can you understand? What words are new? This will help you to improve your vocabulary.
d. You can look for other reports about the news item on the internet. Now you know the story, you will be able to understand more authentic texts on the internet. Maybe you can use the story to write a report expressing your opinions, or practise writing a formal letter in reply?

2. Practise using past papers. Those learners on Jobseekers courses need to study the Trinity exams. Those on Everyday English need to study the OCR exams. However, you can practise with Cambridge Exams. These will help you to improve your reading skills and your vocabulary. Click on Level 1: http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams/skills-for-life/how-to-prepare/ Try and do each paper within the time set (90 mins)

3. Complete the missing words in these Text Builder exercises:
https://elt.oup.com/student/result/engint/e_textbuilder?cc=gb&selLanguage=en
https://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile/intermediate/g_textbuilder?cc=gb&selLanguage=en

4. Read a "graded reader" book from the library. These are books which use easier language. Many of these books have comprehension questions and activities.

5. Complete a 10-minute reading test on: http://englishteststore.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=244&Itemid=353 Some of these are quite hard! If it's too difficult, try something more achievable: http://englishteststore.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33&Itemid=365