LessonsReading for Pleasure
Monday morning found Tom Sawyer miserable... because it began another week of slow suffering in school.
—Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, p. 49
Life abroad can be a real drag. Your favorite programs aren't on television. Your friends are living far away—and probably asleep most of the time that you are awake. School is starting to get a little easier, so when your homework is done there's really not much for you to do. You could try reading. We don't mean the kind of reading you do for school, known as intensive reading. We mean, try reading for pleasure! This is called extensive reading.
To get started in extensive reading, you might like to try The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a classic story of growing up in a small town on the Mississippi River. While you read, do not worry if you know the meaning of every word. You can try to guess the meaning of words you do not know, or simply skip over them if they are not really important to understanding a paragraph. Only if you cannot understand the the entire paragraph or section of the story should you turn to your dictionary for help.
There are many good reasons for doing extensive reading. Here are some of them.
- Students can learn to become better readers by reading more.
- Given enough practice, reading comprehension will improve.
- Often, students with a certain level of ability in English can learn to read by extensive reading alone.
- Reading ability can improve as much with extensive reading as with intensive reading.
Try This!
Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. (To view the book, you may need to install Acrobat Reader.) Here is an audio recording of the story that you can read along with to help get you started. When you have finished reading, complete a book report recipe to show other students what you think of this book.