Keep up your English in the holidays! Reading

Summer is coming and I'd like to give you some ideas of easy and fun ways not to lose your English over the summer, apart from talking to all the foreign tourists your meet in the street! (Which is actually a very good way to practise your English by the way.)

This week we'll look at reading: people often think this is going to be boring, or you will have to check every word in the dictionary.

I say that it doesn't have to be boring if you read something you enjoy!

Reading is an excellent way to improve your vocabulary and also to get the feeling of how English is structured. You'll improve your grammar without noticing.

• If you're not at the level to read a book completely in English, you can read a bilingual book at your reading level. Here's a list to choose from.

• Some English-only books are great for non-native readers. This book is one of my favourites - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It's a moving story, written from the point of view of a boy with aspergers syndrome, who prefers direct and easy-to-understand language. (Great if you're not 100% fluent in English, right?) If you're a B1+ level, you can manage this book.

• You can also try some easy-reading novels such as the Da Vinci code: it's not great literature but if you lose yourself in a story, you won't realise you're reading it in English.

• If you are B2+, you could try one of my favourite autobiographies, The Glass Castle.

• Reading a book you have already read in French will make it much easier. When I was studying German, I read my favourite book, The Secret History, that I had already read many times in English, in German.

My top reading tips:

• Only use your dictionary for really important words - if you get the overall meaning of the sentence or paragraph, you don't need to look in the dictionary! Try to imagine what the word could mean before you check it.

• You are not at school: don't feel you have to read literature. If you don't feel like reading a book, read a magazine.

​Have fun reading!