There’s nothing better than getting lost in a good book during your summer vacation. However, when you choose to read in English, not only you are getting all the thrill and adventure, but you are also learning lots of new vocabulary and your brain makes links with the grammar rules you’ve learnt and the grammar rules it sees…
Reading for language learning purposes is a fantastic way to:
- Increase your vocabulary skills
- Support your grammar knowledge
- Learn at your own pace
- Improve your memory
- Help you think more in English
- Activate your creativity and imagination in English
So, if you are looking for great books to read in English, I’ve got you covered with these books recommended by English learners and teachers from around the globe.
Not sure how to best learn new vocab while enjoying your favourite read? I explain it in detail here.
Learning through reading/listening to stories is very different to memorizing facts. Brain scans show that stories activate both left and right hemispheres of your brain, forming neuronal connections between the factual and creative/experiential parts of your brain. Thanks to this, brain activity from story-based learning shows on scans for days, unlike in the case of regular memorisation. As suggested by psychologist Jerome Bruner, this impacts the long-term memory, making you up 22x more likely to remember facts that are given in a story. It is thanks to the powerful mixture of meaning, memory, and emotion that you remember things you learned through stories for so much longer than from plain memorisation.
However, there are things you need to know about choosing the right book that can do the magic…
To start with, reading will be nothing but frustrating if you don’t read on your level. If your English is not very strong yet and you chose a difficult book that is meant for native speakers, you are very likely to just get frustrated after translating every fourth word, not following the story, and feeling ‘stupid’.
Trust me. I still haven’t returned to my Spanish book purchased in excitement at the airport in Mexico City because of the recommendation of my native speaking friends. I had no idea what was happening in the book, it made me feel stupid, and now it’s been collecting dust on my shelf for years. Let’s be smarter than that!
Choose a book on your level. There are books called ‘graded readers’ which are written with language learners in mind, using simpler language adequate to challenge you but not overwhelm you on your level. You can often find your favourite stories rewritten in an easier to follow language.
However, my favourite graded readers books are: