Last Wednesday, my teacher taught me how to read an English novel. Reading plays an important role in learning English, and a person’s reading competency indicates a person’s language ability. To improve reading, we should try to read for pleasure.

You may ask, how can we improve our reading comprehension as well as enjoy reading? Well, reading a novel will be a good choice. We should read as many novels as we can, but how can you read a novel efficiently?

First, choose a novel that you can read according to your English level. Next, choose a novel that you are interested in because interest is our best teacher. In this lesson, Wu Ruijie introduced four levels of reading from the lowest to the highest.

The first is elementary reading. It means understanding the novel and focusing on grammar issues. This is the most basic step that almost every person can achieve.

The second level is deeper than the first one and it is called inspectional reading. Besides understanding the meanings of the words, we should know what the article is talking about. We should find the main topic and the main points of the novel. You should try not to look up every word in the dictionary, and try to guess new words in the novel by thinking of its context!

The third level is analytical reading, analyzing why the writer wrote the novel. You need to find out the writer’s motive and what the author wanted to express. In our English exams, there are often these kinds of questions.

The most difficult level is syntopical reading. Above all, you classify the novels you have read and compare them to your own understanding. To fully understand a novel, before you read it, you should know the background of the author. That is to know the author’s life experience, especially his or her writing background.

Moreover, you should know the author’s related social experience. In addition, while reading, write down good words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs in your notebook to record what you have read. Keeping a notebook for reading is important as well. After that, summarize the novel you have read and write a book report or review.