Reading to Improve Your Second Language

By Andrea Lopez

Being born Latina but raised in the U.S. has always meant awkward things for my Spanish. Since it was my first language as a child, my pronunciation is native-like, but my grammar was stuck in 4th grade until the beginning of college. I knew FSU’s campus wouldn’t lend itself to the immersive Spanish-speaking environment of a European study abroad experience, so I created one for myself with books. After all, literature is the original time and space traveler for any reader looking to escape or learn something new. If you, too, are trying to improve a second language, maybe these techniques will work for you!

Think back to your first reading experiences

Take yourself back to kindergarten. How did you first learn how to read? My English reading journey began with short books and big texts, entertaining stories with a tangible concept. While you don’t need to go as far back as Little Red Riding Hood, you want easy and digestible stories with a plot you could explain to a friend if you had to. In primary school, you began using dictionaries to define key vocabulary, and by junior high, had practiced context clues and close reading. Find your favorite dictionary app and do it all again. While the timeline may be truncated, mimic the reading journey you’ve already lived with your first language. Summarize your knowledge after each chapter, take frequent breaks, and set a pace with your old skeleton schedule.

What you read matters

Although it may be tempting, don’t start with the classics. If you’re a Spanish beginner, steer away from Don Quixote and anything by Isabel Allende (a master of story but also of complicated language). In fact, Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, is considered the Shakespeare of his language. You wouldn’t start reading Macbeth straight out the gate, would you? When deciding which books to begin with, choose more recent publications, preferably written within the last decade or so. The language and context will be more familiar to you. A page count of approximately 200 is ideal.

Although it pained my mystery-thriller-loving heart, my second reading journey started with Spanish rom-coms, simply because the genre and its tropes were most familiar to me. I didn’t want to overwhelm my brain by trying to decipher the ending of a complicated mystery in addition to deciphering its language. For this reason, I suggest genres and tropes that are most familiar to you: romance, adventure, YA, etc. If you’re a Spanish learner who wants to up the ante, magical realism stifles even the best native speakers (Isabel Allende and I learned the hard way). A good rule of thumb is if you can understand the dust jacket synopsis of a story and only having to define a word or two, you’re in the clear. Be sure to use your judgment: if you feel you’ve been stuck on the first page or chapter for too long, pick up another book! No shame.

Choose a country and stick to it

Take English, for example. It is spoken in the U.K, U.S., and Australia, to name a few. Yet, the American word for zucchini is not the same as its U.K. counterpart, courgette. Other languages like Portuguese work similarly in the sense that they spawn different dialects depending on the country, region, or even community of speakers. Portuguese in Brazil is quite distinct from Portuguese in Portugal. Dedicating yourself to one dialect at a time is a more efficient way of learning as much about colloquialisms, slang, and street language as possible, making you a more contemporary and well-rounded speaker.

In my case, I found South American Spanish to be closest to my Caribbean Spanish, and thus easiest for me to learn. So, I started by reading the debut romance novels of Venezuelan author María Paulina Camejo: Beatriz decidió no casarse and Los complicados amores de las hermanas Valverde. As I improved in my comprehension and speed, I challenged myself with new dialects. Currently, the Spanish dialect in Ana Álvarez’s Dos cafes y una aventura is the most challenging to date. Do your research and see how many dialects your second language may have.

Closing the book

In closing, language input is just as important for learning as language output. There’s no need to hire a tutor or scrounge for a plane ticket to your second language’s country of origin, simply crack open the spine of any book of your choosing. Not only is reading in your second language just as immersive, but the visual input it provides allows you to spend time with the words and take special notice of the grammar. All my life I have understood the rapid-fire Spanish of my grandmother, but it wasn’t until I started reading that I could begin to answer her back.

Andrea Lopez is an editorial assistant for the nonfiction section of The Kudzu Review, and was previously assistant poetry editor. She studied abroad in Spain this past summer and served as a program assistant. In her free time, she loves to read and travel. She hopes to go to law school after graduation.