You say you want my advice about reading. Perhaps, the following are pieces of advice that I hope you’ll find useful.
If the book is in English, that may mean slow progress for you. But I don’t advise you to read too slowly. When I was living in Tokyo, I used to go to Kanda, where the second-hand bookshops are (just as in London, when you were here last year, you used to spend hours in Charing Cross Road). The shelves were full of English books. The first twenty or thirty pages of many of them had their margins(空白) filled with penciled notes and there were lots of words and phrases underlined. The owners, probably university students, had started out very seriously, determined to master the books. Then, as I turned the pages over, I found clean white margins, with not a single note. It was clear that the reader had given up his attempt.
I suppose that’s a common experience in many countries with books in a foreign language. The reader starts out, full of hope. Then the need to turn to a dictionary, perhaps ten or even twenty times a pages, tires him out.
Therefore, don’t start reading a book unless you see, from the first few pages, that it’s one you can read with ease and understanding. Don’t try to run before you can walk. Don’t stop every time you come to a word or phrase you don’t know. Read the whole chapter quickly. Quite often you’ll find the unknown word comes again, perhaps several times, and by the end of the chapter you’ll have guessed its meaning. That’s how we learn the meaning of words in our own language, isn’t it?
1. You can expect to find_______ in Charing Cross Road.
A. books with a lot of blank space
B. many second-hand book shelves
C. books having twenty or thirty pages
D. many bookshops where the used books are sold
2. The writer says ______.
A. too many new words every page will prevent learners from reading to the end
B. you should choose a book with few new words if you prefer not to read too slowly
C. you should never read a book that has ten or twenty new words per page
D. it’s a good idea for the university students to learn the dictionary meaning seriously
3. You can’t complete your reading of a book, ______.
A. unless the book chosen is right for your level and the first few pages can be read easily
B. unless you read a book with the help of a dictionary
C. if you are not filled with hope at the beginning stage of reading
D. if penciled notes are not made in the margins of a page
4. The writer suggests that_______.
A. you try to guess the meaning of a new word through reading
B. you find out what a new word means by using a dictionary
C. you know its meaning whenever you come across a new word
D. you not read a book unless there are no new words
5. This passage tells you ________.
A. how learners choose their books in a foreign language and learn worde
B. how to look up new words in a dictionary
C. how to solve the problem that many foreign students have in reading
D. how the book owners write the notes in pencil in the margins
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