I’ve updated my reading recommendations for beginners with links to some great detective stories and my experiences learning German with simplified books (also known as “learner literature” or “graded readers”).
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Thoughts for serious language learners
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Language help
You can select any word on this page to check its definition and pronunciation in a dictionary. In addition, if you see colored text, you can click it (or point at it) for a pop-up explanation.
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About
My name is Tomasz P. Szynalski. I live in Poland. In the 1990s, my friend and I taught ourselves to speak English fluently (with a native-like American accent) in about 3 years, using some unorthodox learning techniques. In 2001, we founded Antimoon to share our insights with other English learners.
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Recent Posts
- Reader mail: Reading aloud to improve your English3.1
- Grammar rules update4.7
- Why it’s so difficult to speak English without mistakes3.4
- Things you should know about phonetic transcription1.29
- English pronunciation is a minefield11.1
- Why it’s important to learn about the sounds of English10.24
- Modernizing Antimoon10.16
- YouGlish: A YouTube-based pronunciation dictionary2.19
- Antimoon en español12.12
- Confusing American phonetic transcriptions for “air”, “near” and “sure”8.20
- Should you care about phonetic transcriptions?6.26
- Solving the problem of typing foreign characters and phonetic symbols on a PC5.14
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© Tomasz P. Szynalski
Hi Tom. If you have been learning German I’m sure you’ll probably know some good German dictionaries with example sentences. Could you please recommend me one or two? Sorry for the offtopic. Cheers.
Here are two dictionaries that I found OK many years ago, but I’m sure there are better alternatives now.
http://www.langenscheidt.de/produkt/5244_376/Langenscheidt_Grosswoerterbuch_Deutsch_als_Fremdsprache-Buch_%28Hardcover%29_+_CD-ROM_%28Windows%29/978-3-468-49038-5
http://www.amazon.de/PONS-Basisw%C3%B6rterbuch-Deutsch-Fremdsprache-Rechtschreibung/dp/3125172039
Hi Tom, can you give some advice to people who have been in contact with English for 2-3 decades, read books in English, occasionally read newspapers in English, but are still not able to reach native-like level?
I can only give the obvious advice: more spoken input/output.
Hi Tom, could you give some thoughts on how many new words should we learn per day to reach the level of average native speaker’s vocabulary ???? The other day, I have written down and looked up nearly 90 words per day after reading a novel……………… My strategy is to learn and review carefully these 90 words in one day…… But it’s really tough!!!!! COULD YOU HELP ME COME UP WITH A MORE EFFECTIVE STRATEGY PLEASE, …. I really wanna grow my vocabulary despite hard-working !!!!
You should look into SRS.