Practice your English Outside the Classroom with Immersive Reading

I have been teaching English as a Foreign Language in Poland for more than 14 years now and one of the many questions that my students always ask me is “How do you get more practice studying English everyday outside the classroom?” Two ideas that always come up during the discussion are reading books and listening to things such as news, podcasts, or audiobooks. Typically, we think of reading and listening as mutually exclusive (meaning you can do one, or the other, but not both) activities, however newer content and technology is changing that belief. The technique is called immersive reading and in this post I’m going to show you what it is, how it works, and why you want to take advantage of it to practice your English everyday.

The word immersive means that you are completely engaged from all sides in some activity. We often use it to describe foreigners being immersed in another language or culture. When you go and live in another country where you are totally immersed in the language, it is all around you. People speak the language to you, to each other on the streets, you see the signs and billboards, you hear it on the radio and on the television. That is what it means to be immersed.

Immersive reading then is when you both read and listen to the same text, at the same time. Let’s check out a graphic of how the two styles benefit you:

My recommendation for reading novels in English is to use an E-Reader like Amazon’s Kindle, or Kindle Reader app for mobile phones. And yes I know some of you out there are already frowning about how you love “real” books, the feel of the pages, the weight of the book – I get it. I love books too. In fact, the majority of books I have read have been in print, until I had to give up my book collection…TWICE! Then I began to see why an e-reader might be useful.

For starters, as you are reading, when you come across unknown words, you have a built-in dictionary to look up the unknown words, the Kindle for Android App will also search your word on Wikipedia, and there’s a translator option for many languages. Additionally, you can highlight and make notes quite easily in the app. And you will always have your smartphone on you so you will have your library of books with you at all times.

Over the last couple of years, I had converted to audiobooks on Audible to get my reading fix (a term used to describe using a substance you are addicted to), because I could listen to my books while I was driving. But in the last couple of months I was turned onto Kindle Unlimited which combines the e-book experience with the audiobook experience all in the Kindle Reader App.

This works great for me because I can read when I want to read, or switch to listening mode and make progress while I’m driving to my lessons. But immersive reading is really the feature I love most. While you are reading, the professional Audible narration is being played, also at the same time, the text is being highlighted over the parts the narrator is currently reading. This has many advantages which you will find in the video demonstration:

 

If you have been promising yourself to practice your English everyday (like you should), let me introduce you to a cheap but highly beneficial service called Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Kindle e-books are often cheaper than their print counterparts so you could buy a book that you want to read for a low price. In order to get the immersive reading option, the book should have Whispersync Technology associated with the eBook. Whispersync technology means that the eBook comes integrated with the audiobook all in one package so you can read, listen, or do both at the same time.

Kindle Unlimited is a subscription based program whereby for about $10 a month, you have unlimited access to the full library for Kindle Unlimited. Please keep in mind this is not the full Kindle library, but the Kindle Unlimited library which contains over 2,000 titles all integrated with Whispersync Technology. Additionally, there are lots of English learning resources you can get access to to actively exercise your English with vocabulary, idioms, and grammar books.

The only limitation is that you can have up to 10 Kindle Unlimited titles in your library at any one time. However, if you want to add a new title to your library, you simply return one of the 10 titles in your library and that is all. See below for a list of my recommended titles for both novels AND English learning resource books.