The Benefits of Reading With a Tutor in English

Reading is one of the best activities you can do to improve your English language abilities, but it is sometimes overlooked due to a lack of time, the text being too difficult to understand, or the student not liking to read.

Taking the time to read an interesting article or book from start to finish can benefit both your brain and your English in many ways!

Reading will give you access to a wide variety of vocabulary. Many words in English have more than one meaning. Reading words that are in context will help a student to understand the nuances of a word’s meaning (nuance—a very slight difference in appearance, meaning, or sound).

The word “train” can mean:

• A locomotive that transports passengers and freight.
• The process of learning skills through instruction and practice.

These words have the same pronunciation but different meanings:

• Taut—tight or completely stretched.
• Taught—past participle of teach; to give knowledge or to train someone; to instruct.
• Tort—an action that is wrong but it can be dealt with in a civil court.

Reading with a listening tutor is a good way to identify your pronunciation difficulties. My method for reading during online English lessons:

1. Choose a book or an article to read. I will upload the book/article to Google Docs and share the link with the student. Google Docs allows live collaboration online without the need for other documents or screenshots.
2. During the lesson, the student will read, and the tutor will listen for and identify any pronunciation errors, highlighting the difficult word in the shared text without interrupting the student. (I highlight pronunciation errors with a yellow background).
3. When a new word is encountered, the student should let the tutor know, and this word can be highlighted, too. (I highlight new words with red text).
4. After the lesson has finished, I send the student a voice recording or a YouTube video explaining how to correct their mispronunciations. Quite often, there will be a pattern of pronunciation errors that need to be corrected. Also, I will provide an explanation of the new words