Ciencia Y Historia

BBC Learning English Talk about English The Reading Group Part 1
This programme was first broadcast in 2002. This is not an accurate word-for-word transcript of the programme.

ANNOUNCER: You’re listening to “The Reading Group” from the BBC World Service. In this series we bring together listeners, students of English, literature teachers and other contributors from the world of books to sharetheir enthusiasm for reading. We hope that following this series will encourage your own interest in reading books in English as a foreign language.

Gary (Presenter): Hello. I don't know if you remember the moment you first realised you could read - I can't - but for the Argentinian writer, Alberto Manguel, it was a dramatic event.

Insert 1 – from A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel Oneday, from the window of a car I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight couldn't have lasted very long, just perhaps long enough for me to see large and looming, shapes similar to those in my story book, but shapes that I had never seen before. And yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were, I heard them in my head. They metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid,sonorous, meaningful reality. Since I could turn bare lines into living reality I was all-powerful – I could read.

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Gary:

From Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading. This book is a wonderful account of our love affair with written words, from the first known writing marks made in tiny clay tablets over sixthousand years ago in the Middle East to today's electronic media. The enjoyment of reading is the subject of this series, in particular, the enjoyment of reading books in English as a second or foreign language. We'll also offer strategies for improving your reading, and we’ll give details of how to contact us at the end of each programme.

Gary:

We begin today with a discussion about what itfeels like for students to read in English and how to deal with some of the difficulties. Annemarit van der Made is from the Netherlands where she graduated recently from the University of Technology in Delft. Hello

Annemarit: Hello. One of my earliest memories of books date back to my first school days, coming home, having a cup of tea while my mother was reading me a book. Gary: Adrian: AdrianSack is a journalist from Argentina. Hello. Hello …I’m working here in London as a freelance reporter for one of Argentina’s newspapers, La Nation. I’m also writing a history book in Spanish. And our third guest is Jeremy Page. Hello …I’m the Director of Studies at International House, a language school in London. I’ve written several English language teaching course books and I’ve also publishedpoetry and short stories. Adrian and Annemarit, questions for you first. What kind of books do you enjoy reading in English?

Gary: Jeremy:

Gary:

Annemarit: I enjoy several kinds of books. I like romances, crime, fiction and short stories. I recently read Joanna Harris books. They are novels and I think she is very

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good at describing scenery and personal behaviour. When something very exciting happens I really feel like telling the character, don't do this or don't do that. I can be swallowed by the book. Gary: Adrian: What about some of the problems of reading in a different language? Adrian. Well, the two main problems are the lack of vocabulary and the trend to lose the concentration when Iread for long due to the extra effort I have to make when I read.

Annemarit: Well, I agree with Adrian that it's more difficult to stay focussed on a book for example when you're tired and I am reading an English book it's more difficult to stay focused, and apart from that some writers use slang that I'm not familiar with, and when I read Jane Eyre - I read it recently - this book has been...