Reading Time...

"Learning a language is not a sprint, is a marathon".

How many times did I listen theese words?

A lot... and because it's exactly like that, when I acquired a little bit more confidence in understanding spoken English, I took a step forward... I started reading books.

In June  2020 I bought my first English book; a novel by Sophie Kinsella. I decided to start with something "easy" to read; a book where the story was simple and not too long.

I have to admit: it wasn't easy at all...

I needed to look up words in the dictionary all the time to be able to understand most of the story I was reading. It was frustrating but with time and consistency, I started to use the dictionary less until the moment I forgot to use it at all. 

The same thing happened with listening; I've never stopped reading and from that moment on, I've never read books in my mother tongue. Actually, it has been four years since I've read an Italian book! (with few exceptions!).

I was excited about how fast I was improving vocabulary just by doing something that I've always loved to do; even in my mother tongue.

In the past, I remember thinking about how beautiful it would have been to be able to read books in their original version; and there I was! I was able to do it easily! 

That was an incredible fuel for me to keep going and do even better. 

I knew I had to improve more on other skills and that was the moment I decided to focus my attention on another important aspect of the language.