Periodicals: Magazines & Journals
Magazines can educate you and help you explore new perspectives. They can also be your companions in your English learning journey. Most importantly, they can still be entertaining while they do all of this. Discover and explore the power of magazines for reading practice.
Some tips for reading:
- Scan the whole magazine first: Before reading any article, first go to the summary, table of contents or index (the list of articles and their page numbers, usually found at the beginning of the magazine). Look for titles that match your interests. The scanning process also helps you structure the information more clearly, since you already know the main theme and topics of the articles and how they relate to one another.
- Start with the shortest pieces: Once you’ve selected all the relevant articles, start with the shortest one. Very often, ambitious learners pick a lengthy piece about some difficult topic, and quit midway because of mental exhaustion. Finishing an article boosts your learning motivation. So start with an article that you can finish comfortably so you don’t run out of steam.
- Time yourself: Record how much time you took to read each article. Also note the length of the article you finished. After finishing a session, compare the amount of time between sessions to see if you’re improving or not. If your speed is slowing down or isn’t fast enough, try to use different, more efficient reading techniques - see the ESL Help tab.
- Cut out the difficult words and play fill-in-the-blank: This is the best way to test your memory immediately after reading an article. Just circle the words that you find difficult while reading and cut them out after you finish. Then try to put them back in the right places based on their meaning and context.
Access the magazine/journal through the link provided - don't forget to check out the summary, table of contents of index before reading:
