WHAT TO READ

Suppose you have two friends，A and B，both of whom have been studying English for some years. Both are clever young men，and both are anxious to acquire a good knowledge of the language. But now they have got very different results from the several years of study：A can write short letters and read easy news items but cannot read any passage in the classics，while B can read here and there in some classics but cannot write short letters or read easy news items. Reader，which of your two friends would you prefer to be like？

I believe you would prefer to be like A rather than B. You should. I am sorry to find that among Chinese learners of English there seem to be more like B than like A. The trouble lies chiefly in what is read.

Well，what do you read？ I mean to ask what you take as your chief reading matter. Is it a novel or a volume of essays written more than a hundred years ago？ If it is，my advice to you is to change it for something else. Your chief reading matter must have been written far less than a hundred years ago，a few weeks ago if possible，must have been written in simple English，and must have been written by an Englishman or American.

I am not going to give a list of books here. But I think I have to make some general remarks. Your chief reading matter need not be a literary masterpiece. Nor need it be written by a famous author. A volume of short pieces of narration or exposition is better than a novel or a long argumentative essay.

You must have noted that in the above I have talked about only what your chief reading matter should be. You have a book or two for your chief reading matter. You should also read something else，which may be a little more difficult，but which still had better not be a classic of more than a hundred years ago.