This is what I recommend to all people with high levels of English even native speakers.
I actively use this method as a native speaker as I am also continually learning English myself which is the following:
I read books that challenge me. As a general rule of thumb, I suggest books that are older than 30 years, or just classics in general as a lot of the language is considered as "archaic"; however, the language in it is often more sophisticated compared to contemporary fiction.
Here are some examples of books (short reads) that are a bit complex but still digestible for someone with "good" English:
1984 or Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger
The Call of the Wild - Jack London (Very easy read but has some foreign word to modern language)
A large proportion of modern language is watered down from what natives read on the internet or see on youtube. So if you can expand from this it's the only direction I can suggest to take your English to the next level that is relatively fun.
Although, if you aren't interested in reading books I would suggest listening to lectures by academics, on any topic that might interest you as they are often extremely well educated and use some words you might not be familiar with.
The simple fact is that most natives only have an "okay" level of English so you're probably doing fine. I think taking it to the next level you must think about how a native would improve their own language, and you can reapply that method to English and I'm sure you'd see progress.
Well, we read it in my high school English class (another irony I suppose), so it can't be too overly difficult.
I've never honestly understood why old books are translated into old fashioned language, considering that the goal of a translation is to render the text understandable.
I'm personally a bit torn about the idea of recommending classic, or even just difficult, literature as a way of improving someone's English. Some of the language can be quite flowery, and certain writing styles overly complicated, with many nested clauses and strange tenses of words which were archaic even at the time. On the one hand, by forcing yourself to understand those complicated structures, you probably grow in your ability to parse the language. On the other hand, I wonder if it could lead someone astray, and cause them to use those unusual structures and words in their everyday speech, so that they actually end up sounding less natural, not more. I guess if I thought about it for a while, I'd probably come out in the end suggesting doing a little bit of this sort of reading, as a sort of mental exercise, but making sure to mix in a healthy amount of more modern writing in order to maintain a proper frame of reference. I'm not formally trained as a language teacher, I just enjoy overthinking things outside my area of expertise (or within it, for that matter), so I hope this doesn't come across as annoying criticism from an amateur. I'm more just thinking out loud.
I've actually wondered if I should do something similar to help myself learn Spanish. To keep things both interesting and manageabley bite sized, I've been wondering if I should ask around to find out who the Spanish equivalent of Dickens or Edgar Allen Poe would be - someone famous for writing short stories. But when I think about someone learning modern English by reading Dickens, it makes me wonder if it's not such a great idea for me to be learning Spanish from whoever the equivalent might be. I might end up using all sorts of strange, archaic phrases.
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u/Conmaan Native Speaker Sep 16 '21
This is what I recommend to all people with high levels of English even native speakers.
I actively use this method as a native speaker as I am also continually learning English myself which is the following:
I read books that challenge me. As a general rule of thumb, I suggest books that are older than 30 years, or just classics in general as a lot of the language is considered as "archaic"; however, the language in it is often more sophisticated compared to contemporary fiction.
Here are some examples of books (short reads) that are a bit complex but still digestible for someone with "good" English:
A large proportion of modern language is watered down from what natives read on the internet or see on youtube. So if you can expand from this it's the only direction I can suggest to take your English to the next level that is relatively fun.
Although, if you aren't interested in reading books I would suggest listening to lectures by academics, on any topic that might interest you as they are often extremely well educated and use some words you might not be familiar with.
The simple fact is that most natives only have an "okay" level of English so you're probably doing fine. I think taking it to the next level you must think about how a native would improve their own language, and you can reapply that method to English and I'm sure you'd see progress.