Today I felt like writing about a book called The Magicians Nephew. For those who don’t know, chronologically speaking it is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series.

Let me just start off by saying it is a great book for a number of reasons. It is short, fun, compelling, BUT from an English learner’s perspective, it can be a little outdated. Let me explain to you why I think so.

First of all the book was written in the 1950s by a British author; which means the English that is used is quite different from commonly used English these days. Despite that fact that it is a children’s book, I found it difficult to clearly understand some parts. Maybe it is because I have spent most of my time getting acquainted to American English, both spoken and written, so the use of some structures are a little hard for me to understand. Besides being written in British English in the 50s, the book tells a story of what happens before the start of The Chronicles of Narnia. The narrator begins the book by stating that the story about to be told happened a long time ago when the older generation were young. This implies that the author changed the use of English to fit that time period.

So considering all of these details about the book and how it is written, I often caught myself thinking whether or not it was worth it to stop reading just to look up words I didn’t understand. I used my kindle to read the book and according to it, I looked up 39 words. Among these words were adverbs I believe are not used anymore, such as “dreadfully”, “jolly”, “frightfully”….etc. Again, it simply could be that I am just not acquainted well enough with British English.

The way I see it, It will probably take me more than three readings (yes, I have already read this book three time) to learn these words. I have not given up yet. The book has thousands of words that I DID know. Those are words I need to focus my pride on and give myself a little tap on the back and say, “hey Vitor, this time you read a 20k word book and looked up only 400 words! Your English has improved a lot. Keep it up man!”

It is easy to fall into a trap of focusing on what you still don’t know about a language and forgetting about all the things you DO know. Anyway, I think reading in another language is a cumulative skill. You may not notice it, but you always carry something from one reading to another.

Please excuse me if there are any punctuation errors, I usually double check on my writing software, but I don't have access to it right now haha. Great job by the way! ^___^