Learning a new language requires practice, a lot of practice. There are many ways to practice of course: taking/attending class, talking with other language learners, talking with native speakers, reading, learning online, watching movies or TV shows, and so on. Today I am going to provide you with a number of resources to help you practice more of your reading comprehension skills in English.

One of the best ways to do this is to simply read, read a lot, and read real English language material. By “real” I mean written material intended for native speakers. This type of written material will offer an authentic English-language reading experience and it will likely also offer a challenge. You may find you will have to look up words in a dictionary more often than when you read material intended solely for an ESL audience, but that is a good thing. Of course, too much of a challenge can be overwhelming and discouraging, so I don’t recommend that you sit down to read through an entire site or newspaper. Instead I recommend you find one news article from one of the sites below to read daily. This type of regular practice is very important for learning new vocabulary and reinforcing what you already know about grammar.

Here is a list of some of the top newspapers in the United States, all of which have online editions, which can be accessed around the world. Reading articles from these newspapers will not only help improve your English, but also expose you important cultural information.

English-language newspapers:

http://www.usatoday.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.latimes.com/
http://online.wsj.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/

This site also has news articles, but they are written for “students” and therefore the articles might be a little bit easier for you to read, if you are having too much trouble with articles from the newspapers above.

http://www.cnn.com/studentnews/

Here are the websites for some English-language popular magazines in the United States too. The first two in this list are general news and culture magazines. The third one (The Atlantic) has a lot of articles about politics and business as well as culture. The last in the list (People) is a magazine that writes more about pop-culture and celebrities.

English-language magazines:

http://time.com/
http://www.newsweek.com/
http://www.theatlantic.com/
http://www.people.com/

I hope that among these many choices you find a newspaper or magazine you like to go to frequently, to find something new to read, to keep challenging yourself to learn more English! Also, be sure to check back next week to read my next post with more tips on how you can continue to keep improving your English.