In March I realized that totally forget to understand in English. Because I read some story in that language and hardly I didn’t catch at all what is all about the article.

Then, after Revision 2025 demoparty I wrote a blogpost about how furious, heartbreaking am I that some „demosceners” used A.I at the democompos. During the writing the words didn’t come to me easily, I mixed Past Simple(!) with other tenses… so I needed to say to myself that my English is broken. 😨

But I wanted to do something about it, and in month I found out what kind of learning method is good for me. OK, the best would be go to the language school and learn there, but now I don’t have an opportunity to do that. Until then, I thought that reading in English would best for me because I would see tons of good sentences how should I use the grammar properly in every degree (e.g. B1-C1 in CEFR)

I wanted to make stronger my reading skills so I started to read Masters of Doom (I had it on my E-book for about 10 years and didn’t have the courage to read it).. After many pages my head was in pain, I got angry, I got a nausea in my stomach and I don’t undestand why were I reading slowly… I have to look the word’s meaning almost every 2 sentences. –> this was too much for me in this degree (C1-C2) 😣

Solution

So, I needed to cut back the gradient and made the reading easier. I knew for years that there were easy reading stories and Factfiles in Oxford Bookworms Library, so I started to buy those books. And I bought paper flashcards in every degree (just in case from A1 to C1), and I learned again from the beginning. I didn’t want that there were holes in my knowledge I wanted stable base that I could build my understanding

Measurement

After I started to read and learn flashcards I felt something was missing. I needed to measure my progress. E.g. how many pages do I read in which degree? how many pages do I read weekly? How many books have I done in English? So the solution for that I made a little statistics for those questions. I can say it was very fun to make and collecting those datas. Of course during those readings I knew many famous ppl life (e.g. Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Stephen Hawking)

I collected all the data and I can say that already I have read 500+ pages in English (I won’t say that which degree, I want to keep this info to myself). I got inspired and motivated to read more and if I think well I can go back to Masters of Doom and later Scenes from a Memory within a year. That’s the whole point for me. And of course I want to talk with my demoscene friends. 😊