#language_advice Reading Classical English Literature In the last 3 – 4 years, I have read some classical English novels. Last year, I finished The Forsyte Saga, and now I am reading Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy. And I have found it very challenging – if not difficult – at times. In terms of language learning, it is a very intense memory-engaging exercise because of the big chunks of textual information you often have to sustain in your memory that come within one sentence and because of the syntactic structures with numerous clauses and parenthetic constructions used on a regular basis. Classical novels also often present a challenge for the reader on a lexical level because of how abundantly diverse they are with the language they use, which is occasionally outdated but no less relevant in the modern-day discourse. For some, it might be the biggest stumbling block in reading classical literature, for others – the biggest trove. From my personal experience, I would suggest that you could start reading classical English literature as an English learner once you are solidly at the Upper-Advanced level. Otherwise, it might become too big a frustration and burden for you. By my reckoning, your total word stock should constitute at least 16,000 words so that you feel relatively comfortable with the language of classical fiction. There are two ways of approaching classical literature: reading for improving your comprehension skills and reading for building up your vocabulary. In the first case, you should be ready to skip over some of the words you do not understand and probably try to infer their meaning through the context around them. The benefit of this approach will be a smoother, uninterrupted reading process and a faster reading rate, and the deficit will be a vaguer understanding of some details and nuances in the narrative. In the second case, you must be more diligent and methodical with your approach to the reading process. You will take your time to look up the definitions of unfamiliar words and probably write them down in a notepad for better retention. The benefit of this approach will be a faster growth of your vocabulary, and its deficit will be a more psychologically draining reading process because of the additional time and effort you will have to spend on studying the new words. If you do find it hard, you might want to go for smaller portions of the book every day or every other day to retain the continuity of the plot in your memory and make the reading more entertaining. But in real life, it will probably more often be a mixture of both approaches when you feel that you have relatively well understood the meaning of a previously unfamiliar word and may take more time with another word to look it up and study its meaning. In any case, you should be conscious of classical English literature being a tricky tool for learning English. If you don't feel fully confident but still want to try it, I would recommend taking on something of a smaller size that will technically take you less time to read than a longer novel and will be of a lesser psychological burden if the going gets tough. Also, if you feel that you are getting stuck at some point, you should probably go for faster reading and skip through the unfamiliar words more to revive interest in the book by relying on a general understanding of the plot.