------------------------------ More reading, less looking<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SuccessfulEnglish/~3/oQqiyCB8PEw/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
*It’s easy to spend more time looking than reading on the Internet. And that can become a major frustration for someone who’s trying to read as much as possible to improve their English. Help has arrived!* I’m always looking for ways to cut through the mountains of material published every day on the Internet to find a few good things to read. But it’s difficult. Finding good online reading – mostly for advanced English learners Award-winnning Instapaper <http://www.instapaper.com> is one of the best places online to collect and read articles. In addition to their collecting, managing, and reading tools, Instapaper includes a Browse<http://www.instapaper.com/browse>page, where you will find 15 to 20 recent articles on a variety of topics – a good place to start if you don’t know what to read. Today, in a blogpost – *In praise of the long form<http://evolvingnewsroom.co.nz/in-praise-of-the-long-form> * – on allaboutthestory <http://www.allaboutthestory.com/>, I found a list of other web sites and twitter feeds you can follow to find good reading and reduce the time you usually spend looking. Here’s the list: - @IfYouOnly <http://twitter.com/ifyouonly> – “If you only read one thing today, make it this.” - @longreads <http://twitter.com/longreads> / http://longreads.com/ – “Links to long-form journalism and fiction for commuters.” - @thelonggoodread <http://twitter.com/thelonggoodread> / http://thelonggoodread.com – “Articles picked twice daily from the Guardian (UK).” - @longformorg <http://twitter.com/longformorg> / http://longform.org/ - @somethingtoread <http://twitter.com/somethingtoread> / http://givemesomethingtoread.com/ – “A hand-picked selection of the finest articles saved with Instapaper.” - instapaper.com/browse <http://www.instapaper.com/browse> Managing online reading There are two tools that can help you manage your online reading process and make it easier. Instapaper <http://www.instapaper.com/>, mentioned above, makes it possible for you to save articles for later reading with one click of a button on your browser. And they have a number of extras<http://www.instapaper.com/extras>, including iPhone, iPad, and Kindle apps to help make reading possible wherever you are. Readability<http://successfulenglish.com/2010/01/readability-makes-online-reading-easier/>, which I wrote about a few months ago, makes reading easier in two ways. First, it cleans up web pages by stripping distractions – like advertisements – from the page so you can concentrate on your reading. Second, it allows you to change settings – like font and font size, text width, and background color – to make reading easier. Reading online content offline There are a variety of ways to save articles on your computer so you can read them when you’re offline. Let me tell you about two that I use. When I am skimming articles from my RSS or Twitter feeds and find one that I want to read later, I often use a button on my browser to save it as a pdf file to Evernote <http://www.evernote.com/>, a free, simple information manager. When I open the article in Evernote, I can read it from my computer or use the link to return to the article online. If I think I might want to keep an article permanently, I use Readability to “clean it up,” then use the *Print/Save as pdf* function on my Mac* to save it to a reading folder on my desktop. After I read it and decide to keep it, I drop it into the inbox of a database, called DevonThink<http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/>, that I use for all of my articles and papers – in fact, almost everything. Warren Ediger *If you use Windows, you can find tools for converting to pdf by doing a Google search using *windows convert to pdf*. Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ESL Podcast". To post to this group, send email to: [email protected] or just reply this message For invite your friends, visit: http://groups.google.com/group/eslpodcast/members_invite Know how help us, visit this FAQ at: http://groups.google.com/group/eslpodcast/web/frequently-asked-questions
