Looking for a way to further improve my English !

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tarento

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Hello everyone,

I am a French, soon to become, college student (this September !) and I want to further improve my English. Even though I am not a native English speaker, I have reached a fairly high level of fluency to the point that I can hold complex conversations, understand basically everything that I listen to in English and pretty much write whatever I want to say without ever being held back by a language barrier. However, as I mentioned before, I want more than that. I want to be able to write complex sentences, essays, etc. I want to reach a very complex stage of the English language but I don't know where I would be able to do that. As I said before, I will begin my first year of college this September in la Sorbonne, in Paris. I will be studying law. For my 4th year in college, I plan to study French-American law, which is a program that is specific to la Sorbonne. With this program, I will spend two years in either Cornell or Columbia and then two more years back here in Paris. If I'm chosen for this highly selective program I will have to have a very advanced level in English, which I am looking to attain, starting from now. Now, my question to you guys is, where can I start improving my English as a guy living in France in order to improve past the fluent English and to attain very complex, (and I mean very complex) litterature-level English ?

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

-Ilyesse
 

Tdol

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There are quite a few textbooks that deal with high level language for people studying for Law- English for Law is a common title.
 

probus

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Some might think this suggestion outlandish, but I think you may benefit from reading Charles Dickens. His long and complex sentences are no longer in fashion, but they challenge the reader's comprehension in a way that modern prose does not. And it would be an enjoyable form of study compared to reading legal texts. You might want to start with A Tale of Two Cities.
 
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abaka

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A more nearly modern author with famously good style whose writing touches on matters of law, governance and society would be George Orwell. I do not mean Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, which in my opinion are his two weakest works. Try Wigan Pier and Burmese Days.
 

probus

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I agree completely with abaka's opinions on Orwell. Anything but Animal Farm or 1984 would be great.
 

emsr2d2

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The only part of 1984 that might challenge a high-level reader (or native speaker) is the appendix, a section most people don't bother with. I remember starting to read it once I'd finished the main part of the book (when I was 12) and giving up after about six pages. You can read more about it HERE.
 

Tdol

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Some might think this suggestion outlandish, but I think you may benefit from reading Charles Dickens. His long and complex sentences are no longer in fashion, but they challenge the reader's comprehension in a way that modern prose does not. And it would be an enjoyable form of study compared to reading legal texts. You might want to start with A Tale of Two Cities.

Bleak House would be a good start for someone interested in law, and one of the truly great openings to any novel.
 

emsr2d2

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If you really want a challenge, try House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. It's not so much the language that's challenging; it's the format. It's very weird! I've started it three times but never made it beyond about 100 pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves
 

abaka

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The litmus test for universal English comprehension is surely Joyce's Ulysses for "Advanced Level A", and Finnegan's Wake for D.Litt. (Hon.).

Actually, thinking about it, I want to suggest -- do try Joyce. You don't have to go anywhere near Finnegan, but read Portrait of the Writer first and then Ulysses. Ulysses presents just about every style of English then known.
 

GoesStation

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Ulysses has extensive passages in other languages, a companion volume ("The Bloomsday Book") exists to make it comprehensible, and hardly any native speakers can understand it without expert help. Failure to understand Ulysses is in no way a mark of incomplete English comprehension.
 
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abaka

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I agree. However, anyone who has got through Ulysses will have no trouble understanding almost anything else written in English, and that's why I suggested it -- a master-level litmus test.

PS. As an antithesis to Joyce, the non-fantastical work of H.G. Wells is as good an English as I can think of.
 
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probus

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With respect, I think we may be confusing Ulysses with Finnegan's Wake. Ulysses is written in plain English, or at least that's what I thought when I read it. Its structure is complex but its language is not.
 
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probus

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Coming back to my suggestion of Dickens and Tdol's further suggestion of Bleak House, the very first sentence of the preface is a beauty:

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.
 
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abaka

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I meant specifically Ulysses, each chapter of which lampoons a particular style of English.

Another suggestion, altogether more modern, would be the whole of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
 

emsr2d2

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Coming back to my suggestion of Dickens and Tdol's further suggestion of Bleak House, the very first sentence of the preface is a beauty:

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.

Please stop - you're giving me nightmares! I had to do Bleak House for O Level English Lit and I hated it. I didn't even finish it (yet I wrote a 500-word essay on it in the exam!)
 

probus

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Please stop - you're giving me nightmares! I had to do Bleak House for O Level English Lit and I hated it. I didn't even finish it (yet I wrote a 500-word essay on it in the exam!)

In my teens I did something similar with Pride and Prejudice. I've still not read it, and at this point it looks like I never will.
 

abaka

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P. and P. was such a girlie book in Grade 9. I only read it to the end (and loved it) after the serial with Ehle and Firth.
 

emsr2d2

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A "girlie book"? :shock: :lol:
 

probus

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A "girlie book"? :shock: :lol:

Nothing wrong with that in the right context. One of my daughters, a professional writer and editor, and a staunch feminist often describes things as girly.
 

abaka

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Can you really object to fourteen-year-old boys describing books only the girls in their classes like as "girlie books"?

I should never say it now. I'm not ashamed of saying it then.
 
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