Plenty of people can read in English, and when someone asks what they thought of the book, all that comes out is “I liked it”. Reading and talking about what you read are different skills, and the second needs its own practice. A good book for training both is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Why this book works at B2 level
The novella was published in 1886 and has ten short chapters. The story is driven by a mystery: who is Mr Hyde, and why does a respectable lawyer, Mr Utterson, start to fear that he is connected to a friend of his, Dr Jekyll? Because the reader wants the answer, the reading moves forward, and every chapter ends with a question that gives you something to talk about.
There is a cultural bonus too. “A Jekyll and Hyde” has become an English expression for someone who has two very different sides, and you will meet it in TV series, news stories and conversations. The book is in the public domain, and there are free editions, such as the ones from Project Gutenberg.
What usually trips readers up
The English in the book is nineteenth-century English, so the sentences are longer than in a modern text, and expressions appear that you rarely hear today. In chapter 1, for example, there are these:
- take a loathing to somebody: to suddenly come to hate someone, almost always at first sight;
- pay through the nose: to pay far too much for something;
- out of the question: impossible, not to be considered;
- hit home: to make painful sense, or to have a strong effect.
Some of these are still used in English today, others are more literary. It is worth separating the ones you want to use from the ones you only need to recognise.
A four-step reading method
To move from silent reading to conversation, I use the same routine with my students, chapter by chapter:
- Listen and read at the same time. The audio teaches you the rhythm of the sentences and shows you how to pronounce what you only know in writing.
- Answer the questions without looking at the book. If you can only answer by checking the text, your comprehension is still fragile.
- Pick two expressions and make sentences about your own life. That is how a word from the page becomes your word.
- Arrive with a prediction. Before you open the next chapter, bet on what will happen. People who have a bet want to comment.
Reading in English is comprehension. Commenting on what you read is production, and production only improves when someone listens and replies.
Three questions to discuss chapter 1
In the first chapter, Mr Enfield tells Mr Utterson a strange story about a door and a man called Hyde. After reading, try to answer out loud, in English:
- Why does Enfield call the building “Black Mail House”?
- Enfield, the doctor and the child’s family react to Hyde in the same way. What do they have in common?
- Why does Utterson ask, “Are you sure he used a key?” What does he seem to suspect?
If you froze on any of them, it was not for lack of English. It was for lack of practice organising an opinion out loud, and that practice can be trained.
If the original is still heavy, start with a graded version
If you are at B1+, you can start with an adapted edition and build confidence with the story before facing the original text. I wrote a review of the Oxford Bookworms edition, level 4, with the strengths and limits of that version.
Want to read with company?
I am opening a Jekyll & Hyde Book Club, in English, for people at B2+. It has 12 live 60-minute sessions on Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. (Brazil time), starting on 31 October, in a group of 5 to 10 people, with activities on the platform between sessions. The details, the schedule and the prices are on the Book Club page.