Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari continues to top bestseller lists around the world and for good reason! This book is packed with fascinating facts from the history of our species and the author is, I believe, one of the best storytellers of our time.
But, if you are an English learner, how difficult is Sapiens to read?
Rating:
English difficulty: 4 / 5
English Level: C1 +
Overview:
I honestly believe that reading this book will give you a new perspective on society and humankind. It will provoke deep and meaningful discussion with friends and family. It will make you want to dig deeper and learn more. Additionally, it can be a great tool in your English learning journey.
Before giving my review of the language features of the book I want to mention one important point…
Read the physical, paper book. Some books lend themselves to e-readers but that isn’t the case with Sapiens. You will want to make notes, you will want to highlight new words and information, and you will constantly want to go back and reference previous chapters; this is made much more difficult if you are using an e-reader. Likewise, I think it is much better to read the book, rather than listen to an audio book.
What English level is required to read Sapiens?
'Sapiens' requires an advanced, C1 level of English to read the original version. The main reason for this is the level of vocabulary, advanced grammatical features and the tendency of the author to use a lot of metaphorical language to express his point. These factors combine to tell the story, meaning that if you struggle to understand the details, you will struggle to understand the main idea.
I read this book with C1 and C2 level students and they all report the beneficial effects on their language knowledge after reading, demonstrating that if you are at that level this is a great book to support the development of your language.
So, what challenges will you face while reading this book? And what will you find easy? Find my review below...
What difficulties will I face when reading this book?
The language difficulty of Sapiens remains consistent throughout the book; You need a C1 (Advanced) level of English for each and every chapter. However, the most difficult section of the book is 'Part 3: The unification of Humankind', especially chapters 12 & 13 which deal with the development of religion. This is because these chapters are crammed with a huge amount of information which often reference things earlier in the book and things ‘outside’ of the book for which a general understanding of religion would be helpful.
Other things that make Sapiens difficult to read (but also serve as opportunities to boost your English!) are as follows:
Inversion - Inversion is when the normal sentence order is changed in order to place emphasis on a particular thing or to give dramatic effect. For example: "Never before had the fate of so many been decided by so few." While these sentences may be easy to understand on their own, once they are included in a paragraph which contains several connected ideas, they pose a slightly more difficult challenge which will impede your understanding unless you can ‘keep up’ with the author.
Modals of past deduction - Due to the nature of Human history, many things remain either unknown or have not been conclusively proven. Therefore the author uses a lot of grammar such as: “Early Homo sapiens might have developed language as a means of social cooperation." This tendency to use ‘might have done', ‘could have been’ 'would have been doing’ etc. adds another level of difficulty to the book but does provide plenty of exposure to an often overlooked language point.
Metaphorical language - The author uses a lot of metaphors throughout the book to tell our story. This is an incredible storytelling technique but it can lead to some confusion, take a look at the following sentence - “human societies transitioned from hunter-gatherer communities to agricultural civilizations, highlighting a key turning point where early humans threw off the yoke of nomadic existence and embraced settled farming” and this one - “This ‘curtain of silence’ shrouds thousands of years of human history” both sentence use metaphors, if you are an advanced level student you can highlight these, study them and add them to your vocabulary.
What makes this book easy to read?
Human experience - Sapiens, of course, deals with the history of Humankind so naturally many of the things discussed are common human experiences meaning that it’s easy to have a broad, overall understanding of the larger concepts of each chapter.
Repeated Vocabulary - As with many non-fiction books, the author repeats adjectives and expressions throughout the book to describe certain factors of our history. This repetition helps with retention of new vocabulary.
Repeated Grammar - While the grammar structures in this book are quite advanced, the pure fact that the author often employs the same story-telling techniques again and again allows you to see the same grammar used in different contexts and for different effect.
Conclusion:
If you are a C1 or C2 level student then this book will be an enjoyable, and incredibly interesting read for you. Also, if you put in the effort you can use it to really boost your English knowledge as well.
If you really want to read this book but you are not sure that your English level is good enough, my advice is to read the book in your own language first and then read it in English. You can do this chapter by chapter. This way, you will understand the main idea of each chapter and you will be able to navigate the difficult language aspects of the book better.
Because this book is so incredibly interesting and provides a great English learning resource, I have included it in my Book Club course for Advanced learners of English.
Comentarios