How I Learned English, edited by Tom Miller (ISBN 978-1-4262-0097-7) is an entertaining set of stories that describes how 55 accomplished Latinos learned English. Some methods are comical, some are creative, and some are very practical.

U.S. Congressman José Serrano (originally from Puerto Rico), used the Sinatra method to learn English. His dad brought home a collection of Frank Sinatra records (when he returned from World War II). Young José listened to them and learned correct pronunciation from Sinatra's intonation and even learned to pronounce Tuesday correctly as "Tewsday" and not "Toosday" as everyone did in his New York neighborhood .

My favorite story is Don Francisco's Six Steps to Better English. Don Francisco is a famous Chilean TV personality and host of Sábado Gigante. He provides 6 common sense methods to learning English. I introduce these methods to every class I teach. My favorite step - he would take 10 new English words that he learned from the previous day and try to use them in conversation. For my beginner classes, I rewrite his story in simpler language and have the students read and discuss it. My advance students read the original story (3 pages).

How I Learned English is an entertaining book. I find the book useful because I teach many Latino immigrants. They not only relate to many of the stories, but since each featured Latino "has made it", it gives them hope.

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