Why extensive reading is so effective for language learning

CC subtitles available in multiple languages.

Have you heard of extensive reading? If not, in today's video you'll learn what it is and how I use this strategy to acquire vocabulary and grammar!

SOURCES:

⏲️ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
1:23 What is extensive reading?
1:49 The benefits of extensive reading
3:00 Obstacles to extensive reading
3:42 What I see as the main obstacle
6:18 My strategy for reading extensively (part 1)
8:08 My strategy (part 2)
8:43 What I think about video and language learning

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[Thelinguist]

❓Have you tried extensive reading before? Let me know in the comments!

[JB-qzme]

A trick I found by accident is that reading graphic novels is really good at the early stages of a language. The pictures help you follow the story even if you know few words, and the context usually helps you understand their meaning without having to look them up.

[markalexander]

As a language teacher, I always encourage my students to read, so that they can be independent of me (I'm a terrible businessman). Almost without exception, they just don't want to read. They don't read in their first language, regardless of age and intelligence.

[jamestwigg]

I have about 5 months and 400 hours of comprehensible input in German. I started slow with simple text and worked my way up through graded readers. Now I am on the 3rd Harry Potter Book and I can attest that reading really does massively improve your comprehension. I would say though, that during my commute I listen to the audio book of the thing I have already read to improve pronunciation. I found that some things I was pronouncing wrong in my head when reading and going back and listening to the audio book where I have a good idea of what is going on has improved my pronunciation ability. Literally have been like "Oh, that's how you say that word."

[anak_kucing]

Listening is for reinforcing the words one knows. Reading is for mining new words.

[Kujiranoai]

I passed the Japanese language proficiency test at the top level on one attempt after about 15 years of study. It’s the only Japanese language exam I ever took. During the period I was studying the most, which is about fifteen to twenty years ago, and before the techniques we now have thanks to the Internet, I pretty much came across by myself the same approach that Steve advocates.

Since then I have studied Spanish for about 5 years, and am now reading Game of Thrones onto the fourth book - Festin de Cuervos. I just finished reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez in Spanish. I’ve got a lot further a lot quicker thanks consistently adopting the techniques and approaches Steve talks about.

For what it’s worth, in my opinion Steve speaks more sense than anyone I have ever come across about language learning. This is based on my own experience. I’m assuming he makes a good living off LingQ but he 100% deserves to. I’m starting German next - I failed my German O level when I was young with a ‘U’ grade, but now I’m absolutely confident I can go as far with the language as I want if I put in the time and effort and the Steve’s approach will make the learning efficient and enjoyable at the same time.

[evelioguaperas]

After I started reading manga my japanese understanding has improved dramatically, I love reading!

[aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve]

Beautiful. That is exactly how I learned Lithuanian and how I teach languages. I taught for one year at a school and started with that precise project, i.e., reading, and the result - after a few weeks the children complained to the parents so much that the parents went in force to the director (principal) and insisted that I stop. The director did not talk this over with me; he just ordered me to stop, period. I suspect this is the biggest obstacle to reading in schools, i.e., teachers know the resistance of students.
The second obstacle is that progress cannot be measured easily. With standard testing over right/wrong questions like what is the accusative singular of x, slacking is immediately obvious. Reading can hide a lack of effort and learning a language takes a lot of effort. Thus, a student seems to be doing well until suddenly he or she is not.

As to level, that is a different question. I start with real language written by one person (fiction authors individually often use limited vocabulary.). It has a steep learning curve, but it gives me the real vocabulary and grammar used by real people. (Grammar I do not memorise, just review as needed.) For example, words with no easy translation are usually avoided from all instructional material. In the US, one talks about isobars and high/low pressure, in Lithuania, about cyclones and anticyclones. But instructional texts talk about clouds and rain, which is not much help understanding a real weather forecast. The really steep learning curve lasts only a brief period, a month or two, and then reading becomes pleasurable with your 20-30 percent unknown level.

Thanks for the link. It should be a great help in convincing skeptics as it is properly referenced, not just an opinion piece.

[lewjames]

How sad that in an age where literacy is approaching 100% worldwide, more and more people choose film instead. Read, folks. Read!

[Liliana_Nunn]

One of the best videos in a long time!!!🦊

[paulwalther]

Nice video to watch before I sit down to read something in Korean on LingQ. It really helps not just being able to look up words I don't know but the highlighted words alert me to lookup certain words right away making it a smoother process.

[mimill]

In 2021, I was extremely bad in English and was still B1 after years of school; and randomly decided to start to read books in English. I have never been interested by series or film and had no one to speak English with, so it was the only support available and enjoyable for me.  
After two years I went up to C1 level.
I know there is nothing that impressive or that fast, obviously, but knowing how bad I am in languages, I am impressed by how reading helped me. I try now to do the same with new languages, even if it is far more challenging than English since we grow up surrounded by English but no other languages !! I kinda struggle to find easy and interesting books in foreign languages, but it is so pleasant when I do !!

[Garow-urgz]

Reading is powerful way to learn whatever guys, unfortunately people don't know

[mustaphameharich]

Thanks to my dad who didn’t fix TV when I was very young about 7
Since then I have started reading voraciously

[nalberthreis]

As for four words per page: I agree with you, it depends much more on who you are; I've spent over a month reading books not knowing 20 to 40 words per page when I was at the beginning of one of my journeys to learning a language, and nevertheless I was happy to finish it when the time came. Over the months, I was getting better and eventually achieved the moment that I read, for example, the Luther King's biography (an over a thousand-page book) not knowing from 0 to at most 3 words per page. Overall, I presume that I wouldn't reach such level if I wasn't ready to suffer a bit.

[RogerRamos]

I do the following: I read my books with the ReadEra app. I can use the Google translate app to find out the meaning of a word or a sentence. All without leaving the book. I can also click on a word and do a web search or a dictionary search. Both take me to Google. Then, back to the book. My main current target language is Romanian. If I were reading on paper, my progress would be ridiculously smaller.

[mazenHaddad-ckqd]

When I listen to you, you let us enjoy
the learning processthe 😍 makes it more enjoyable, easier, and more effort like a journey that never ends🎉.. love you ❤

[PainReaverX]

Being someone who had to do book reports starting in grade 4 I 100% agree with that. I loved reading until I had to do book reports. I only rediscovered my love of reading over the past several years or so.

[tommybinson]

Great talk, thanks! I, too, much prefer free reading and listening to answering questions and doing word puzzles.

[jackbombay]

I'm a video guy, and I deliberately chose that way not because I don't like reading (like the vast majority of students, I'm a high school teacher so I know that for a fact). It's that my main goal was to understand what people say in their native tongue. So, reading can be not optimal for that matter. Even though I fully agree reading is the best way to improve your vocabulary and your speech, in terms of use of the language. Audiobook maybe the solution for me, because now I feel I'm trapped in the 'intermediate stage'.