At some point in your language learning journey, you may find yourself stuck or struggling to make progress. Maybe you feel like you’re not learning as fast as you should, or that you’re not remembering the words you’re learning. An effective way to overcome this challenge is to By incorporating reading into your language learning routine. In this article, we’ll discuss how to increase your vocabulary through reading.
At LingQ, we believe in the importance of developing good study habits that can keep you motivated and excited about language learning without always worrying about the ultimate goal of fluency. One of the habits we promote is to vary the types of activities you engage in during the language learning process.
While conversation groups can help you practice using words you already know, reading is one way to acquire new vocabulary. Especially extensive reading is an effective way to increase vocabulary. It involves reading a wide range of material, such as fiction and non-fiction, in your target language.
One benefit of reading widely is that it exposes you to a lot of different words and helps you become more familiar with the language. As you encounter words in different contexts, you start to understand their meaning and usage, which is very helpful for increasing your vocabulary.
Boosting Your Vocabulary through Intensive Reading: A Detailed Approach
Intensive reading is another way to use reading to increase your vocabulary. This method involves reading while focusing on the details of the text and looking for words you don’t understand. While extensive reading is a great way to learn about language, intensive reading can give you Focus on specific words and phrases that you don’t know yet.
Reading on paper is the ultimate extensive reading experience, allowing you to concentrate and concentrate. When you read a book, you can ignore words you don’t know and focus on experiencing the language. For many language learners, being able to read fiction in the target language Language is an important milestone.
However, if you are still building up your vocabulary, reading on paper may not be an enjoyable experience as there may be too many words that you don’t know. In such cases, reading online with an online dictionary can be very helpful. At LingQ, we have developed a reading platform that allows You can easily look up words and save them for later review. This online reading experience is like panning for gold; you’re constantly adding new words to your repertoire.
Unlocking New Vocabulary: The Power of Looking Up Unknown Words
By looking up words you don’t know, you’re mining new vocabulary that will eventually become part of your passive and active vocabulary. When you come across a word that you’ve looked up before in a different context, you’ll start to understand its meaning, and over time, you’ll start to understand some of the meanings Vocabulary will become an active vocabulary that you can use.
Renowned linguist Stephen Krashen is a strong advocate of reading widely. Research shows that extensive reading can help you become more familiar with the language and increase your vocabulary, even if you don’t automatically look up words. As you read more and more, you start to get a Get a feel for the language and you’ll start to recognize words you’ve seen before.
All in all, reading is an effective way to increase vocabulary. Especially extensive reading allows you to immerse yourself in the language and become more familiar with it. Intensive reading, on the other hand, can help you focus on specific words and phrases that you don’t know yet. go through By reading online with an online dictionary, you can mine new words and gradually add them to your passive and active vocabulary. With enough practice, you’ll eventually be able to read novels and other books in your target language and take your language learning to the next level.
I learned French a long time ago at school then lived in France for 5 years. Now I can pick up just about any novel in French and read without recourse to a dictionary. It’s an incredibly satisfying experience. I’ve only recently started learning Spanish and can’t wait to start reading. In fact, although I am a complete beginner, I’ve already purchased my first novel, actually a collection of short stories, by Isabel Allende in both hardcopy and audiobook. So looking forward to getting to a point where I can read this.
Excellent advice. I failed all throughout school. It wasn’t until I dropped out and started reading, that I began to actually learn. It worked out so well, that I got a GED and graduated from several trade schools, several colleges and several Universities. Ironically, public school wasn’t able to teach me, but I was able to teach myself and publish several books, several songs, three patent inventions and an award winning movie script. Every bit was a struggle and no one helped even a little. But I was resolved to succeed and piss everyone off that said I would never amount to anything.
I’ve found that combination of intensive and extensive reading effective as well. In addition, I do something partway in between I think of as targeted reading. If there is a particular aspect of the language that is frustrating me when I run across it, I target it each time I encounter it until it is not frustrating. The first time I tried it, I had hit a plateau in Ancient Greek in my extensive reading. I had improved quite a bit, but just seemed to not get any better. Intensive reading wasn’t effectively fixing this either. It was an issue of internalizing grammar to the point it was automatic.
I don’t remember why, but I decided to fix one problem at a time. The first obvious problem was that I hadn’t internalized verb endings of the indicative cases to the point they were completely automatic. To fix this, during extensive reading, I paused at each indicative (and subjunctive verb), thought about it intentionally for a bit, then picked up again with extensive reading at the beginning of that sentence. I found that quick emphasis on a particular aspect of the language helped internalize it. Within a few days, the verb endings were not much of a problem so I stopped focusing on them.
I’ve found that this targeting of the aspect of grammar that is most annoying and frustrating applies the Pareto Principle to clearing out the worst stumbling blocks to comfortable extensive reading. I don’t stay on one aspect until I have it perfect, but rather until it’s not a noticeable impediment to smooth extensive reading. This is something that is much like what using parallel texts, interlinears, or computer click-for-definition functions is for vocabulary when extended reading, except it’s for grammar. It’s a momentary distraction to the reading, but gives a quick review on what is needed.
I found targeted reading a great addition to both intensive and extensive reading. It’s a minor temporary slowdown to extended reading that gives a permanent bump up in skills. I’ve found that this targeting usually clears most stumbling blocks in a few days or at most a week without turning all my reading time into intensive reading.
Reading could be very difficult in the beginning. I read few paragraphs and then gave up. Cause.. I didn’t get what sentences meant. Sometimes even if I knew almost every word. But listening to audiobook same time while reading text helped me a lot. I did that and after few chapters I started to read without help of audiobook. It’s like children learning to ride bicycle with a hard of a parent. So now I get this skill to read book even without knowing some words. While reading in foreign language. Don’t give too much attention on unknown words, take a meaning of whole sentence or even a paragraph.