Why extensive reading is so effective for language learning
Today, I want to talk about extensive reading, also known as free, voluntary
reading, because I think reading is such a powerful way to improve
your language skills, regardless of where you are in the language.
I'm going to refer you to a document that was shown to me from
Cambridge University, And also another one from Oxford University.
Before getting into the subject, it's interesting to note, because I got
curious doing research for this video, the market for language learning
worldwide in 2023 was over 60 billion U.
S.
dollars, and it's projected to reach 115 billion dollars in the year 2032.
So it's an enormous market.
Apparently, two thirds of that market, Is for learning English now,
given that it's not expensive to buy a book, we can buy books online.
There's an, a limitless amount of material available online that we
can read, that we can access, that we can read and look up words.
It is amazing that so much money is spent on the language learning industry,
on things, for example, like LingQ.
Reading is powerful, but maybe people are discouraged from reading or don't
think they can do it on their own, or they feel they need to have a teacher
to guide them or a system to guide them, but in fact, a lot can be achieved.
by a motivated learner who is willing to read.
But there are issues and problems, and I want to get into those.
First of all, if you refer to the link I left, you will see what extensive
reading or free voluntary reading is.
It's basically just reading, but it's reading material that's of
interest, that's not too difficult, reading on your own, reading at
a good speed, reading silently.
I would add, although they don't mention it, it's probably a good
idea to also have the audio for the material that you are reading.
Now, you'll see in this link that the Cambridge study points out certain
obvious benefits to extensive reading.
Should be obvious, but may not be obvious to every language learner.
And that is that reading improves our ability to read, obviously.
It improves our vocabulary.
We encounter words.
We encounter words in context with other words.
We get to see how they work with other words.
We get a better sense of grammar.
It's a massive exposure to the language.
It's easy to do.
You do it on your own.
When I was learning Chinese in Hong Kong, over 50 years ago,
my major activity was reading.
And I would scour the bookstores of Hong Kong to find readers with vocabulary lists
behind each chapter, which I would review before reading and then after reading.
There wasn't so much audio available in those days.
Reading is powerful.
I also consider that, especially if you listen to the same material
that you're reading, it upsets you.
Almost like speaking because when you are reading on your own in a foreign
language, you are sub vocalizing.
So therefore it helps you to get to where you can speak.
It helps you with your comprehension, grasp of grammar, seeing words in context.
All of these things are greatly, assisted by free voluntary reading.
Now the Cambridge study refers to what they call obstacles.
To free voluntary reading or extensive reading and most of those obstacles seem
to refer to the resistance from teachers who are Reluctant to see the learners go
off on their own ahead of what the teacher wants to teach or that the classroom You
know student will spend his or her time reading rather than Studying grammar or
doing the other things the activities that the teacher wants to do in other
words The teacher is reluctant to give up their time Teacher time, classroom time
to free voluntary reading, although it has been demonstrated that free voluntary
reading has all of these benefits.
So the resistance on the part of some teachers is considered the main obstacle,
but I don't see that as the main obstacle.
To me, the biggest problem or the biggest obstacle when it comes to
free voluntary reading is vocabulary.
Some of the proponents of free voluntary reading or extensive reading suggest that
free voluntary reading should be based on no more than four words per page of
unknown words or a couple of percent unknown words for it to be a pleasant
experience and that the student should be encouraged to guess or infer the
meaning of words that they don't know.
To me, that's wrong.
Actually, I shouldn't say it's wrong, but I should say that the strategy
when it comes to free voluntary reading depends on who you are
and where you are in the language.
Obviously, if you're a school child and you've got 10, 12 years or more to
improve your vocabulary and to develop that sense of joy of reading, then free
voluntary reading with a very small number of unknown words is a good thing.
Again, I would avoid the sort of.
Teaching reading strategies, inferring strategies, just let the child read, let
the words they don't understand go by.
They'll eventually figure them out one way or another.
So that's free voluntary reading in the sense that Krashen describes
it for people in school, probably a better use of the student's time than
listening to the teacher in many cases.
However, when we as adults, and I include say students at a university, say at
a foreign university where they're having to take courses in a foreign
language, adults wanting to learn a language, we are in a bigger hurry.
We don't have.
12 years to gradually, slowly increase our vocabulary.
We need to increase our vocabulary more quickly.
And therefore the strategy has to be different.
We can't be dealing with just 2 percent unknown words.
When we start in the language, of course, we have no known words
or depending on how different the language is to a language we know.
So typically my strategy is I go to the many stories and, or you go to
other easy content, lots of repetition.
So we are able to knock off the 500, most common words of the language.
We all know that.
Frequency declines very quickly.
And now we have to deal with chasing those low frequency words that are very
important and yet don't appear that often.
So then in my experience, we need to deal with a larger number of unknown words.
Either we say using LingQ, we look them up and we hope to acquire
these words by seeing them often enough, or we just let them go.
You can have free voluntary reading with a book where there's a lot of unknown words.
I never bother inferring or guessing.
I, it just flows by me.
But there is some benefit in encountering those words in this
free voluntary reading format.
However, it's frustrating if you forever don't know what the words mean.
And that's essentially.
What's at the origin of link typically early on when I'm starting in a language,
it might have 30 percent unknown words.
And I admit that's difficult.
And we track these statistics at link.
And of course, initially you may know a bunch of words that the system
doesn't yet know that, So that might also push the number up to 50%.
If I were to go into Dutch, for example, it'll show me a large
percentage of words that I don't know.
And in fact, in the case of Dutch, I can infer the meaning of those words.
But in Turkish, that's not the case.
Very difficult for me to infer the meaning of words unless they're
connected to words that I already know.
So in terms of the percentage that I can deal with.
15%, 15 to 20 percent is an acceptable level of unknown words for me.
And so I develop a strategy which says at an early stage, I want
material that's five minutes long.
I want maybe 15 to 20 percent unknown words.
I want that to be about 20 words that I'm trying to learn.
2025 words that I've never seen before.
And that is my strategy and it's an optimum position.
It's a sweet spot in terms of increasing my vocabulary so that I can eventually
reach the stage where I can read a paper book because I will have enough vocabulary
so that I won't be guessing at every second or third word, but at the same
time, it won't be, only three, four words per page that are unknown to me because
then I'm not increasing my vocabulary.
Make no mistake.
We need a lot of vocabulary.
Even low frequency vocabulary in order to enjoy free voluntary reading.
So we have to invest that time in getting our vocabulary level up.
But while we are doing that, we are increasing our familiarity with the
language again, the research has shown that people who read a lot, they write
better, they have better grammar.
They speak better.
There's tremendous benefits to this free voluntary reading, but
you have to be prepared for it.
You have to build yourself up to be able to do it.
If you try to do that from day one, I think it'll be quite difficult.
One other strategy I have is to stay in a limited range, a
limited content area for a while.
So that if I'm doing history of say in this case, the Ottoman
Empire, I will stay with that.
So the same vocabulary will repeat.
I have found that typically fiction is much more difficult.
There's a far broader range of words and given the tremendous Precipitous decline
of frequency of words in any language.
You want to, have a strategy where you have a greater likelihood of meeting
the same words or related words again.
So to summarize, many people like video.
I'm not a big fan.
I like video.
I like film, but for language learning, video is less effective.
There's a lot of dead time.
Sometimes it's difficult to catch what people are saying.
Whereas reading is pure words.
And to that extent, listening is pure words.
So that if we're talking not just about what's enjoyable, but how do
we improve our vocabulary, how do we improve our grasp of the language,
reading and it's associated activity of listening to my mind are the way to go.
And yes, you want to consume more and more of the language, more and more
extensive, more and more free, voluntary.
And above all, you don't.
want to have too much teacher intervention.
Teachers love to have pre reading questions and post reading questions and
comprehension questions and instructing you on how to infer and critical thinking.
I always quote Ruben Alves who says, nothing destroys the enjoyment
of reading as much as being asked questions about what you have read.
I may not understand it perfectly, but it's what I understood.
I'm happy with that.
I don't want to be challenged.
I just want to enjoy my reading.
The essence of free voluntary reading is to be free of those kinds of impositions
from the teacher and free to explore the language following a strategy where you're
gradually increasing your ability to take on more and more difficult, potentially
more and more interesting material, longer material, and that way you will eventually
achieve your language learning goal.
So with that, I wanted to leave you those references to people talking
about free voluntary reading and lend my support to free voluntary reading.
One of Crouch's big bugbears, extensive reading.
As a relatively inexpensive and effective way to improve your
language skills in any language.
