📲 The app I use to learn languages: bit.ly/3WZijI4 🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: bit.ly/3MBLf4p ❓Have you tried extensive reading before? Let me know in the comments!
I would love a follow-up with this.. on languages with alternate writing systems.. that adds a much larger learning curve.. to get into the reading… i.e Chinese japanese etc. i find with lingQ i almost want to have “romanji on ontop of the kana early on.. just like you have kana on top of kanji to help you out.. but sadly lingq only has a on / off 2 options so you lose the kana when romanji is on.. which is a crying shame.. would make the transition much better.. NOTE i agree turning the romanji off as fast as possible but at least at first it lets you start reading and hearing words.. bridging the gap much like furigana does for kanji
Excuseme, if I have an audiobook, what would be the best strategy to Read it? First listen to without follow the text? Next read without listen and finally both? Or first read, later listen? What is your advance? Regards
A friend from República Dominicana told me yesterday that I know enough so I should just focus on pronunciation and reading a lot! So here I am to learn more about reading more!!
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.
Yep. I learned Italian to an intermediate level by reading a shelf meter of Peanut books in Italian, after that I could add newspapers to what I was reading, and eventually actual books.
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."
Also, I want to point out to people looking at this trying to learn a new language. Yes, I have over 400 hours studying this language. Sometimes I feel great that I can understand a lot, sometimes I feel terrible because I don't understand anything. It's an emotional rollercoaster that is normal for learning a language. There is a lot you have to learn to become truly great at a language. We're talking a couple thousand hours of work, and it is completely normal to have different feelings about your abilities based off of the content you're consuming. I think I am learning is just to continue to push through with my daily habit and eventually it will get there. Don't stress it
Hi there from Germany, I always wanted to ask a native English speaker how tough it really feels like when beginning to learn German? Bei mir war es andersherum so, dass ich von der 5. Klasse an 6 Jahre relativ langweilig gestalteten Schulunterricht in Englisch hatte, wovon wir die ersten 3 Jahre noch sehr viel Deutsch in den Unterrichtsstunden sprachen, dann komplett auf Englisch gewechselt hatten. Danach dann durfte ich ein Schüleraustauschjahr an einer US-amerikanischen High School verbringen und bei einer Gastfamilie wohnen. In den ersten 3 bis 6 Wochen habe ich dann mehr Englisch gelernt als in den ganzen Jahren zuvor an meiner deutschen Schule. Insbesondere hat sich natürlich das Sprechen sofort sehr stark verbessert.
@@luthov the hardest thing for me learning German in the beginning, because it was also my first foreign language, was the word order. Over time and lots of reading it finally started to just make sense but having to place verbs at the very end of sentences, or word order changes in subordinate clauses is quite strange for a native English speaker. In the beginning when speaking it is especially difficult; you are trying to remember the noun, the gender, the case, the adjectives, etc and you get all the way to the end of the sentence and you've completely forgotten the verbs that are needed. As a contrast, I've been learning Italian since January of this year and besides the fact that there are many cognates between Italian and English, the word order is essentially the same. From day 1 I was able to read basic Italian sentences and have a good sense as to the meaning without a lot of mental head translation gymnastics, sozusagen :). Here is a funny video demonstrating English as spoken like German: ruclips.net/video/0CbOFQAnYG8/видео.html
@@FearlessRefactoring Thanks! Yes, word order in the German language seems confusing and complicated. I have to admit that as a native German speaker I have never spent much time learning all the grammar and rules. You probably have a much better understanding of the German grammar than I. Most of the time I have just memorized how it's done from reading texts and listening to other people.
@@luthov Brazilian with 3 weeks of studying german here, "rushed" through lingq ministories, nico weg A1 and A2 (on lingq), now reading nico weg B1 on lingq and also watching begginer comprehensible input videos on youtube(when i feel like procastinating instead of doing something else), far from remembering every words that i come across, but i do feel my comprehension slowly improving. Funny thing is that in my mind, some words i dont translate, some words i translate to english and some words i translate to portuguese, all words I dont know I look up the translation in english, but there are some words that I feel more similiarity with portuguese(some times is more a nmemonic then a direct relation), funny experience learning my second foreign language. Cant say absolutely nothing in German though, and feel that because of the declension are going to be a long time until I feel comfortable to speak, especially without studying grammar or phrases books
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.
Yes, that's what I've noticed myself and still can't understand why. The same people could be ok with doing a lot flashcards or even grammar exercises, but they somehow avoid reading like a plague. Could it be that they prefer to have some immediate feedback from their actions, or seek for gamification, or maybe reading just feels too passive and boring activity to them?
Reading can be very boring. It's hard habit to acquire as an adult. If they are reading to improve their language skills, they often see it as a waste of time, as they can't realize instantaneously how much they are learning. Were they to read for 6 months in a row, they would find out how amazing reading is. So, the way a see it is this: try to find a book you think your student will really like and have them try to read it. Just saying "Reading is awesome" to someone who doesn't read won't make a great impact.
@@KnightOfEternity13 I'm in basically this exact situation: I will do flashcards and short exercises all day long, but until recently I really struggled with reading regularly and for "extended" periods of time (that is, 30mins at a time). I do think it comes down to feedback. It's not that I don't enjoy reading, it's that if my mind starts drifting off or I start thinking or something else, there's nothing in the book to sort of grab me by the neck and bring me back to my reading, whereas if you're watching a show, doing flashcards, short exercises, reading a graphic novel, you get this constant reminder to stay on track. For a lot of people, myself included, we can't just read like any other activity. Reading has to be made into an occasion, a habit, and we have to create appropriate circumstances for reading (computer turned off, phone at the other end of the room) in order to overcome this initial 5-10 minute hurdle before we are actually fully immersed in the book and don't need those crutches anymore. The problem is that 5-10 minutes by digital standards is an eternity and so book reading as an activity suffers from it. Hope this gives you some insight
I think it is important to not focus on the "for learning" part. In my experience the magic happens when you instead focus solely on the enjoyment of reading or listening, the wish to follow the story, whatever it is.
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 !!
What kind of Manga do you read? I'm learning korean, but have heard reading manhwa isn't as useful as straight learning because there is a lot of words that aren't necessary outside of the manhwa (magic, portals, etc). With Manga, however, is there greater potential for more common words? Obviously though, reading something, especially something that you like, is better than nothing.
@@themistake8904Not the original poster, but I'm also learning Japanese. I think the concept can apply to any form of content, but just like Steve says in the video, fiction will contain a lot more lesser-used vocabulary. In essence, I don't think it is the medium that matters, it is how closely related the medium is to reality. Shoujo Romance Manga/Anime generally have much easier vocabulary than Shounen Fantasies. Similarly, reading a Drama manwha will probably bestow much more useful vocabulary than a Fantasy-based manwha would. I've never read a manwha in my life, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I can only speak from my experience with Japanese.
@@themistake8904 I'm reading DanDaDan. I don't know if it's as useful as straight learning but I don't think I could have progressed as fast that way. The first volume took me about two months to reads. I finished the third volume in a week, now there are sentences I just don't need to look up. Also, I think the best approach is mixing your learning up. Now I'm into reading manga, before I was spending a lot of time writing kanji, some other time I was watching some comprehensible input videos. That way you keep it interesting. Stop worrying about how useful this things are and enjoy them! You know words like portals and magic in english as well anyway, might as well learn them in korean!
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.
The way I see it is: you will have to sacrifice the enjoyment of 4 or 5 books to achieve a large vocabulary. After that, reading becomes amazing. I found that out by sacrificing my enjoyment of Les misérables by reading it in French. It has over 2000 pages. But I became a fluent French reader after that. I still find many unknown words, but reading in French is not tiring anymore. For that reason, I choose a book about the effects of television on the brain to read in Romanian. It's a book I'm just slightly interested in reading (almost 600 pages, on page 80 now), but by the end of it I'm positive I'll be able to read a detective novel at least without much suffering.
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.
I still haven't heard you say a single thing I disagree with. Thank you for imparting so much wisdom. I'm so glad I found this channel and LingQ. I'm on a 585-day streak in Spanish and about 16k known words, and I'm loving it every day. My plan is to get to 40k in one continuous streak.
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.
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.
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.
I like to open the subtitle while listen to your video. Because I can understand 98% of the content, but sometimes,there are still some unknown words. Subtitle can help to identify the word, the spelling, look up to the meaning, and listen to your pronunciation of the word. Which is usually enjoyable and helpful.🎉
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'.
Watching video and listening to an audiobook are more passive ways to learn a language, but conversation and/or reading in a new language forces the brain to work harder. As with any other workout, more intense work over time leads to higher levels of strength/fitness of whatever muscle or system is being worked, in this case it's the language brain. Many of us lack the conversation partners to do the conversation piece, which is why we are relying on video, audio, and reading in the first place. That leaves reading in your target language as the fastest way to get through that intermediate stage. At least that's the logic I'm hearing, because I'm still in the Intermediate Stage too 🤣🤣🤣. I'm reading like crazy though while still listening and I'm feeling the gains.
Don't mean to spam but let me also add that reading really helps you practice processing the sentence structure of the spoken target language and adds words to your vocab bag that you need while listening.
@@BlackCodeMath I don't think I need any partner to learn a language. The amount of time that I've spoken English in the last 20 years must be like full 20 minutes, including the test that I took to receive a fluency diploma. So, in my mind, you don't need a partner to be able to speak the language, even though It looks obvious that had I practiced the speaking I would be much better by now. But, to me you can go around that if you are able to read and write the language. I have the feeling that everytime you read or write, your brain is 'mimmicking' the conversation in your head and that's enough practice to become fluent.
@@BlackCodeMath Yeah, I fully agree reading is the best way to elaborate a good speech, even in your own mother tongue. I have no doubt in that. My only downside is that my main goal is to understand the spoken language that's why I invest all my time watching videos.
@@jackbombay1423Oh I'm not saying you must have a partner to become fluent, I'm saying conversation and/or reading in the target language is going to move you much faster through the intermediate stage you discussed and into fluency. This is demonstrated in everyday life- nothing beats immersion (for kids or adults) for learning a new language, where listening and speaking to conversation partners goes hand in hand. But, it has been demonstrated that mute individuals can have full understanding of spoken language. And really? As a non-native speaker only 20 minutes total speaking English in 20 years (including the test) and you're fluent? I honestly must confess I am a bit skeptical, can you elaborate on that test?
Really nice tips Steve, yesterday I said to my English teacher that when I read more it really facilitates my speech skills. I was too focused on speech, and I felt that I had achieved a plato. I will restart my extensive reading today!!
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.
As a beginer I write and read song' s lyrics. At this point it is easier than other material and of course I sing. It s good for prononciation. 🎼 and of course it a powerful way to remenber new words.
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 ❤
I have read 18 novels in english (my native language is spanish). It was very difficult at first but now it's amazing how my comprehension and vocabulary have improved. Now I'm reading Dune, it's kinda difficult but I can handle it and I'm very proud of myself. Most of the time I look for the meaning of words I don't know and I high light them and jot down their meaning. After finishing the book, I go back to see the new words and I remember their meaning because of the context or the sentences where they are. Also I have found new words from any other book I have read and I can remember in which part of which book I saw that word. It's just amazing.
Olá steve comecei a usar a sua plataforma lingq para aprender idiomas e estou amando, é incrível o poder dessa plataforma, estou exportando vários vídeos de ciencia e historia em ingles, e em 4 semanas de plataforma já estou lendo e entendo varias frases no idioma muito obrigado!
Recommend using Google books with the online translator. Lots of material available, even in less popular languages--I am currently reading a book in Catalan with minimal prior study (although knowledge of other Romance languages). My strategy is to start exclusively with Google books and then move over to the traditional book versions with time. Done this with many languages, including German, Italian, Russian, Czech, Norwegian, Ukrainian. More planned!
Huge proponent of reading for language acquisition. I literally learned Brazilian Portuguese from reading the harry potter series (but fuck JK Rowling). My spouse's family is Brazilian. I spent probably 2 years on duolingo, which was really helpful for giving me a base understanding of the language/vocabulary, but progress was really slow, and I couldn't speak in conversation. I began devoting all of my language study time to reading, and not only was it more enjoyable, but it completely unlocked the language for me. I read all 7 books, but reached "conversational fluency" sometime around the fourth or fifth book. I am currently at a B2 level (upper intermediate), and I can totally hang in conversation now.
This last quote got me hanging for a bit to also think of what that supposed to mean. In class context I got to agree. Some of these questions aren't as valuable to the language learning and more to 'paying attention to details' however I always tend to create these little stories about the books or topics I've read in order to be able to tell it to someone. On other hand, I have a friend who was a firm book reader, but after a question of what was the book about, he could barely say a thing. I guess moral of the story is (imo) that reading shouldn't just be about 'enjoying yourself', you should get something from it too. (still can be enjoyable)
In learning a new language there is no such thing as " ONE SIZE FITS ALL" . Everyone learn new language or for that matter other subjects in their own and unique way. In my opinion, while learning a new language you have to utilize all of your senses. Put on your head phones and LISTEN a lot, WRITE a lot and READ a lot. Or any other way that may help you. And if you can travel to the country of your TARGET LANGUAGE, take classes there and immerse yourself in the language you are learning you can make an amazing progress in a very short time.
It's a lot easier to find things to read on my level than stuff to listen to. Listening often involves very intimate knowledge of the way words flow together unless words are enunciated very clearly it can be frustrating trying to pull words apart.
Reading is a very time consuming business and anti social, even in retirement! We are told by the experts that reading is necessary for a healthy brain so I must keep reading! And walking!
9:35 yeah, as a Brazilian, about what Rubem Alves said, I dont really know all the uses of the word "vagabond" in english, the dicitonary says its somewhat like a "homeless person who wanders", maybe the word "vagabundo" in portuguese can have the same meaning but the more common meaning would be a person who doesnt like to work and just do things he enjoys to do without carying for anything, usually in a bad way, its somewhat commom for mothers use the expression "Vai arrumar um emprego, seu vagabundo"/"Go get a job, you vagabond" or "Para de ficar vagabundando e vai fazer alguma coisa de bom"/ "Stop being a vagabond(vagabonding*🤣) and go do something good". "Vagabundo" can also means a Unfaithfull person, but the intented meaning of Rubem Alves is what i said before, could be translated (i think) to "Slacker", so the joy of reading is a "slacker experience". please, some native answer me if "Slacker" its a better translation
See, when I was in school, they required us to do "voluntary" reading, but a lot of students didn't want to do it because we had homework that we wanted to catch up on!
Hi Steve! I think you left out the "compelling" aspect of it.. I feel this is sooo fundamental, in my experience I can be reading something with 30% unknown words yet I can't put the book down and I just want to know what happens next (and it also feels like a mind hack to spend more time with the language)
That's exactly it.. if you can get the story to hook into your brain then you don't care about words you don't understand, you get enough of the story to keep wanting to read. In that particular mood the brain is in its optimal setting for acquiring language, unlike when consciously trying to study or learn.
Listening to podcasts in a language you learn shows you if you are really interested in the topic. If you get hooked, as you say (which is the exact way to describe it), your language comprehension suddenly goes through the roof. It is as if the brain puts on its superman outfit. The "getting hooked" depends on the topic, the speaking skills of the speaker, the character of the speaker (if you like him or her), and his or her personal engagement with the topic. (On the last criterion: There is a set of French podcasts by the same podcaster on various topics, well presented, but they are not quite as easy to "get hooked on" for me, since the personal engagement part seems to be missing somehow or is at least not presented in the podcasts.)
I like reading about subjects that I already know. I read some wikipedia articles in the target language because they are kind of similar having the same structure and there are many languages avalailable including Latin.
I love to turn on the subtitles and watch these videos in the target language I'm trying to learn. However, lately the subtitles don't seem to line up with the audio. Please fix!
Truly, your points are certainly right if anyone wants to expand their ability in reading. Unfortunately, in my place, things cannot go on that way. Time is always not enough for students to tackle many academic subjects, except for English reading.
I'm curious at one point is reading considered "intensive reading", when you don't know 50% or more of the words? Big fan of Extensive reading and using it more than intensive reading, but I feel "intensive" reading has it's place. Split probably depends on the person but maybe 80% extensive and 20% intensive reading? On extensive reading I like trying to choose material where I don't know around 10% of the words. 30% to 40% unknown words to me is a middle ground between extensive and intensive reading. Just me -- but I also found intensive reading more useful when I was first starting -- and then extensive reading became more useful after I had a vocab of 1200-1500 words. Hard to estimate my vocab now -- but I think I have a vocab of around 5000 words in Portuguese -- and extended reading works extremely well now and is very enjoyable.
Kurdish is a rich and beautiful language, deeply rooted in the history and culture of the Kurdish people. Kurdish has a diverse range of dialects, such as Kurmanji, Sorani, Zazaki,Badini and Hewrami.
Will you plz listen to the song " shirin shirin" by Shahram Nazeri and tell me what dialect it is. ( available on youtube) I am exposed to some Kurdish by dancing with friends ( halay) to the songs of Ibrahim tatlises . Just fell in love with Kurdish but don't know which dialect should I start with.
My experience I dealt with larger number of unknown words when I started. It is kind of top to bottom strategy. Started with novels difficulty even now I read classics like the Brothers Karamazov, Robert browning my last duchess…
Thank you very much for sharing. May I ask if there are any websites for finding books? After reading Sydney Sheldon and Carl Sagan, are there any other captivating books you would recommend? Thank you!
My unscientific 2 cents on this: the order of mastery for those unable to do second language immersion is Reading fluency --> Writing fluency --> Listening fluency --> Speaking FLUENTLY. An unscientific take, I'll admit that, and surely people can do/have done it differently. When reading one does have the requirement to learn the symbols, grammar, and syntax needed to comprehend. This isn't easy. But you don't have the additional pressure of in-the-moment formulating comprehensible and appropriate outputs. You're only processing inputs and you can "cheat" with translation tools and dictionaries. Lowest cognitive load for a mature learner and the lowest (social) pressure. While writing one DOES have to create output, but you DON'T have to process second language inputs. You will need to have practiced the rules for making and ordering symbols, while adding enough words to your usable vocabulary. Not saying it's easy but when writing you can take your time, revise in real time, do a draft then return and polish it, and only then share your output. Added pressure of not sounding foolish, but still a low-ish cognitive load. Listening to native foreign language speakers is significantly harder because real speech is constantly moving away from the small set of formal language rules you learn while mastering a language. Common slang, "eating words/syllables", regional accents, etc. become real barriers. However, this is somewhat offset by the fact that you don't have to make any outputs while listening. Cognitive load is still one sided, and here as with the above only an input OR an output is required. No pressure but a higher cognitive load. But when conversing you have the highest cognitive load AND the highest pressure. You have to understand formal and casual input while simultaneously creating timely, comprehensible, appropriate outputs. And often you must do it in that everyday language that you often haven't had a chance to practice. Many long-time learners after years of practice can read, write, properly pronounce words, and construct strings of sentences in the target language but can not hold a true conversation with a native speaker. The combination of processing non-formal audio and producing it is the last thing to be mastered. This logic makes sense to me and it's what I'm experiencing on my language journey but maybe you folks will correct me. BTW the above order would be a terrible (if not impossible) way to learn a first language. I think that best order is what you get with native immersion: Listening --> Speaking --> Writing --> Reading FLUENTLY. My anecdotal evidence for this is working with younger native language (American English speaking) students that can hold great conversations and write their thoughts down clearly but cannot truly comprehend what they read at an appropriate level. They often can nicely "read" aloud through a passage and not understand what they read, as reading comprehension is the last part to arrive. Surely there is some research that would support that take.
Teachers are not reluctant, they have got to stick to the curriculum and the official teaching material. Otherwise they get in trouble. When they make students read then its mostly to analyze the text and being graded afterwards. Very off-putting and i guess that is why many people don't read for fun
After having a decent vocabulary you don't need to read anymore. I mean you probably will continue reading if you enjoy it but you won't depend on it to learn new words. I find reading more tiresome than listening so i tend to listen to audios rather than to read books. Actually I've listened to this whole video with my phone screen locked 😅 Or maybe... I do it the other way around so i learn new vocabulary from podcasts, tv shows etc and I confirm it when i find those words written.
Sure, reading is the most powerful input source helping you increase the number of passive vocabulary but it will have little use on your spoken English or fluency unless you try to practice what you read at every opportunity, as much as you can.
This is definitely true- speaking is really important especially if one's goal is communication. However, in cases such as mine (learning Finnish), the only thing that it shares in common with English is an alphabet. Remembering words, especially uncommon ones, plus the hundreds of different forms they can take on, has proven to be difficult. With extensive reading, you are able to keep words as well as their various forms much fresher in your mind for instances where the need to use them can be applied.
@@placebo_7505 if you are not in an English speaking environment it's really hard to create life like situations in which you can use English. Repeating and trying to use what you come across when reading can help to some extent but not much as you are not highly motivated when studying on your own so it doesn't stick as expected. There are online speaking clubs where you can speak English with native speakers. I think that would be the best thing to do.
It's interesting (and disappointing) that some teachers are resistant to learners reading on their own. A friend of mine who teaches German and English in junior high, with excellent results (unlike when *I* was in school.. that was a 100% waste back then) encourages the students to find reading material, anything they enjoy reading, and doing lots of that. It's a central part of my friend's method. I personally couldn't agree more, as that's how I learned English: Constantly reading. As for "how many unknown words should there be per page", I never tried to check that when I was reading English. 4? 40? Don't know. I was most definitely an adult (in my thirties when I started reading non-technical material, i.e. novels), and there was definitely a lot of words I didn't understand. But I simply let that go by, no stopping, no looking anything up, because if I managed to get a grasp of the story I would want to continue reading. Never mind if I didn't understand what one person was giving to another, or whatever it was they were eating (or what they were doing.. I didn't, for example, know that "grub" was referring to actual food). As long as I grasped something then my mind would "see" a story, and THAT is what's important. The mind must see something, and that should *not* be words on a page. Then just ingest, ingest, acquire, input, and the mind *will* figure it out, eventually, without conscious thought.
@@placebo_7505 In my job most of my customers are from other countries, so whenever there was a meeting I would have to speak English. Pronunciation I got from TV and movies (fortunately there's no dubbing of movies etc in my country) and of course those I met through my job. When I was younger (before I started to read English outside of tech manuals) my English was considered not particularly good (by people I met who I knew well enough that they could be upfront about it. After going through massive input through reading (NB: Reading for enjoyment, not for learning English) and other input it all changed (and rather quickly). Of course, with the huge vocabulary I acquired that way I didn't necessarily get the pronunciation.. some words are pretty rarely used in actual speech. So to this day I still occasionally get a surprise when I hear how certain words are actually pronounced.. :-)
Hi Steve, thanks so much for share your knowledge, what book do you recommended to read in English and for a beginner Japanese student, what book do you recommend to read in Japanese.
I started learning korean by reading harry potter. 99.99999% unknown words and still managed to get through it. Initially page by page than chapter by chapter ater a few months and now there are a few unknown words here and there per chapter. It is doable but requires an insane level of dedication
@@markbr5898 If I'd used a paper one i would've gone through a few. I used an application similar to linq. I don't even want to think how long it would've taken without it.
I don’t understand why reading improves your ability of listening. I mean why does that happen if we’re not actually listening to anything, just watching words
He said that it’s better to have the ability to listen to the material we’re reading, and this would improve listening skills And he did mentioned that reading improves speaking skills, because when we read, we pronounce the words at least inside
Only if you want to read children’s books but, personally, I don’t find it interesting. However, thanks to the Simplified A.I feature on LingQ you can import a novel and read the simplified version first and then read the original. Of course, the original version will still be difficult but it’s great to stumble through a novel written for natives even though it takes months because by the end of it you read a lot faster than at the start and you’ve acquired tens of thousands of new words.
I’m learning mandarin I’m at an intermediate level But reading , I would love to not understanding one character is one thing but of course all the new ones I don’t know how to pronounce unless they have pin yin Is there a solution to this?
Steve, do you have an opinion on using The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language to help learn a language? I heard online Eric Weinstein discussing its value in language acquisition. He claims that academics are aware of its importance but, for some unknown reason, don’t use it with their students. Thoughts?
Here’s how Amazon describes the book: “This new, thoroughly revised edition of the acclaimed Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language incorporates the major developments in language study which have taken place since the mid 1990s. Two main new areas have been added: the rise of electronic communication in all its current forms from email to texting, and the crisis affecting the world's languages, of which half are thought to be so seriously endangered that they will die out this century. • All language statistics have been updated, and additional information provided about their linguistic affiliation • All topics involving technology have been revised to take account of recent developments, notably in phonetics, language disability, and computing • Maps have been revised to include new countries or country names • Special attention has been paid to fast-moving areas such as language teaching and learning • The text design has been completely updated with many new illustrations throughout.” Thanks for all that you do!
Thank you. I misunderstood. I thought it was a dictionary. I go through these comments quite quickly as there are a lot of them. I just ordered the book from Amazon and may do a video around it.
Thanks! I think that what Eric Weinstein is saying is that you need to fully understand the English language, its origins, rules, etc. to better (and more quickly) learn another language. I ordered it, too.
Essentially you just need more input. I had similar issues , especially with idioms when I was learning English. The more you read and listen the more you will understand
it is extremely inefficient. Image that you want to learn a language and reach c1 level. It's quite easy to get contexts from reading for a thousend most common words. What about next 7k? If you exceed 4 thousand words, every word after that appears 5 times and less per million words read !!! a book has 100k words or so. If you want to passively learn a word you need to gather from 20 to 50 contexts per word. So you need to read 10 books to have these 6 contexts, so 80 books to learn a word from b2 level. Congratulation, now you can recognize a word, and you are still not able to speak!! What about words from c1 level which appear two times in a milion?? 240 books to recognize a word? Focus on deliberate practice for a week and you won't go back to the INPUT CHURCH .
Maybe you read too hard books for your level, if you fail to understand the context. Try to start with some graded readers, but don't become too attached to them, you need to challenge yourself. May also consider learning the basics of grammar. I'm generally agree with Steve that dabbling in grammar too much is not an effective use of your time. But if the language you learn is too different from your own, it may be helpful to learn the basics to make reading easier.
Find material which has context you are familiar with. When I still was a teenager I would read that period's computer magazines, not because I wanted to learn English but because I wanted to know about computers. I could "get" it because it was a context I was familiar with. Later I read short scientific books, again because I knew enough science to "get" it, and science uses a lot of common vocabulary, independent of language. And I liked (and like) science. Only later did I switch to ordinary novels.
And for me. 593 days of continuous reading, 15617 pages read, and zero or no progress at all. That myself began to reassure and motivate that this is just the Compound Effect in action and that, according to my calculations)), vertical growth should occur in April next year. It remains only to believe)))
I tried a link below to subscribe to linkQ but my bank told me it’s fraud. Not to pay the £15.49 asked for. Maybe someone is acting fraudulently on you RUclips video? Please check
I just checked with the LinkQ support team as my bank sent me a warning fraud message when I tried to subscribe. The team assured me it’s fine so I tried again to subscribe and all went well. Maybe my phone was hacked? Anyway, all good now! I love this course and wish I had found it sooner.
The downside to free reading is that its effectiveness decreases with each book. Unfortunately, there is no ideal method for learning English that would meet all the requirements at once.
it is extremely inefficient. Image that you want to learn a language and reach c1 level. It's quite easy to get contexts from reading for a thousend most common words. What about next 7k? If you exceed 4 thousand words, every word after that appears 5 times and less per million words read !!! a book has 100k words or so. If you want to passively learn a word you need to gather from 20 to 50 contexts per word. So you need to read 10 books to have these 6 contexts, so 80 books to learn a word from b2 level. Congratulation, now you can recognize a word, and you are still not able to speak!! What about words from c1 level which appear two times in a milion?? 240 books to recognize a word? Focus on deliberate practice for a week and you won't go back to the INPUT CHURCH .
With language learning you need to incorporate speaking, listening reading and writing. Not sure why you would think reading is inefficient when words are all around… to reach c1 you need to know how to do all four practically like a native.
📲 The app I use to learn languages: bit.ly/3WZijI4
🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: bit.ly/3MBLf4p
❓Have you tried extensive reading before? Let me know in the comments!
Hi Steven you are light The número of unknown words can be mucho higher. The problema is that The study that crested that was veeeery flawed
I would love a follow-up with this.. on languages with alternate writing systems.. that adds a much larger learning curve.. to get into the reading… i.e Chinese japanese etc. i find with lingQ i almost want to have “romanji on ontop of the kana early on.. just like you have kana on top of kanji to help you out.. but sadly lingq only has a on / off 2 options so you lose the kana when romanji is on.. which is a crying shame.. would make the transition much better.. NOTE i agree turning the romanji off as fast as possible but at least at first it lets you start reading and hearing words.. bridging the gap much like furigana does for kanji
Excuseme, if I have an audiobook, what would be the best strategy to Read it?
First listen to without follow the text? Next read without listen and finally both?
Or first read, later listen?
What is your advance?
Regards
A friend from República Dominicana told me yesterday that I know enough so I should just focus on pronunciation and reading a lot! So here I am to learn more about reading more!!
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.
I agree, and I have already commented to LingQ that they should work on an OCR system to allow the use of comics in the system.
You are right . My three kids under sixteen non natives are amaizingly fluent english speakers and they used to read such materials. It works .
Yep. I learned Italian to an intermediate level by reading a shelf meter of Peanut books in Italian, after that I could add newspapers to what I was reading, and eventually actual books.
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."
Also, I want to point out to people looking at this trying to learn a new language. Yes, I have over 400 hours studying this language. Sometimes I feel great that I can understand a lot, sometimes I feel terrible because I don't understand anything. It's an emotional rollercoaster that is normal for learning a language. There is a lot you have to learn to become truly great at a language. We're talking a couple thousand hours of work, and it is completely normal to have different feelings about your abilities based off of the content you're consuming. I think I am learning is just to continue to push through with my daily habit and eventually it will get there. Don't stress it
Hi there from Germany,
I always wanted to ask a native English speaker how tough it really feels like when beginning to learn German? Bei mir war es andersherum so, dass ich von der 5. Klasse an 6 Jahre relativ langweilig gestalteten Schulunterricht in Englisch hatte, wovon wir die ersten 3 Jahre noch sehr viel Deutsch in den Unterrichtsstunden sprachen, dann komplett auf Englisch gewechselt hatten. Danach dann durfte ich ein Schüleraustauschjahr an einer US-amerikanischen High School verbringen und bei einer Gastfamilie wohnen. In den ersten 3 bis 6 Wochen habe ich dann mehr Englisch gelernt als in den ganzen Jahren zuvor an meiner deutschen Schule. Insbesondere hat sich natürlich das Sprechen sofort sehr stark verbessert.
@@luthov the hardest thing for me learning German in the beginning, because it was also my first foreign language, was the word order. Over time and lots of reading it finally started to just make sense but having to place verbs at the very end of sentences, or word order changes in subordinate clauses is quite strange for a native English speaker. In the beginning when speaking it is especially difficult; you are trying to remember the noun, the gender, the case, the adjectives, etc and you get all the way to the end of the sentence and you've completely forgotten the verbs that are needed. As a contrast, I've been learning Italian since January of this year and besides the fact that there are many cognates between Italian and English, the word order is essentially the same. From day 1 I was able to read basic Italian sentences and have a good sense as to the meaning without a lot of mental head translation gymnastics, sozusagen :). Here is a funny video demonstrating English as spoken like German: ruclips.net/video/0CbOFQAnYG8/видео.html
@@FearlessRefactoring Thanks! Yes, word order in the German language seems confusing and complicated. I have to admit that as a native German speaker I have never spent much time learning all the grammar and rules. You probably have a much better understanding of the German grammar than I. Most of the time I have just memorized how it's done from reading texts and listening to other people.
@@luthov Brazilian with 3 weeks of studying german here, "rushed" through lingq ministories, nico weg A1 and A2 (on lingq), now reading nico weg B1 on lingq and also watching begginer comprehensible input videos on youtube(when i feel like procastinating instead of doing something else), far from remembering every words that i come across, but i do feel my comprehension slowly improving.
Funny thing is that in my mind, some words i dont translate, some words i translate to english and some words i translate to portuguese, all words I dont know I look up the translation in english, but there are some words that I feel more similiarity with portuguese(some times is more a nmemonic then a direct relation), funny experience learning my second foreign language.
Cant say absolutely nothing in German though, and feel that because of the declension are going to be a long time until I feel comfortable to speak, especially without studying grammar or phrases books
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.
Yeah that last sentence is really what's wild to me and has been my xp. I know some very intelligent people that do not read whatsoever as an adult.
Yes, that's what I've noticed myself and still can't understand why.
The same people could be ok with doing a lot flashcards or even grammar exercises, but they somehow avoid reading like a plague.
Could it be that they prefer to have some immediate feedback from their actions, or seek for gamification, or maybe reading just feels too passive and boring activity to them?
Great comments, thanks! Best wishes 😊
Reading can be very boring. It's hard habit to acquire as an adult. If they are reading to improve their language skills, they often see it as a waste of time, as they can't realize instantaneously how much they are learning. Were they to read for 6 months in a row, they would find out how amazing reading is. So, the way a see it is this: try to find a book you think your student will really like and have them try to read it. Just saying "Reading is awesome" to someone who doesn't read won't make a great impact.
@@KnightOfEternity13 I'm in basically this exact situation: I will do flashcards and short exercises all day long, but until recently I really struggled with reading regularly and for "extended" periods of time (that is, 30mins at a time). I do think it comes down to feedback. It's not that I don't enjoy reading, it's that if my mind starts drifting off or I start thinking or something else, there's nothing in the book to sort of grab me by the neck and bring me back to my reading, whereas if you're watching a show, doing flashcards, short exercises, reading a graphic novel, you get this constant reminder to stay on track.
For a lot of people, myself included, we can't just read like any other activity. Reading has to be made into an occasion, a habit, and we have to create appropriate circumstances for reading (computer turned off, phone at the other end of the room) in order to overcome this initial 5-10 minute hurdle before we are actually fully immersed in the book and don't need those crutches anymore. The problem is that 5-10 minutes by digital standards is an eternity and so book reading as an activity suffers from it.
Hope this gives you some insight
Listening is for reinforcing the words one knows. Reading is for mining new words.
I think it is important to not focus on the "for learning" part. In my experience the magic happens when you instead focus solely on the enjoyment of reading or listening, the wish to follow the story, whatever it is.
I can't agree with you any more.
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 !!
After I started reading manga my japanese understanding has improved dramatically, I love reading!
What kind of Manga do you read? I'm learning korean, but have heard reading manhwa isn't as useful as straight learning because there is a lot of words that aren't necessary outside of the manhwa (magic, portals, etc). With Manga, however, is there greater potential for more common words? Obviously though, reading something, especially something that you like, is better than nothing.
Are you Brazilian?
@@themistake8904Not the original poster, but I'm also learning Japanese. I think the concept can apply to any form of content, but just like Steve says in the video, fiction will contain a lot more lesser-used vocabulary.
In essence, I don't think it is the medium that matters, it is how closely related the medium is to reality. Shoujo Romance Manga/Anime generally have much easier vocabulary than Shounen Fantasies. Similarly, reading a Drama manwha will probably bestow much more useful vocabulary than a Fantasy-based manwha would.
I've never read a manwha in my life, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I can only speak from my experience with Japanese.
@@M4th3u I'm spanish
@@themistake8904 I'm reading DanDaDan. I don't know if it's as useful as straight learning but I don't think I could have progressed as fast that way. The first volume took me about two months to reads. I finished the third volume in a week, now there are sentences I just don't need to look up.
Also, I think the best approach is mixing your learning up. Now I'm into reading manga, before I was spending a lot of time writing kanji, some other time I was watching some comprehensible input videos. That way you keep it interesting.
Stop worrying about how useful this things are and enjoy them! You know words like portals and magic in english as well anyway, might as well learn them in korean!
How sad that in an age where literacy is approaching 100% worldwide, more and more people choose film instead. Read, folks. Read!
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.
The way I see it is: you will have to sacrifice the enjoyment of 4 or 5 books to achieve a large vocabulary. After that, reading becomes amazing. I found that out by sacrificing my enjoyment of Les misérables by reading it in French. It has over 2000 pages. But I became a fluent French reader after that. I still find many unknown words, but reading in French is not tiring anymore. For that reason, I choose a book about the effects of television on the brain to read in Romanian. It's a book I'm just slightly interested in reading (almost 600 pages, on page 80 now), but by the end of it I'm positive I'll be able to read a detective novel at least without much suffering.
My method is to read materials only a little more difficult than my competences. Now is Japanese..
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.
Any suggestion to anyone who wants to learn Japanese? How would one go on about undetaking this language?
I still haven't heard you say a single thing I disagree with. Thank you for imparting so much wisdom. I'm so glad I found this channel and LingQ. I'm on a 585-day streak in Spanish and about 16k known words, and I'm loving it every day. My plan is to get to 40k in one continuous streak.
Reading is powerful way to learn whatever guys , unfortunately people don't know
Your comment looks useful, but I won't read it, sorry :v
Most underrated comment
fact
Absolutely 👍🏻 Reading is the best way for learning English ❤
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.
I went to link but my bank told me it’s fraud. I think a criminal has hijacked the video. Be careful
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.
Yes I found same. It’s great
I use the _@Voice Aloud Reader_ for the same purpose - reading and listening at the same time.
@@jacobpast5437 ReadEra has that feature, too, but I only use it sporadically. I try to read aloud as much as I can.
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.
I like to open the subtitle while listen to your video. Because I can understand 98% of the content, but sometimes,there are still some unknown words. Subtitle can help to identify the word, the spelling, look up to the meaning, and listen to your pronunciation of the word. Which is usually enjoyable and helpful.🎉
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'.
Watching video and listening to an audiobook are more passive ways to learn a language, but conversation and/or reading in a new language forces the brain to work harder. As with any other workout, more intense work over time leads to higher levels of strength/fitness of whatever muscle or system is being worked, in this case it's the language brain. Many of us lack the conversation partners to do the conversation piece, which is why we are relying on video, audio, and reading in the first place. That leaves reading in your target language as the fastest way to get through that intermediate stage. At least that's the logic I'm hearing, because I'm still in the Intermediate Stage too 🤣🤣🤣. I'm reading like crazy though while still listening and I'm feeling the gains.
Don't mean to spam but let me also add that reading really helps you practice processing the sentence structure of the spoken target language and adds words to your vocab bag that you need while listening.
@@BlackCodeMath I don't think I need any partner to learn a language. The amount of time that I've spoken English in the last 20 years must be like full 20 minutes, including the test that I took to receive a fluency diploma. So, in my mind, you don't need a partner to be able to speak the language, even though It looks obvious that had I practiced the speaking I would be much better by now. But, to me you can go around that if you are able to read and write the language. I have the feeling that everytime you read or write, your brain is 'mimmicking' the conversation in your head and that's enough practice to become fluent.
@@BlackCodeMath Yeah, I fully agree reading is the best way to elaborate a good speech, even in your own mother tongue. I have no doubt in that. My only downside is that my main goal is to understand the spoken language that's why I invest all my time watching videos.
@@jackbombay1423Oh I'm not saying you must have a partner to become fluent, I'm saying conversation and/or reading in the target language is going to move you much faster through the intermediate stage you discussed and into fluency. This is demonstrated in everyday life- nothing beats immersion (for kids or adults) for learning a new language, where listening and speaking to conversation partners goes hand in hand. But, it has been demonstrated that mute individuals can have full understanding of spoken language.
And really? As a non-native speaker only 20 minutes total speaking English in 20 years (including the test) and you're fluent? I honestly must confess I am a bit skeptical, can you elaborate on that test?
Really nice tips Steve, yesterday I said to my English teacher that when I read more it really facilitates my speech skills. I was too focused on speech, and I felt that I had achieved a plato. I will restart my extensive reading today!!
Great talk, thanks! I, too, much prefer free reading and listening to answering questions and doing word puzzles.
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.
Thanks to my dad who didn’t fix TV when I was very young about 7
Since then I have started reading voraciously
As a beginer I write and read song' s lyrics. At this point it is easier than other material and of course I sing. It s good for prononciation. 🎼 and of course it a powerful way to remenber new words.
This is wonderful, so thankful to get the fruit of your research.
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 ❤
I have read 18 novels in english (my native language is spanish). It was very difficult at first but now it's amazing how my comprehension and vocabulary have improved. Now I'm reading Dune, it's kinda difficult but I can handle it and I'm very proud of myself. Most of the time I look for the meaning of words I don't know and I high light them and jot down their meaning. After finishing the book, I go back to see the new words and I remember their meaning because of the context or the sentences where they are. Also I have found new words from any other book I have read and I can remember in which part of which book I saw that word. It's just amazing.
Ich habe 10 Percy Jackson Bücher auf Deutsch gelesen und es hat mir wirklich geholfen (und jetzt bin ich auch eine Fan der Bücher)
Ich muss allerdings hinzugefügen, dass die Sprachlern Funktionen des Kindle mir enorm geholfen haben
Olá steve comecei a usar a sua plataforma lingq para aprender idiomas e estou amando, é incrível o poder dessa plataforma, estou exportando vários vídeos de ciencia e historia em ingles, e em 4 semanas de plataforma já estou lendo e entendo varias frases no idioma muito obrigado!
ممنون از نکات آموزندهای که همیشه یادمون میدی❤
Recommend using Google books with the online translator. Lots of material available, even in less popular languages--I am currently reading a book in Catalan with minimal prior study (although knowledge of other Romance languages). My strategy is to start exclusively with Google books and then move over to the traditional book versions with time. Done this with many languages, including German, Italian, Russian, Czech, Norwegian, Ukrainian. More planned!
Great idea!
Huge proponent of reading for language acquisition. I literally learned Brazilian Portuguese from reading the harry potter series (but fuck JK Rowling). My spouse's family is Brazilian. I spent probably 2 years on duolingo, which was really helpful for giving me a base understanding of the language/vocabulary, but progress was really slow, and I couldn't speak in conversation. I began devoting all of my language study time to reading, and not only was it more enjoyable, but it completely unlocked the language for me. I read all 7 books, but reached "conversational fluency" sometime around the fourth or fifth book. I am currently at a B2 level (upper intermediate), and I can totally hang in conversation now.
This last quote got me hanging for a bit to also think of what that supposed to mean. In class context I got to agree. Some of these questions aren't as valuable to the language learning and more to 'paying attention to details' however I always tend to create these little stories about the books or topics I've read in order to be able to tell it to someone. On other hand, I have a friend who was a firm book reader, but after a question of what was the book about, he could barely say a thing. I guess moral of the story is (imo) that reading shouldn't just be about 'enjoying yourself', you should get something from it too. (still can be enjoyable)
In learning a new language there is no such thing as " ONE SIZE FITS ALL" . Everyone learn new language or for that matter other subjects in their own and unique way. In my opinion, while learning a new language you have to utilize all of your senses. Put on your head phones and LISTEN a lot, WRITE a lot and READ a lot. Or any other way that may help you. And if you can travel to the country of your TARGET LANGUAGE, take classes there and immerse yourself in the language you are learning you can make an amazing progress in a very short time.
It's a lot easier to find things to read on my level than stuff to listen to. Listening often involves very intimate knowledge of the way words flow together unless words are enunciated very clearly it can be frustrating trying to pull words apart.
My Spanish comprehension has definitely improved by reading the Harry Potter books and listening to them at the same time....
Reading is a very time consuming business and anti social, even in retirement! We are told by the experts that reading is necessary for a healthy brain so I must keep reading! And walking!
Speed of reading it's interesting
Book 800 pages I did in 2 days
Victor Hugo of this Time ❤
Вы правы: чтение помогает в изучении языков
9:35 yeah, as a Brazilian, about what Rubem Alves said, I dont really know all the uses of the word "vagabond" in english, the dicitonary says its somewhat like a "homeless person who wanders", maybe the word "vagabundo" in portuguese can have the same meaning but the more common meaning would be a person who doesnt like to work and just do things he enjoys to do without carying for anything, usually in a bad way, its somewhat commom for mothers use the expression "Vai arrumar um emprego, seu vagabundo"/"Go get a job, you vagabond" or "Para de ficar vagabundando e vai fazer alguma coisa de bom"/ "Stop being a vagabond(vagabonding*🤣) and go do something good".
"Vagabundo" can also means a Unfaithfull person, but the intented meaning of Rubem Alves is what i said before, could be translated (i think) to "Slacker", so the joy of reading is a "slacker experience". please, some native answer me if "Slacker" its a better translation
See, when I was in school, they required us to do "voluntary" reading, but a lot of students didn't want to do it because we had homework that we wanted to catch up on!
Hi Steve! I think you left out the "compelling" aspect of it.. I feel this is sooo fundamental, in my experience I can be reading something with 30% unknown words yet I can't put the book down and I just want to know what happens next (and it also feels like a mind hack to spend more time with the language)
That's exactly it.. if you can get the story to hook into your brain then you don't care about words you don't understand, you get enough of the story to keep wanting to read. In that particular mood the brain is in its optimal setting for acquiring language, unlike when consciously trying to study or learn.
Listening to podcasts in a language you learn shows you if you are really interested in the topic. If you get hooked, as you say (which is the exact way to describe it), your language comprehension suddenly goes through the roof. It is as if the brain puts on its superman outfit. The "getting hooked" depends on the topic, the speaking skills of the speaker, the character of the speaker (if you like him or her), and his or her personal engagement with the topic. (On the last criterion: There is a set of French podcasts by the same podcaster on various topics, well presented, but they are not quite as easy to "get hooked on" for me, since the personal engagement part seems to be missing somehow or is at least not presented in the podcasts.)
I like reading about subjects that I already know. I read some wikipedia articles in the target language because they are kind of similar having the same structure and there are many languages avalailable including Latin.
I love to turn on the subtitles and watch these videos in the target language I'm trying to learn. However, lately the subtitles don't seem to line up with the audio. Please fix!
Truly, your points are certainly right if anyone wants to expand their ability in reading. Unfortunately, in my place, things cannot go on that way. Time is always not enough for students to tackle many academic subjects, except for English reading.
The only question is if while we are reading we are speaking with a bad pronunciation. But I agree.
Listening to the audio book concurrently while reading addresses this! Steve always promotes this, and it's a big feature of Linq too!
maybe you should recommend some easyand intresting books
I'm curious at one point is reading considered "intensive reading", when you don't know 50% or more of the words? Big fan of Extensive reading and using it more than intensive reading, but I feel "intensive" reading has it's place. Split probably depends on the person but maybe 80% extensive and 20% intensive reading? On extensive reading I like trying to choose material where I don't know around 10% of the words. 30% to 40% unknown words to me is a middle ground between extensive and intensive reading.
Just me -- but I also found intensive reading more useful when I was first starting -- and then extensive reading became more useful after I had a vocab of 1200-1500 words. Hard to estimate my vocab now -- but I think I have a vocab of around 5000 words in Portuguese -- and extended reading works extremely well now and is very enjoyable.
Kurdish is a rich and beautiful language, deeply rooted in the history and culture of the Kurdish people. Kurdish has a diverse range of dialects, such as Kurmanji, Sorani, Zazaki,Badini and Hewrami.
I want to know more about Kurdish
Me too
Will you plz listen to the song " shirin shirin" by Shahram Nazeri and tell me what dialect it is. ( available on youtube) I am exposed to some Kurdish by dancing with friends ( halay) to the songs of Ibrahim tatlises . Just fell in love with Kurdish but don't know which dialect should I start with.
My experience I dealt with larger number of unknown words when I started. It is kind of top to bottom strategy. Started with novels difficulty even now I read classics like the Brothers Karamazov, Robert browning my last duchess…
Thank you, Steve Kaufmann!
🤩
Thank you very much for sharing. May I ask if there are any websites for finding books? After reading Sydney Sheldon and Carl Sagan, are there any other captivating books you would recommend? Thank you!
My unscientific 2 cents on this: the order of mastery for those unable to do second language immersion is Reading fluency --> Writing fluency --> Listening fluency --> Speaking FLUENTLY. An unscientific take, I'll admit that, and surely people can do/have done it differently.
When reading one does have the requirement to learn the symbols, grammar, and syntax needed to comprehend. This isn't easy. But you don't have the additional pressure of in-the-moment formulating comprehensible and appropriate outputs. You're only processing inputs and you can "cheat" with translation tools and dictionaries. Lowest cognitive load for a mature learner and the lowest (social) pressure.
While writing one DOES have to create output, but you DON'T have to process second language inputs. You will need to have practiced the rules for making and ordering symbols, while adding enough words to your usable vocabulary. Not saying it's easy but when writing you can take your time, revise in real time, do a draft then return and polish it, and only then share your output. Added pressure of not sounding foolish, but still a low-ish cognitive load.
Listening to native foreign language speakers is significantly harder because real speech is constantly moving away from the small set of formal language rules you learn while mastering a language. Common slang, "eating words/syllables", regional accents, etc. become real barriers. However, this is somewhat offset by the fact that you don't have to make any outputs while listening. Cognitive load is still one sided, and here as with the above only an input OR an output is required. No pressure but a higher cognitive load.
But when conversing you have the highest cognitive load AND the highest pressure. You have to understand formal and casual input while simultaneously creating timely, comprehensible, appropriate outputs. And often you must do it in that everyday language that you often haven't had a chance to practice. Many long-time learners after years of practice can read, write, properly pronounce words, and construct strings of sentences in the target language but can not hold a true conversation with a native speaker. The combination of processing non-formal audio and producing it is the last thing to be mastered.
This logic makes sense to me and it's what I'm experiencing on my language journey but maybe you folks will correct me.
BTW the above order would be a terrible (if not impossible) way to learn a first language. I think that best order is what you get with native immersion: Listening --> Speaking --> Writing --> Reading FLUENTLY. My anecdotal evidence for this is working with younger native language (American English speaking) students that can hold great conversations and write their thoughts down clearly but cannot truly comprehend what they read at an appropriate level. They often can nicely "read" aloud through a passage and not understand what they read, as reading comprehension is the last part to arrive. Surely there is some research that would support that take.
Teachers are not reluctant, they have got to stick to the curriculum and the official teaching material. Otherwise they get in trouble. When they make students read then its mostly to analyze the text and being graded afterwards. Very off-putting and i guess that is why many people don't read for fun
I had no idea he could speak English so well 😮
Can you make a video talking about IPA? If you think it's necessary to learn English, for example.
I never use IPA
Kolay gelsin Steve.
After having a decent vocabulary you don't need to read anymore. I mean you probably will continue reading if you enjoy it but you won't depend on it to learn new words. I find reading more tiresome than listening so i tend to listen to audios rather than to read books. Actually I've listened to this whole video with my phone screen locked 😅
Or maybe... I do it the other way around so i learn new vocabulary from podcasts, tv shows etc and I confirm it when i find those words written.
Sure, reading is the most powerful input source helping you increase the number of passive vocabulary but it will have little use on your spoken English or fluency unless you try to practice what you read at every opportunity, as much as you can.
This is definitely true- speaking is really important especially if one's goal is communication. However, in cases such as mine (learning Finnish), the only thing that it shares in common with English is an alphabet. Remembering words, especially uncommon ones, plus the hundreds of different forms they can take on, has proven to be difficult. With extensive reading, you are able to keep words as well as their various forms much fresher in your mind for instances where the need to use them can be applied.
What kind of strategy should be applied in speaking?
@@placebo_7505 if you are not in an English speaking environment it's really hard to create life like situations in which you can use English. Repeating and trying to use what you come across when reading can help to some extent but not much as you are not highly motivated when studying on your own so it doesn't stick as expected. There are online speaking clubs where you can speak English with native speakers. I think that would be the best thing to do.
It's interesting (and disappointing) that some teachers are resistant to learners reading on their own. A friend of mine who teaches German and English in junior high, with excellent results (unlike when *I* was in school.. that was a 100% waste back then) encourages the students to find reading material, anything they enjoy reading, and doing lots of that. It's a central part of my friend's method. I personally couldn't agree more, as that's how I learned English: Constantly reading.
As for "how many unknown words should there be per page", I never tried to check that when I was reading English. 4? 40? Don't know. I was most definitely an adult (in my thirties when I started reading non-technical material, i.e. novels), and there was definitely a lot of words I didn't understand. But I simply let that go by, no stopping, no looking anything up, because if I managed to get a grasp of the story I would want to continue reading. Never mind if I didn't understand what one person was giving to another, or whatever it was they were eating (or what they were doing.. I didn't, for example, know that "grub" was referring to actual food). As long as I grasped something then my mind would "see" a story, and THAT is what's important. The mind must see something, and that should *not* be words on a page. Then just ingest, ingest, acquire, input, and the mind *will* figure it out, eventually, without conscious thought.
So how is your speech? How did you handle the speaking part?
@@placebo_7505 In my job most of my customers are from other countries, so whenever there was a meeting I would have to speak English. Pronunciation I got from TV and movies (fortunately there's no dubbing of movies etc in my country) and of course those I met through my job.
When I was younger (before I started to read English outside of tech manuals) my English was considered not particularly good (by people I met who I knew well enough that they could be upfront about it. After going through massive input through reading (NB: Reading for enjoyment, not for learning English) and other input it all changed (and rather quickly).
Of course, with the huge vocabulary I acquired that way I didn't necessarily get the pronunciation.. some words are pretty rarely used in actual speech. So to this day I still occasionally get a surprise when I hear how certain words are actually pronounced.. :-)
Hi Steve, thanks so much for share your knowledge, what book do you recommended to read in English and for a beginner Japanese student, what book do you recommend to read in Japanese.
Whatever you are interested in.
My Father ❤
English subtitles are out of sync. Please fix it in the future videos.
I started learning korean by reading harry potter. 99.99999% unknown words and still managed to get through it. Initially page by page than chapter by chapter ater a few months and now there are a few unknown words here and there per chapter. It is doable but requires an insane level of dedication
Congratulations.
Your dictionary must be falling to pieces
@@markbr5898 If I'd used a paper one i would've gone through a few. I used an application similar to linq. I don't even want to think how long it would've taken without it.
When i read books there a many words i can't pronounce. How could i get out of this? How could i pronounce every word of a page?
أنا تائه في القراءة I'm so lost on the reading part!!
Doktor StiVe❤
Mr.Brain❤
Do you recommend read newspapers?
I don’t understand why reading improves your ability of listening. I mean why does that happen if we’re not actually listening to anything, just watching words
He said that it’s better to have the ability to listen to the material we’re reading, and this would improve listening skills
And he did mentioned that reading improves speaking skills, because when we read, we pronounce the words at least inside
SandS of time❤
If only I could read Arabic I'm so lost on the reading part!!
I think it's better to speak little bit slowly. ❤
What whould you say about reading aloud to improve pronounciation ?
Yes it works!
Is it best to read children’s books if a beginner. Know bit vocabulary but can’t form big sentences yet. I’m 71 and learning portuguese
Only if you want to read children’s books but, personally, I don’t find it interesting. However, thanks to the Simplified A.I feature on LingQ you can import a novel and read the simplified version first and then read the original. Of course, the original version will still be difficult but it’s great to stumble through a novel written for natives even though it takes months because by the end of it you read a lot faster than at the start and you’ve acquired tens of thousands of new words.
I’m learning mandarin I’m at an intermediate level
But reading , I would love to not understanding one character is one thing but of course all the new ones I don’t know how to pronounce unless they have pin yin
Is there a solution to this?
No, just keep going. It will slowly get better.
@@Thelinguist 谢谢您
Steve, do you have an opinion on using The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language to help learn a language? I heard online Eric Weinstein discussing its value in language acquisition. He claims that academics are aware of its importance but, for some unknown reason, don’t use it with their students. Thoughts?
I only use online dictionaries and I use a variety of them on LingQ depending on the language and my purpose.
@@Thelinguist Thank you! He made it sounds as if it’s a Rosetta Stone for language learners.
Here’s how Amazon describes the book:
“This new, thoroughly revised edition of the acclaimed Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language incorporates the major developments in language study which have taken place since the mid 1990s. Two main new areas have been added: the rise of electronic communication in all its current forms from email to texting, and the crisis affecting the world's languages, of which half are thought to be so seriously endangered that they will die out this century. • All language statistics have been updated, and additional information provided about their linguistic affiliation • All topics involving technology have been revised to take account of recent developments, notably in phonetics, language disability, and computing • Maps have been revised to include new countries or country names • Special attention has been paid to fast-moving areas such as language teaching and learning • The text design has been completely updated with many new illustrations throughout.”
Thanks for all that you do!
Thank you. I misunderstood. I thought it was a dictionary. I go through these comments quite quickly as there are a lot of them. I just ordered the book from Amazon and may do a video around it.
Weinstein recommended one other book: The Loom of Language-An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages by Frederick Bodmer (1943).
Thanks! I think that what Eric Weinstein is saying is that you need to fully understand the English language, its origins, rules, etc. to better (and more quickly) learn another language. I ordered it, too.
Weinstein recommended one other book: The Loom of Language-An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages by Frederick Bodmer (1943).
I read a lot but don't understand the context, being a non native English speaker.
Can someone help me ?
Essentially you just need more input. I had similar issues , especially with idioms when I was learning English. The more you read and listen the more you will understand
Our saying don't make a lot of sense, just keep practicing until it's better
it is extremely inefficient. Image that you want to learn a language and reach c1 level. It's quite easy to get contexts from reading for a thousend most common words. What about next 7k? If you exceed 4 thousand words, every word after that appears 5 times and less per million words read !!! a book has 100k words or so. If you want to passively learn a word you need to gather from 20 to 50 contexts per word. So you need to read 10 books to have these 6 contexts, so 80 books to learn a word from b2 level. Congratulation, now you can recognize a word, and you are still not able to speak!! What about words from c1 level which appear two times in a milion?? 240 books to recognize a word? Focus on deliberate practice for a week and you won't go back to the INPUT CHURCH .
Maybe you read too hard books for your level, if you fail to understand the context.
Try to start with some graded readers, but don't become too attached to them, you need to challenge yourself.
May also consider learning the basics of grammar. I'm generally agree with Steve that dabbling in grammar too much is not an effective use of your time. But if the language you learn is too different from your own, it may be helpful to learn the basics to make reading easier.
Find material which has context you are familiar with. When I still was a teenager I would read that period's computer magazines, not because I wanted to learn English but because I wanted to know about computers. I could "get" it because it was a context I was familiar with. Later I read short scientific books, again because I knew enough science to "get" it, and science uses a lot of common vocabulary, independent of language. And I liked (and like) science.
Only later did I switch to ordinary novels.
❤
💥✨💥
Williams Charles Hernandez Donna Taylor Eric
For me it doesn't work😢😢😢😢
Even when you faile don’t stop trying that’s the key
And for me. 593 days of continuous reading, 15617 pages read, and zero or no progress at all. That myself began to reassure and motivate that this is just the Compound Effect in action and that, according to my calculations)), vertical growth should occur in April next year. It remains only to believe)))
02.09.2024
I learned German by reading children's stories.
I tried a link below to subscribe to linkQ but my bank told me it’s fraud. Not to pay the £15.49 asked for. Maybe someone is acting fraudulently on you RUclips video? Please check
I just checked with the LinkQ support team as my bank sent me a warning fraud message when I tried to subscribe. The team assured me it’s fine so I tried again to subscribe and all went well. Maybe my phone was hacked? Anyway, all good now! I love this course and wish I had found it sooner.
I like you ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Hello Steve how's it's going? Good weekend by Lord.
The downside to free reading is that its effectiveness decreases with each book. Unfortunately, there is no ideal method for learning English that would meet all the requirements at once.
.
Zjbs
it is extremely inefficient. Image that you want to learn a language and reach c1 level. It's quite easy to get contexts from reading for a thousend most common words. What about next 7k? If you exceed 4 thousand words, every word after that appears 5 times and less per million words read !!! a book has 100k words or so. If you want to passively learn a word you need to gather from 20 to 50 contexts per word. So you need to read 10 books to have these 6 contexts, so 80 books to learn a word from b2 level. Congratulation, now you can recognize a word, and you are still not able to speak!! What about words from c1 level which appear two times in a milion?? 240 books to recognize a word? Focus on deliberate practice for a week and you won't go back to the INPUT CHURCH .
This is nonsense. The last three months, I have learned 12000 new Italian words by reading. In a couple of months, I am at C1.
@@ivankaramasov great joke
@@ivankaramasov So why people spend thounds of hours using input? You're clever, you can easily explain
@@janolszewski5068 I don't really understand the question? How would you suggest expanding vocabulary fast?
With language learning you need to incorporate speaking, listening reading and writing. Not sure why you would think reading is inefficient when words are all around… to reach c1 you need to know how to do all four practically like a native.