PicoBlog

Sorry for the break last week! One of us (Colin) had to take some time away from computer screens due to a poorly timed migraine – as if there are well-timed ones!

In our last issue, we wrote all about how the skill of reading interacts with your developing mental representation of your target language, and outlined two strategies you might consider taking in different scenarios: reading early and reading late.

This week, we'll turn our attention to the activity of reading itself and how this works in your target language.

Do you sit down with a book or an e-reader and move your eyes across the page until the job is done? What happens when you get to a word you don't know? Do you get out the dictionary? How about new grammar – should you stop to look that up too? And what if, worst of all, you're not sure what's going on? Should you stop and find another book or forge ahead?

In this issue we'll give you a framework to help you answer these questions when they come up. Spoiler alert: it all hinges around making a distinction between two different types of reading, each with its own guidelines and each good for something different.

The first type is intensive reading, in which you read a short passage slowly, focusing on features of the language you do not understand. The second type is extensive reading, which describes reading lots of easy material at a quick pace.

Let's look at the two types of reading in detail, focusing on how to do each and what benefits each kind can bring.

The type of second-language reading that many people do instinctively is intensive reading. In intensive reading, you choose something to read, sit down to read it, and as you read, you pay close attention to the things you don't understand. When you find a word you don't know, you look it up in a dictionary. When there's some unfamiliar grammar, you consult a grammar book for an explanation.

Intensive reading is a relatively slow process, so you don't end up covering much of a text in a session. Many people find this kind of reading frustrating for just this reason. You may only get through the first page of a book in a whole hour of reading. The focus drifts from the content of the text to the form: much of your time is spent puzzling out how the grammar works or trying to understand lots of new vocabulary.

This all sounds rather un-fun. And it can be. It also goes against the tenets of comprehensible input: if you can only get through a short text, you won't have received much input from it. Similarly, if you can only get through a text with difficulty and ample aid from a dictionary, the input that you’re getting from text is unlikely to be comprehensible in any meaningful way.

Because intensive reading involves a slow pace and deliberate effort, it’s only necessary when a text is above the level where you can sail through it with ease. 

This points to where intensive reading can be helpful: if you want to read a text that's above your level (maybe it's required for a course you're taking, maybe you need to read it for work, maybe you just want to read it), intensive reading will be the only game in town.

Many of the difficulties of intensive reading can be avoided by knowing that what you're doing is intensive reading. When you're doing intensive reading, don't imagine it's the same activity as reading a book for pleasure in your native language. It's something very different, and you're less likely to be frustrated in doing intensive reading if you know what it is and what it isn't.

You can also employ specific strategies to minimise the difficulties of intensive reading. One such strategy is to read these difficult texts in multiple passes, gradually understanding more and more of the text as you go.

For example, the first time, you may focus on the meaning of individual words, looking things up as you go. The second time, you may focus on idioms and other combinations of words. The third time, you may focus on grammar. If you have the patience to make multiple passes through a text, you will soon come to comprehend the text and make more of it count as comprehensible input.

Overall, however, intensive reading is likely something that you will want to spend only a minority of your reading time doing. The bulk of your reading time you will want to spend doing extensive reading.

Extensive reading is reading in great quantity. This means you'll be moving through the material at a quick pace. And this means that the material has to be written at a level which will let you move through it at a quick pace.

And there's the rub.

If you're in the beginning stages of learning a language, the selection of reading material suitable for extensive reading will not be wide. More widely taught languages have graded readers, which are written with limited vocabulary so as to be suitable for language learners. For other languages, though, reading material suitable for the beginner and low-intermediate levels may be hard to find.

The good news is: we can get more specific about what kind of material is suitable for extensive reading, so you don't have to rely on graded readers. You can open up any book (or article, blog, etc.) and see whether it'd be a good candidate for extensive reading given your current level.

Here's the rule: Extensive reading is possible when you understand 98% of the words in the text.

So, take a sample of the text – could be a page of the book, for instance – and count how many words in that sample you don't know. Divide that number by the number of words in the sample and turn it into a percentage. If that number is around 98%, go forth and read. Any words you don't know you'll be able to pick up from context.

If the percentage of words you understand is too much lower, say around 95%, your comprehension will get patchy and you'll no longer have enough context to be able to work out the meaning of unknown words. Yes, 95% may seem high but it's really not quite high enough.

You can check out a demonstration of what various percentages feel like when reading, using English texts with different percentages of the words struck out. It becomes very hard to guess what the missing words would be as the percentage of known words decreases!

Extensive reading has been shown to be an effective way to increase your reading skill, your vocabulary, your knowledge of grammar, and pretty much everything else you're interested in improving. And, best of all, it can be just as much fun as reading in your native language.

So if you're not doing a lot of reading now in your target language, see if you can find some material to get started doing extensive reading.

If you find yourself in the position where intensive reading is necessary or interesting to you, keep in mind the differences between intensive and extensive reading and try doing multiple passes over your intensive reading texts to lighten your load.

Happy reading!

Colin & Natasha

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