#extensive reading

I have some thoughts on developing listening skills versus reading skills.

Summary: any abilities to extensively read and extensively listen, quickly come back if you do the activity again. The things you can extensively read and extensively listen to and understand, will reliably come back after breaks in study. (at least for me)

For prior posts about this, search my tag #comprehensible input

TLDR: if a person is EXTENSIVELY doing something then they understand the main idea of the comprehensible input using their own knowledge and from context clues only, so the input is already comprehensible to them. If a person is INTENSIVELY doing something then they use tools/lookups to understand the main idea of the input which MAKES it comprehensible to them. Extensive = no tools used. Intensive = tools used. Tools in this case meaning word lookups, dictionaries, vocabulary lists, grammar explanations, glossaries, translations.

Extensive Reading: simply put, extensive reading is what you do in your native language. You read, you run across an occasional word you do not know, and you guess the meaning based on context. You probably did this growing up as you learned to read in your native language. So it's just reading, and not looking things up. You probably also did intensive reading as you learned to read in your native language - looking up many unknown words when you read or using a vocabulary glossary to read something difficult, such as in history textbooks with a glossary of terms definited, or literature textbooks with a vocabulary list for reading passages.

When someone says to "extensively read comprehensible input" what they generally mean is that you should pick something you understand ALMOST EVERY WORD of. Which usually is when you understand 95-98% of all words on the page. Or 2-5 unknown words per 100 words you encounter as you read. When you extensively read, it is easy to guess the occasional unknown word meaning when you only encounter 2-5 unknown words per 100. When you grow up and learn to read, the kinds of books your teacher is giving you to read, and that the library is suggesting for your age group, are books that will mostly fall in that sweet spot where you can easily extensively read them and guess the occasional unknown words. This is where the suggestion that comprehensible input be 95-98% comprehensible comes from. It comes from the suggestion of what is easiest to extensively read. What is easiest to read and learn new words, without looking anything up.

Intensive Reading: Intensive reading is when you look up words, refer to a glossary or vocabulary list or dictionary, to understand enough words to understand the reading material. Again, you probably did this in your native language any time you used a textbook and had to read the term definitions to understand the chapter or reading passage. In terms of design in textbooks and classes, intensive reading material tends to be designed to be around 90%+ comprehensible, and once you use the TOOLS like vocabulary list/term definitions/look up words it becomes 95-100% comprehensible. Because you have looked up all the unknown pieces in the reading material. Extensive = you can understand the meaning without looking anything up, it is possible to can guess the meaning of what is unknown.

When you are doing intensive reading on your own, with whatever material you choose, it is simply looking up most or all of the unknowns so that you understand as much as you can of the reading material. So if you're a beginner, and you pick to read The Hobbit in your target language, that would be intensive reading as you look up every single unknown word and grammar point to understand enough to follow the story of the book. If you watch a show, and look up nearly every unknown word, until you can understand it, that's intensive listening (and/or intensive reading if you're reading the target language subs). If you were not a beginner, but you also could not extensively read/listen and understand, then you would look up enough words to understand the meaning and that would still be 'intensive reading/listening'. Intensive = look up most or all unknown information, until you understand all or nearly all of the meaning.

Intensive reading/listening tends to be helpful for learning the information you need in order to later be able to extensively read/listen. For example, you cannot extensively read about Psychology until you first intensively read (use a Psychology textbook with definitions of terms, or use Wikipedia or other explanation articles to learn the terms needed to read more about psychology). In History classes, Literature classes, Science classes etc in school, textbooks or teachers often defined new terms so you could eventually read more about those topics later without needing to look at the term definitions. In a language learning context, intensively reading a novel (looking up unknown words) for several chapters could help you study/learn enough words, to then understand enough of the words in later chapters to extensively read (use no tools to keep reading and understand).

Many language learners who immerse in content for native speakers, will say they're getting "comprehensible input" when they do intensive listening or reading - the material is MADE comprehensible by all the word/grammar lookups they do. The material is not 98% comprehensible if they cannot extensively read/listen, so they do intensive reading/listening (looking up enough unknowns to understand the main meaning) to make it comprehensible to them.

When these learners extensively read/listen, yes they're doing it with 95-98% comprehensible input usually. As in the meaning of the material is already comprehensible to them, without looking anything up/using any tools. (Sometimes a learner may extensively read/listen to something they understand as little as 70% of if it's audio-visual, or as little as 90% if it's reading material as some people can follow the main idea meanings with that amount of comprehension of the words).

My point here is: if someone is looking things up and they say the material is "comprehensible input," they're intensively reading/listening to material they would not be able to understand without looking things up. If someone is not looking things up and says they're using "comprehensible input" then they're extensively reading/listening and can probably probably close to 95% of the words/grammar or more.

If someone's extensively listening/reading and saying they use "comprehensible input" they mean they can understand most or all of the meaning from what they already know and context.

If someone's intensively listening/reading and saying they use "comprehensible input" they mean they can understand most or all of the meaning with the HELP of looking things up.

As you can see, one kind of 'comprehensible input' involves looking things up to make the material comprehensible. When reading about comprehensible input advice, or seeing suggestions of using comprehensible input to study, NOTE which kind of activities the person/article is suggesting you do!

So, one, it makes the suggestion to learn ‘2000 common words’ somewhat useful. 2000 common words covers around ~80% comprehension of text in many languages, meaning if you’ve studied those 2000 words you’re more likely to find texts you comprehend Enough of to follow the main idea. And meaning if you do not comprehend enough, you’ve got a better chance of looking up some key words to get you up to at least that 80% comprehension. And, if you’re going to learn by extensive reading, at least hitting the 80% comprehension mark is going to make learning more doable. (Although true, it will be quite draining and frustrating if you have a low tolerance for ambiguity and you’re trying to read stuff you only comprehend 80% of, it is at least doable). 

Two, that point from 80% comprehension to 95-98% comprehension may feel brutal (in my opinion). Because it is when reading texts for native speakers roughly becomes doable, but it won’t necessarily be easy or clearly understood until you learn a bulk of words that make the difference between those percents of comprehension. Once you get past learning the common words, the vocabulary increases you make do not increase your comprehension % nearly as much. You can learn a few hundred words and see a huge improvement in comprehension (like 50%), you can learn 2000 common words and see a huge improvement in comprehension (around 80%!). Then you get to the next thousand and next thousand and the percent comprehended isn’t going up as quickly anymore. What you comprehend starts to depend on if you learned words in that subject before or not, if you’re brand new to that topic domain or not. 

. I’ve also reread chapters 1-10 of Guardian at least 2 more times since that last count (so 3.5 pages a priest novel chapter is what i used for my last calculation, is 3.5*20=70 pages).

52+70+1120=1242 pages read so far, lets say.

The last post I did on “pages read” was about an article that said after about 6,000 pages read, you read fluently.

This reddit post today I saw, is going by the assumption after 10,000 pages reading becomes fluent. Either way, I’ve got a long way to go lol.

I wanted to compare my progress to the reddit poster’s, as I think their metric of “how the reading went” at each pages milestone seems very on point.

Here’s what they shared:

How do I read? Here is a rough guide based off of current/past experience.

Pages 0-1500 - very, very slowly. Looking up words and trying to memorize them with flashcards or just re-reading passages

Pages 1500-3500 - slowly and everything sucks. I look up unknown words but no longer try to memorize them

Pages 3500-6000 - now reading is fun, I can read fluidly and only look up words that seem important. There are enough unknown words that reading is annoying but I generally enjoy it and can read up to 40-50 pages a day

Pages 6000-7500 - reading is very easy. I now mix extensive reading in with looking up unknown words

Pages 7500-10,000 - reading almost feels like reading in English except I need to look up unknown words and make an effort to memorize really strange ones that I like

Pages 10,000+ - reading feels easy and enjoyable.

Based on this, I wonder if I’ve read more that I’ve simply not counted? Maybe re-reading ought to count (I know I’ve read the first hundred pages of Guardian several times, and while listening to an audiobook is not reading, I’ve listened to those first 20 chapters like 10 times each at minimum... so I know the words in those chapters fairly well). I’ve also partially reread my two favorite pingxie fics at least 4 times each, because I always read 30-60 chapters then burn out, then a few months later start rereading from the beginning and repeat. 

I’d place myself, based on how reading feels, somewhere between pages 1500-3500, and 3500-6000. I read somewhat slow but not much slower than when reading in english, I look up unknown words sometimes depending on the novel, but it does not generally suck and doesn’t generally feel super difficult and I don’t necessarily NEED to look up any words for comprehension. That said - I read very appropriate to my reading level. If I picked up a published novel in a genre I’m unfamiliar with, particularly some literary work, I’m going to feel a lot more like its a sucky slog. I feel reading is often fun (especially genres I’m familiar with like crime and supernatural), I only look up words occasionally that seem important or I’m curious about (but it’s usually not needed for comprehension), there’s enough unknown words that I couldn’t translate it with confidence in my word choice without the aid of a dictionary, I could read 40-50 pages a day (but since I usually only read for a half hour to hour max a day, I usually read 20-40 pages in a day). So yeah my reading in chinese feels like around the 3500 page mark or right below, compared to this person. However, if I was constantly reading newspapers I’d definitely put myself down in the 1500-3500 range as literary works and newspapers still feel like a slog depending on the topic. 

Its funny and maybe its because of the cognate overlap, but my french reading feels like 7500-10,000 page level. It feels like reading in english, except every once in a while I look up a word and make an effort to memorize a new one (just like I would in english). However, I’ve had my wikipedia, google (and all connected sites), set to french for over 6 years now. I don’t know if that ever added up to better reading skills in french. I’ve read a few books in french but I don’t think it was over 2000 pages. It was like 400 pages graded reader, 300 short stories, maybe 500 in random novels, maybe 600 in history books, 200 in science books, and then random articles online over the years. Maybe french just feels like reading in english because I set all my tech to it for so long? It could theoretically be difficult for me to read. But also I see it so much I don’t even usually notice if a website is in french or english anymore, unless its linkedin since its ALL french but people are messaging me in english which feels so jarring to me (but i still haven’t fixed it because as far as i can tell google language determines linkedin language and french works perfectly fine for all my other google uses).

One of the best ways to level up your Japanese is by reading — as much as possible! In the best case scenario, you should try to choose something interesting to you that you can read smoothly, without having to take breaks or look things up. This is a process known as extensive reading. Even so, this can be easier said than done. Learners might be used to the style and length of texts from their…

when i studied french, reading with no dictionary was still sufficient to increase my vocabulary and eventually was most of my ‘reading’ study. i started knowing 500-1000 words then abandoned looking up words except like... once a month, on occasion. i still got better and better at reading, and my vocabulary just sort of ‘grew’ without conscious effort. But - french has lots of cognates and near cognates. chinese does not.

also, even though my french reading comprehension was only like 80% when i avandoned a dictionary (instead of the recommended 95-98% comprehension of vocab in stuff i read), again i think the cognates sort of artificially still made reading vocab comprehension closer to the 90+% range. chinese is so different from english that there is no artificial way to partially kick up that ‘known vocabulary’ before i actually know it.

10 Major Benefits of Reading

Reading is one of the great pleasures of life. It’s an acquired taste, though. It doesn’t develop naturally. The habit of reading starts at home. Kids will probably develop a liking to books eventually, if they see their parents reading; if there are shelves with books around; if they are allowed to spend time in libraries and bookstores just playing with and touching books; or if they are read…

intensive reading - looking up many unknown words, to understand most or all details, often reading in smaller ‘intensive’ chunks since lookup time slows down reading speed and can be frustrating after a certain point. Intensive reading is generally done to learn new words, to challenge and improve reading ability by attempting to read texts noticeably above one’s reading level. 

extensive reading - limiting lookup of unknown words or not looking up words altogether, aiming to read for overall gist of meaning, aiming to read a larger expanse of text. Extensive reading is generally done to enjoy reading, speed up reading speed, and to pick up new words comfortably from context assuming one is actually reading something they nearly completely comprehend. Usually extensive reading is done with material at one’s reading level or just a tiny bit above one’s reading level.

In the way I am about to personally describe doing these things, I also consider extensive reading (for myself) to be - any reading done with minimal word look up, with the intent to at minimum just comprehend the gist of the main ideas, with the intent to read a larger expanse of text. So in the way I do it, even if material is significantly more difficult then my current reading level, if I can follow the main gist and am not heavily relying on a dictionary then I am using the reading material for ‘extensive’ reading. If I am looking up words frequently, and aiming to understand most or all specific details, then I am ‘intensively’ reading.

I have been doing intensive reading a lot lately. I read 23k chinese words in the last several days, during intensive reading. (I just calculated it based on the average 1800 characters a chapter in the novel I’m reading - wow I did not realize I’ve read that much lately). I think it’s been helping tremendously. It’s been exposing me to new words, drilling grammar examples into my recognition, improving a lot of my reading skills, and helping me learn new words I’m studying and ones that pop up in the novel.

However, I think I should read extensively a bit more too. This past week I tried to read extensively a bit, in contrast. And I had forgotten the benefits that come specifically from extensive reading instead. 1. Gauging progress. 2. Practicing reading with no dictionary as a crutch, so you get more practice letting your mind actually pull knowledge you know/are learning instead of feeling slightly uncomfortable and clicking a dictionary entry when your brain might have actually known the answer if you’d given it time to prove it. 3. It’s what reading is generally ‘considered’ to be, when we aim to do it for enjoyment. So it’s good to actually practice reading in that way. We get better at it, by doing it. 

I saw someone mention how they read with a dictionary, but they limit themselves to only look up words occasionally. And it reminded me why that’s a valuable exercise - yes, you look up less words. But the trade off is, all the time you do not look things up you get more practice recalling and actually practicing what you’ve studied and getting better at using it. I know my brain and... it gets better at things, the most, by doing them (even though sometimes that is the MOST draining brutal way I’ve studied and learned lol). I should not fool myself into thinking that my intensive reading is practicing and improving the same skills that extensive reading is.