Hey guys welcome to Fingtam languages today
I just wanted to make a quick video about something that I've been learning in school recently and that is the difference between
intensive Reading and
extensive reading when you're learning a foreign language
And a lot of you know that I am currently a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
studying linguistics applied linguistics
And I'm also studying the subtle art of teaching English as a foreign language, so
In one of my classes one of the books that we've had to read is this textbook, Teaching Readers of English
And it's specifically about teaching people how to read English, but the principles in here are solid and they apply to
Whatever language you want to teach or whatever language you're learning
There's a lot of you really strong linguists quoted in here second language acquisition
experts
And there's really a lot of interesting material in here, so I just want to read you a quote out of here really quick
Having to do with different types of reading, and I said at first that
We're gonna talk about intensive reading and extensive reading and their differences
And how you can use those two and so...
What are intensive and extensive reading? Well that's what it's going to talk about here in this book
An early definition of intensive reading states that its purpose is to take a text,
Study it line by line
Referring at every moment to our dictionary and our grammar
Comparing analyzing translating and retaining every expression that it contains
nonetheless most classroom instructors
Most classroom instructors would define intensive reading more broadly
By saying each text is read carefully and thoroughly for maximum comprehension
So in intensive reading it really is just what it sounds like you're reading intensively. You're studying the text, and this is called
I believe this is also called a bottom-up technique because you're starting at the bottom you're looking at words
prefixes suffixes
You know noun cases you're looking at verb conjugations
You're looking all the way at the specific letters, and you're just studying that word by word, line by line
And then you work your way up so you you start by understanding the words, then you understand the sentence the paragraph
And then you grasp the whole meaning of the whole
Passage of whatever you're reading
And it's a very thorough technique. That's why it's called intensive, and then you contrast that with extensive reading
Let me find the quote in here about extensive reading
All right, it says the teaching of reading
Sorry
Yeah, they defined extensive reading in very basic terms
The teaching of reading through reading. There is no overt focus on teaching reading
Rather it is assumed that the best way for students to learn
to read is by reading a great deal of
comprehensible material. These definitions focus on quantity of materials read in contrast to the explicit
classroom teaching of reading
So when you're doing extensive reading it
Also is just what it sounds like you're just reading a lot
And you're reading a lot of
Materials and the important thing is that it's enjoyable you're reading things that you want to read and this fun
They can engage you and keep you reading a lot
And probably one of the boat the most well-known
linguists in the field of second language acquisition is stephen krashen and he
Highly recommends extensive reading he calls it free voluntary reading, and he's published a lot of articles
And I think he's published a book on this called free voluntary reading
And he says that free voluntary reading or extensive reading may be the single most effective thing that you can do
to learn a foreign language
But the important thing that I want to emphasize
in this video is that they are both valid ways of learning languages intensive reading and
Extensive reading they both have their place
and I've used both of them very effectively and I kind of want to talk a little bit about
these two
Different methods, and and how they compare and contrast
Extensive reading is obviously a lot more fun because you're just reading for fun
You're just reading a lot
If you enjoy reading to begin with then you're golden all you have to do is start doing that in your foreign language
And that's something that I've done. I've read
Game of Thrones in
Spanish just because I like Game of Thrones, and you can tell that's a pretty lengthy. That's a hefty book
I've also read this is Dan Brown's, Inferno
And I promise it's in Spanish. I know it's the same has the same title in English and in Spanish there si una, Nevada
And I've read both of these books in Spanish just because I like reading and
The key is finding books that are interesting to you if you're not
Interested in fantasy or thriller novels then I find something that's right for you find a romance that will find a mystery find
Sci-fi whatever it is find. Self-help books you know
Here I have seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I don't think I've read this whole thing
But I read a good portion of this in Spanish
Because that's also interesting to me
And you have to find
One of these one of the things in my textbook that was emphasized is that for extensive reading it has to be
comprehensable
material you need comprehensable input
Otherwise you're not gonna get anything out of it if you're if you are a b2 in Spanish and you start reading
Game of Thrones you're gonna get nothing out of it you're not gonna understand a word, and you're just wasting your time
I have a high level in Spanish so I can read books like Game of Thrones
Or Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
My level in French is not as high as it is in Spanish so when I do extensive reading... This is the last book that I read
Or one of the last books I read extensively in French 'Compte les étoiles' um in English its 'Number the Stars'
And it's a children's book
But I highly recommend this book because even though it's designed for children even for adults
It's it's just very endearing. It's I highly recommend. This book. It's about the Holocaust
but some of the Jews that were
Persecuted in Denmark, and then the Danish people that resisted the Nazis
It's just a great story. I recommend it
And this was translated into French
but
Doesn't matter it's still in French and then still gave me a lot of extensive practice of extensive reading
And I enjoyed it a lot, so I highly recommend this book
And one of the things I want to point out here's another book
'Le Petit Prince', this is originally in French, but it's been translated into a
Lot of languages like pretty much any every language you can think of
And it's also a children's book, but it's very interesting
for an adult, and it's it's just I
Don't know how to explain it. It's a great read
It's very deep for a children's book um but I didn't do extensive reading on this one. Not initially at least
And I've actually done a whole video on this earlier a few months ago called I
Don't remember was like four steps to you to learning languages with books
And I talked about this book specifically my method where I go through the book, and I will literally
Just highlight words that I don't know
This is more of an intensive reading
Exercise um it was still relatively extensive um
But because I was highlighting words that I don't know and focusing on the actual bottom level elements
like the words and phrases and and
suffixes and prefixes and stuff, and then I would make myself a little dictionary I
Mean focus on memorizing vocabulary, that's more intensive. That's actually studying. You're not just reading just for fun at that time
But it becomes more extensive as you go through it more and more because the first time
the first time I read through this book I
Highlighted all the words. I don't know in pink and then next time I read through it
I started highlighting the words that I don't know in yellow
So you can actually go through this book and see which words I highlighted my first time through
You know so pink, I highlighted that my first time through. Yellow, I highlited that my second time through.
Green, that was my third time going through
After a while you start to just become more familiar
With the words that originally were throwing you off
And you don't have to spend as much time stopping and looking the words up you just become familiar with them
And then you can just read through a little bit more fluently and more extensively for fun
So that's a great technique that starts you off learning
intensively and
You progress more and more towards extensive reading
So intensive reading and extensive reading play off of each other very well, and I like that
because
Really what this is is a type of spaced repetition?
And I've talked about this before
Spaced repetition is one of the best ways for your brain to record memories and to store memories
And what it means is that if you learn a new vocabulary word and you just study a bunch of times really quickly
one right after another
you're soon going to forget that word, but if you put space in between your
Repetitions if you put space in between how many times you study that word it makes your brain have to work harder
to remember the word and
Then it's it's doing a better job of forming those neural pathways
and your memories actually form more solidly and quicker and easier and
Your memories will last longer
And that's one of the things that they try to create, but they try to do that when you're using apps like memorize
It's called spaced repetition apps because at the beginning they show you one vocabulary word a bunch of times
and then
As you progress they start to put more and more space in between your repetitions of those words
And it works pretty well. But the problem with Memrise
or Anki or any of these online flashcard apps is that
they show you these words out of context, so it doesn't mean a whole lot when you're just looking at a flashcard and
Just trying to remember
That word out of context, and I'm not ditssing
I'm not dissing Anki or Memrisee because I think those apps are great
but a much better way of utilizing spaced repetition is by reading because
If you're learning a foreign language, or if...
Anyone who has ever spent any time learning a foreign language
knows this phenomenon that I'm about to describe and it's where you learn a word and even in your
Native language if you've never learned another foreign language before you but you've probably had this
Experience where you learn a new word that you've never heard you've never seen you have no idea what it means
But also when you learn this word and then all of a sudden you just see it everywhere you look
Right you you know you're the first day of your intensive reading you
You know you learn this word
That's highlighted right and you've never seen it before
All of a sudden you start to see it on every page
and you're like how in the world that I spend my whole life without knowing that word and
Somehow, I survived but now all sudden. I see that word every page of
Every page of the book that I'm reading
Right and it's like
You're just amazed. How often this word is used well. That's spaced repetition
Because and not only is that spaced repetition
but that's based repetition in context because every time you run into that word you now have a
Context of what's going on in the story that will help you place that that
Vocabulary word of that memory somewhere in your mind, and it'll help you recall that better
So I
Don't know I guess that's all I really had to say for this video
intensive reading extensive reading
Use them both
They're both great and they play off of each other really well extensive reading where you're just reading a lot for fun and that's great
and that's probably one of the best ways of learning, but also intensive learning where you're actually studying the text that you learn in your
You're worried more about
Understanding everything that's going on understanding every piece of grammar and every vocabulary word
And that's necessary to. It's necessary to help you perfect the grammar whereas
Extensive reading where you're not necessarily worried about the grammar very much. That's going to give you a lot of repetitions
It's going to give you a lot of practice and it's gonna help build your fluency so I hope this video has helped you
kind of think about how you can use reading in your foreign language
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