Extensive Reading and Vocabulary Range

Alexander Arguelles presents the 1st part of a 2-part lecture on the practice of extensive reading as a means of acquiring an extensive vocabulary of the range of low-frequency words required in order to read literature.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Extensive
• Reading
• and
• Vocabulary
• Range
• language
• acquisition
• learning
• development
• polyliteracy
• advanced
• level
• high-frequency
• low-frequency
• word
• words
• Great
• Books
• literature
• English
• ESL
• EFL
• Paul
• Nation
• Alexander
• Arguelles

[RyuPiu]

Yes! Another upload!

[vixen020202]

For some reason, I had thought that extensive reading was a "beginner's technique," but I see now that I was wrong. It is obviously very necessary even for advanced, even for professional users of a foreign language. I suspect that even many native speakers could profit from it. Thanks so much for making me aware of this!

[plaidchuck]

@plaidchuck

For example, if you have been reading the classics read a silly romance novel or if you have been reading fiction read academic texts or essays.

[plaidchuck]

It seems like this is similar to any kind of discipline in life, physical or mental: you make great strides at first, and then the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Where to go from here when reading? That seems to be the million dollar question. For me I would say to constantly change the "genre" and type of material that you read. If you have been reading a certain kind of fiction, read something out of your "comfort zone" or the genre that you prefer.

[Jate0000]

I did the test and I got this result: You know at least 10,800 English word families! My native language is Spanish. I need to get back to work on my English ;-)

[katanamanatee]

@klnkx SRSs are fantastic programmes, definitely the best way I've found to ensure that you remember low-frequency vocabulary. Your English is excellent, especially impressive for one year of study!

[Vik51272]

My result is 13,200 word families. I'm a non-native speaker of English. I spent 5 days in London with my family last year, that's all.

[ChipsOnLanguage]

After watching this video I started reading Pinocchio in the language I'm learning and found I was having quite a bit of trouble. After doing a word count of the few pages I'd read, I found that I know appx. 93% of them. I was very surprised it was that high because I was having considerable trouble with it but it is more evidence what you say is true.

[klnkx]

But still learning vocabulary is a real pain for me, because words have too many multiple meanings.

[klnkx]

I started learning English a year ago. I picked up one of those word frequency lists and crossed out all the words I knew. Then I compiled a list of unknown words and the words I mispronounced into an SRS collection.Since then I've been checking out at least 400 items every day.It skyrocketed my learning curve and I've filled in a lot of gaps in my vocab. Now I can read books pretty well.Using SRS is by far the fastest way you can get to boost up the frequency of encountering rarely used words.

[blaiseli]

My reaction? "funny" ? "incredible" ? "classic" ? "cute" ? "what?" ? "ouch" ?

No, just simply "interesting". But apparently the guys at Youtube do not imagine people use this for sharing interesting ideas.

[americaninkorea]

As I learn more from you about language learning methods, there seems to be less and less of raison d'être for language teachers. This poses a dilemma for me, as I am now employed as a language teacher.