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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