You don't need a 53 minute video to answer this question; the answer is simple: yes. The only reason I have whatsoever any high level of English fluency is because I've read hundreds of books, and those helped me to understand the language much more intimately than anything else I could've done. Almost 99% of my technical knowledge of English probably comes from fiction books and Wikipedia, so the answer is totally *yes*. Each time you see a word, you get closer to remembering it forever. The more you go on reading, the fewer words you'll ever need to look up, and thus the easier reading (and speaking) will become.
Did you ever use any flash card system or app? I see people recommending those a lot but don't particularly like them. Is reading a lot without stopping to look up words all the time still effective, assuming you have a reasonable foundation already? I do in German for example
@@zacharyerlick I personally did quite a lot of learning by rote, in German as well, before I got good enough to read. I was eventually able to read a book in German, but I personally looked up a lot of words back then; but, at the same time, I think it's still totally viable to not do that as well. You learn a lot just by immersion, so if you're already solid, I'm sure you don't need to look terms up and interrupt yourself. I understand not liking flashcards, though, and I'm also trying to move away from them in the future... reading is certainly the most fun and productive method for learning :P
One flaw with the argument that you need to read more and more to gain vocabulary, is that the underlying presupposition is that you need to read more and more books to come across these words. But really, they key is to read a wider variety of texts. After having read ten spy thrillers in a row, you won't get much new vocabulary from another modern spy thriller, but a historical novel set in medieval Spain will give you tons more new vocabulary. Read a wide variety of authors, try books in different genres, read classic 19th century authors.
Yah, I mean ideally people's interests will change over time and they will explore more, but at the same time sticking with something you like and are familiar with while increasing the reading level, such as reading several spy novels at the 3000-word level then reading more at the 4000-word level, they will probably find it easier to ease into the heavier vocabulary because of the more common words being similar across the books. May be difficult to stay in one genre but I feel like doing so while not stagnating can be possible. Maybe science fiction could be a better genre perhapse, as it tackles so many different subjects.
I agree that a wide variety of subjects/genres, etc. will yield a larger body of vocabulary at higher levels, but Paul Nation is talking about the use of extensive reading to acquire up to the first 9000 most frequent English words, most of which appear in just about any book. So, until you've developed into the advanced level of a language, I don't think the genre will matter so much. You can get the foundational vocabulary and conversational vocabulary with just about any topic.
The assumption is to learn a word from context in comprehensible material you would have to come across a word 12 times. The assumption is that learners learn words from the most frequent to the least frequent (there are exceptions to this) 11:26 To learn the second 1000 words of English ( assuming meeting each word 12 times allows you to learn it) you would need to read 2000 (I believe it is actually supposed to be 200,000) tokens of language, equivalent to 2 not so long native speaker novels. Reading at 150wpm you would need to read for 33 minutes per week, 40 weeks per year. 7 minutes per day 5 days a week if you want to learn the 5th 1000 words you would need 1,000,000 tokens or 10 not so long novels. about 33 minutes per day for the 9th 1000, 1h40 minutes 5 days a week for 40 weeks high frequency words 1000-3000. mid frequency 4000-9000. Here's the list in order of which level of occurrence, number of tokens, minutes per week : 2 nd 1000 200, 000 33 minutes (7 minutes per day) 3 rd 1000 300,000 50 minutes (10 minutes per day) 4 th 1000 500,000 1 hour 23 minutes (17 minutes per day) 5 th 1000 1,000,000 2 hours 47 minutes (33 minutes per day) 6 th 1000 1,500,000 4 hours 10 minutes (50 minutes per day) 7 th 1000 2,000,000 5 hours 33 minutes (1 hour 7 minutes per day) 8 th 1000 2,500,000 6 hours 57 minutes (1 hour 23 minutes per day) 9 th 1000 3,000,000 8 hours 20 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes per day) Note. The per week figure is based on forty weeks, and the daily rate is based on 5 days To reach all 9 the levels shown, it is roughly 94 native level novels of average length. If you search the following, you will find his paper detailing all of this info. "How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words? Paul Nation Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand"
Just a little note here. Reading at 150 wpm is very fast. I'm a native english speaker with a college education and I struggle to read books in English that I've already read many times (such as Harry Potter) at 150 wpm. For people starting with extensive reading I think 50 wpm - 100 wpm or even lower is more realistic of a measure. I might be misreading your comment though if you're summarizing or quoting from the video (I don't think I'm going to watch it haha 50 minutes is too long especially with helpful comments like yours).
This video was recorded six years ago. I think technological advance has made extensive reading much easier to do. I spent a year studying Portuguese with Duolingo and Memorize, watched hundreds of Netflix shows on my laptop with subtitles able to be translated with a few clicks, listened to uncountable hours of Brazilian music with the lyrics and translations of them available with a quick search. Then I installed Kindle on my phone and found that I can translate words and phrases in books via Google Translate with a few taps. Now I've breezed through three substantial novels in a few months. I'm powering through Duolingo Spanish now and looking forward to jumping into novels when I finish.
This was quite an interesting presentation! I use to learn languages mostly by reading, and I find now exactly quantified, what I always felt in my guts. Now, the degree of frustration caused by a book which is beyond my capacity can even be put into figures. I would like to add a further experience: The kind of difficulties you face learning by reading strongly depends on the language in question. English has a rather simple structure, but correct pronunciation is often not evident. Marathi is easily read and pronounced, but dictionaries are incomplete, and outdated. Georgian pronunciation is very simple: you speak as you read, but because of the mind boggling grammar, it is very time consuming to look up words, if you have a poor grammar knowledge. Georgian dictionaries are outdated. When I started to learn Japanese, there were no electronic dictionaries, so that looking up words was extremely time consuming. Now, there are fantastic electronic dictionaries available for Chinese and Japanese. Guessing of word meanings is easier in character based languages, too. Anyway, you don't have to know every word. Even in my mother language, German, I sometimes are confronted with unknown technical, dialectal or outdated words. Meaning is normally given by context. So, you don't have to bother much.
Tolerance towards not understanding a lot of what you're reading might be an important key. I remember reading Frank Herbert's Dune for the first time and not having a clue about what was happening in entire scenes. I avoided looking up words on principle and kept on reading and some twenty novels later I came back to Dune and got it all easily.
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet It was a long and arduous journey indeed, but I was infatuated with the idea of finishing an entire novel in English, especially a science fiction one. Also, the parts I did understand were so enchanting and rewarding for me that they outweighed the difficulty I experienced with comprehension.
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet Are you doing it in Japanese to learn Japanese? If so, I would consult with some expert (unless you are an expert yourself?) before taking this leap of faith, because a quick glance at the Japanese writing system page on Wikipedia tells me it's a completely different system from the English alphabet. I'm not sure incidental vocabulary learning through pure reading is the same with such writing systems.
Professor I couldn’t agree with you anymore. I just used this extensive reading method and I got quite good progress which I found myself gradually improving on each aspect of the language . To summarise, learning language is just about immersing and familiarity. It’s not such a big difficulty but you need both patient and time. I’m now working on English and Russian. It’s a huge fun getting to know different other cultures. This is my vast motivation of acquiring other languages. Looking forward to my harvest. Just keep up!
Just a heads up, there's a big difference between "I couldn't agree more" and "I couldn't agree with you anymore" The second one makes it seem like they went too far and you no longer agree, whole the first means you agree completely.
I just finished reading 'The Alchemist' in my target language. I estimate that I knew about 95% of the words and I'm currently at an intermediate level. I used the method of re-reading each chapter in my native language of English, to ensure that each forthcoming chapter was as comprehensible as possible. I acquired a lot of new words in the process, and I did so incidentally.
@@Sosui2 I'm probably more B1 but I'm close to B2. My motivation to improve is still there, so I know it's only a matter of time. What language(s) are you currently learning?
In my view ,yes we can expand our vocabulary by reading books, i'm also doing it and does work ... my english is improving day by day , my level of vocabulary is increasing .😁
Reading is great to learn a language. You get the vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc. There is something to be careful about. You need to pratice your pronunciation. Mimic native speakers. Have a native speaker correct your pronunciation. With lots of reading, you might be mispronouncing the words in your head and this becomes a bad habit, fossilization. There is research support for this. Keep reading but also practice pronunciation to keep this from happening.
The complex linguistic talent being a uniquely human neurological characteristic is of interest to longevity researchers like me. Reading is linked not only to examination passing but in mastery of cognitive maturation and mental sophistication. There is a likely benefit to develop multiple vocabularies by becoming a polyglot. I got carried away and now juggle 21 languages. One recommendation is to learn 7 languages and spend one day of the week learning or mastering a new language. It would help with cognitive capacity and neurogenesis. So, in my case it is 3 languages each on new weekday. Another benefit of reading about health-related issues is that exposes one to adoption of those health promoting strategies. So that is the ultimate benefit of reading at a personal wellness level and longevity or healthspan expansion. Benefits of expansion of vocabulary in one language might be ameliorated by becoming a polyglot.
"As an English learner for 30 years, an English teacher/instructor for 18 years and as a PhD candidate, I have been following Stephen Krashen's videos etc esp on the importance of Reading, and very very very luckily just today when I googled Stephen Krashen again, on the right handside I saw some other names one of whom was Paul Nation whose name I definitely remember from many articles. I said "let me go through Paul Nation,too". Oh my God, Oh my God.; an unbelievable man.; Oh God, take him to your paradise/heavens pls.; he has already deserved it. What a prolific, hardworking and generous professor. I salute you sir.. in my culture we kiss the hands of our elderly and respected people.. if u allow me, I would like to kiss your hands. I thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. May God/Allah bless you.. May He protect you and your beloved ones from any trouble here and in the after life. I wish I could contribute to our ELT world as much as a drop of your ocean. You are an ocean sir. Thank you."
I apologize in case I misunderstood something about the question at hand, but I believe it has already been decided a long, long time ago: What we call the Arabic language is really a combination of a colloquial, regional dialect (عامية) and a written language (فصحة), which itself comes in several historical levels (MSA, Quranic, and pre-Islamic). Every Arab child grows up speaking a colloquial language, and then as they grow up, they add MSA (Modern Standard Arabic). MSA and the colloquial dialect share some vocabulary, depending on the region, sometimes with differences in pronunciation, orthography, *and* meaning. But the grammar of MSA is quite more complex than that of any regional dialect. And yet, readers of graded texts in MSA shall progress to full fluency in the written language. Put simply: Arab children progress from learning the alphabet to full fluency of MSA, essentially by reading. It is true that MSA is studied in school, but in principle, reading graded texts, starting from children's books and moving on to ordinary books for adults, should let a learner develop a large, active vocabulary.
Very interesting! Could you recommend a course of such reading? Scholastic (school) books are usually hard to find either through commercial booksellers and even more so overseas. They tend to be (I think) very specific to a single country.
Interesting and practical subject. Actually I can tell the question : how much to read to get enough repetition for learning 9000 words in English. Ans: It’s about 2-3 classic novels. I wrote down each new words while reading. Hence I know exactly the number of words that I acquired. I’ve done “The little Prince “ ,” The old man and the sea” and now working on “the Christmas Carol “ as well as “ the Call of the wild “. That’s my path. 🙂 I really enjoy these learning process , it’s simple , however gave me satisfaction of enhancing my knowledge ,whatever the world general insights or the language skills. Knowledge is power is real . I’m so glad and fortunate to be in nowadays which I can access all I need via the high-technology. Grateful for God and for all human being which has contributed the world.
A few to several thousand high frequency words can be acquired from input without too much emphasis on vocabulary learning, but to learn less frequent words like 10,000 to 30,000 words, you have to memorize words deliberately in addition to encountering such words in reading or listening from my experience
Appreciate for you full statistic of research. You elaborate the factors and principle of learning language process. Vocabulary is the king in language learning . Just keep adding your vocabulary , you can make steady progress for sure. No short cut . Just keep going slowly but surely. This is my opinion.
Wide reading and practice by writing on wide topics. As you read widely you will know words repeatedly and in context. And by writing on wide topics also make you to recall words of not on a one topic then may be on another topic, slowly you will embed words in mind. For reading, you need to come across a word 54 times and so for fifty thousand words to come 54 times will require to read 50 minutes a day for 365 days a year. For writing practice, if you write 150 words each paragraph story on 100 topics daily, you will write 7500 words daily. And in 365 days in a year you will be writing more than twenty lakh words. So you will be practicing a word 54 times in a year of fifty thousand words. So reading 54 times and writing 54 times a word will definitely make you memorize the word and that too in various context.
Thanks, Mr Nation, I got your al of series of your book. I guess those word will help me improving my english. When I will finish those book, I will write comment again under this video.
This has been said already but I say it too. People underestimate pleasure reading. Boy, let me tell you how many unknown words there were in Star Wars Darth Plagueis but I didn't care. I got a few and moved on, didn't ruin anything for me. Oh yeah, and people, read fiction, amazing input. Tja
If you understand 98% and enjoying your book, you will never need to look up every unknown word in the text. I think, that of those 1000 words, you'll infer the meaning from the context. That what's happened when I learned English. There are a large number of words that I understand and can use but have difficulty to translate into my native lang.
I would say that it's definitely easier to pick up words the more words you know. That's less true in English, though, than in most other languages because English is Frankensteined together from multiple other languages (that's why our spelling/pronunciation makes no sense). But most languages have evolved naturally over a very long period of time and they have root words that, with the addition of prefixes and/or suffixes, make very logical related words. I've learned that Polish is really good at having root words and I'm picking up words just by saying, hey, that looks similar to a word I already know; I think it might have a related meaning.
The Pimsleur Method, which is based on the behaviorist methodology of cognitive psychologist Sidney L Pressey, who created the first programmed-learning textbook for teaching psychological terminology, would be the best method to take a learner through the first most-frequent 9,000 words of the target lexicon were it not for the fact that so many repetitions of the learned words at each stage would be required to move the learner through the successive sections. There must be a way that a servo-mechanism could be devised to take the learner back through the previous sections after a few hundred new words were learned, before going on to the next plateau, without boring the learner with simple repetition. Clearly there's an opportunity there for some individuals with excellent object-oriented software skills, but the input of a linguist or two would probably also be required. It has to be kept in mind, however, that learning enough vocabulary to read a really important book in the target language is almost the job that was required for the native speaker to learn the target culture. How would you test for comprehension of Homer's Odyssey in his original Greek, for example, if even Modern Greek were not your mother tongue? We should be grateful for a scholar like Paul Nation who has taken his discipline to the level at which he knows its real boundaries.
in short: in order to learn the 9000 most frequent words you would need to read 1h40 mn a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year for one year (see at 15:07 mn)
@@AngelaRodhas the 9th 1,000 words means the last part of the total 9,000 words. (So they are frequent, but not as frequent as the first 8,000 words...if that makes sense.)
Where do you find the novels that are at the appropriate level for extensive reading (98 percent comprehension) given that there don't seem to be many graded readers available.
@@narsplace From English learning perspective I say it’s totally and completely helpful. Before I tried to learn English through textbooks and through academic way, but it was so demotivating and absolutely unproductive and because of that I gave up several times. Then I just decided to learn through comprehensible input and started reading slowly and watching hundreds of English related videos, movies, podcasts and many more. And it helps me to improve tremendously day by day.
Someone please help me, I have some questions, do we have to read out loud or read in our minds in extensive reading. And also for eg I want to learn Japanese through ER reading so in what language shall I read the Japanese book, do I have to read a book written in Japanese alphabets or written in English but with Japanese words.??? So confused please help me
Reading could be useful but Speed reading course maybe not efficient way to improve language proficiency. The reading speed couldn't speed up by some method, it only increase when people really get the words. And the reading with question following up may ramp out the anxiety. Yeah, student maybe read faster but may lost their interest for the reading. Mr Stephen Krashen claim he discourage the question after reading, which really converted the fun to burden. Coz people always wanna faster and finally exhausted excessively .
I read every day in the morning. It usually takes from 30 to 45 minutes a day. My vocabulary is not too smart. Just about ,15,000 to 20,000 words. I think people have to read to expand their vocabulary. My practice was like that: firstly reading for the gist, secondly reading for every word's meaning is clear.
I think there is an error with this. Some authors will use certain rare words frequently, and a few authors take great pleasure in only using rare words. With those authors you'd learn a ton of words quickly, if you didn't get too frustrated. Also, who cares about knowing 10000 words in a new language if the words are rarely if ever used? You'll learn the words you care about quickly.
48:05 I don't believe this at all. I don't think you need deliberate learning to learn a language. It might not hurt, but I'm almost certain that language is 100% subconsious, no matter what that study showed. One thing for sure, you can't learn an language to a really good level of fluency with 100% deliberate study, but you can do it with 100% unconscious learning (via immersion). That should tell us something. Every single person on the earth who speaks a language did that with at least one language; there were no exceptions. That's a HUGE clue if you ask me.
It's quite disappointing. Before discussing something you need to agree on the exact definitions of the words you are using. What does "to learn" exactly mean? To this guy "to learn a word" means "to recognise the word in the text and manage to recall its meaning". Does it mean automatically that you can recognise that very word off the text and context? The answer is "no". Does it make you able to use that word impromptu while writing something, leave alone speaking. No again. So, what exactly is this guy talking about? In certain terms, about "placing some words into your so called "passive vocabulary"" which, by any standard is far from "learning". The speech is full of baseless assumptions, like "12 repetitions", why not 20? Basing on that "exact" figure he builds the whole construction. Every point of the speech is actually speculations, guesses, unproved theories etc. Nothing that a teacher or learner can rely on and use in the process of learning. All he said boils down to a simple fact - the more you read the faster you learn, which is, no doubt, correct and very fresh, only about 5000 years old. Amazing result!
You don't need a 53 minute video to answer this question; the answer is simple: yes. The only reason I have whatsoever any high level of English fluency is because I've read hundreds of books, and those helped me to understand the language much more intimately than anything else I could've done. Almost 99% of my technical knowledge of English probably comes from fiction books and Wikipedia, so the answer is totally *yes*. Each time you see a word, you get closer to remembering it forever. The more you go on reading, the fewer words you'll ever need to look up, and thus the easier reading (and speaking) will become.
I much appreciate your commentary, you save me 53 minutes of my life.
@@jfrv2244 Thanks xD Glad it was helpful :')
YO PIN THIS.
Did you ever use any flash card system or app? I see people recommending those a lot but don't particularly like them. Is reading a lot without stopping to look up words all the time still effective, assuming you have a reasonable foundation already? I do in German for example
@@zacharyerlick I personally did quite a lot of learning by rote, in German as well, before I got good enough to read. I was eventually able to read a book in German, but I personally looked up a lot of words back then; but, at the same time, I think it's still totally viable to not do that as well. You learn a lot just by immersion, so if you're already solid, I'm sure you don't need to look terms up and interrupt yourself.
I understand not liking flashcards, though, and I'm also trying to move away from them in the future... reading is certainly the most fun and productive method for learning :P
One flaw with the argument that you need to read more and more to gain vocabulary, is that the underlying presupposition is that you need to read more and more books to come across these words. But really, they key is to read a wider variety of texts. After having read ten spy thrillers in a row, you won't get much new vocabulary from another modern spy thriller, but a historical novel set in medieval Spain will give you tons more new vocabulary. Read a wide variety of authors, try books in different genres, read classic 19th century authors.
Take my like👍
Reading about what personally interests the student is also a really good way to ensure a "comfy" start.
Yah, I mean ideally people's interests will change over time and they will explore more, but at the same time sticking with something you like and are familiar with while increasing the reading level, such as reading several spy novels at the 3000-word level then reading more at the 4000-word level, they will probably find it easier to ease into the heavier vocabulary because of the more common words being similar across the books. May be difficult to stay in one genre but I feel like doing so while not stagnating can be possible. Maybe science fiction could be a better genre perhapse, as it tackles so many different subjects.
I agree that a wide variety of subjects/genres, etc. will yield a larger body of vocabulary at higher levels, but Paul Nation is talking about the use of extensive reading to acquire up to the first 9000 most frequent English words, most of which appear in just about any book. So, until you've developed into the advanced level of a language, I don't think the genre will matter so much. You can get the foundational vocabulary and conversational vocabulary with just about any topic.
The assumption is to learn a word from context in comprehensible material you would have to come across a word 12 times.
The assumption is that learners learn words from the most frequent to the least frequent (there are exceptions to this) 11:26
To learn the second 1000 words of English ( assuming meeting each word 12 times allows you to learn it) you would need to read 2000 (I believe it is actually supposed to be 200,000) tokens of language, equivalent to 2 not so long native speaker novels. Reading at 150wpm you would need to read for 33 minutes per week, 40 weeks per year. 7 minutes per day 5 days a week
if you want to learn the 5th 1000 words you would need 1,000,000 tokens or 10 not so long novels. about 33 minutes per day
for the 9th 1000, 1h40 minutes 5 days a week for 40 weeks
high frequency words 1000-3000. mid frequency 4000-9000.
Here's the list in order of which level of occurrence, number of tokens, minutes per week :
2 nd 1000 200, 000 33 minutes (7 minutes per day)
3 rd 1000 300,000 50 minutes (10 minutes per day)
4 th 1000 500,000 1 hour 23 minutes (17 minutes per day)
5 th 1000 1,000,000 2 hours 47 minutes (33 minutes per day)
6 th 1000 1,500,000 4 hours 10 minutes (50 minutes per day)
7 th 1000 2,000,000 5 hours 33 minutes (1 hour 7 minutes per day)
8 th 1000 2,500,000 6 hours 57 minutes (1 hour 23 minutes per day)
9 th 1000 3,000,000 8 hours 20 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes per day)
Note. The per week figure is based on forty weeks, and the daily rate is based on 5 days
To reach all 9 the levels shown, it is roughly 94 native level novels of average length.
If you search the following, you will find his paper detailing all of this info. "How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words?
Paul Nation
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand"
Just a little note here. Reading at 150 wpm is very fast. I'm a native english speaker with a college education and I struggle to read books in English that I've already read many times (such as Harry Potter) at 150 wpm.
For people starting with extensive reading I think 50 wpm - 100 wpm or even lower is more realistic of a measure. I might be misreading your comment though if you're summarizing or quoting from the video (I don't think I'm going to watch it haha 50 minutes is too long especially with helpful comments like yours).
This video was recorded six years ago. I think technological advance has made extensive reading much easier to do. I spent a year studying Portuguese with Duolingo and Memorize, watched hundreds of Netflix shows on my laptop with subtitles able to be translated with a few clicks, listened to uncountable hours of Brazilian music with the lyrics and translations of them available with a quick search. Then I installed Kindle on my phone and found that I can translate words and phrases in books via Google Translate with a few taps. Now I've breezed through three substantial novels in a few months. I'm powering through Duolingo Spanish now and looking forward to jumping into novels when I finish.
I can help you if u want to , I’m a Portuguese native speaker !!!
Kindle made life so much easier
parabens
This was quite an interesting presentation! I use to learn languages mostly by reading, and I find now exactly quantified, what I always felt in my guts. Now, the degree of frustration caused by a book which is beyond my capacity can even be put into figures. I would like to add a further experience: The kind of difficulties you face learning by reading strongly depends on the language in question. English has a rather simple structure, but correct pronunciation is often not evident. Marathi is easily read and pronounced, but dictionaries are incomplete, and outdated. Georgian pronunciation is very simple: you speak as you read, but because of the mind boggling grammar, it is very time consuming to look up words, if you have a poor grammar knowledge. Georgian dictionaries are outdated. When I started to learn Japanese, there were no electronic dictionaries, so that looking up words was extremely time consuming. Now, there are fantastic electronic dictionaries available for Chinese and Japanese. Guessing of word meanings is easier in character based languages, too. Anyway, you don't have to know every word. Even in my mother language, German, I sometimes are confronted with unknown technical, dialectal or outdated words. Meaning is normally given by context. So, you don't have to bother much.
@@gee8883 佩服不佩服？我用比较多的时间学习语言。有的时候我觉得可用闲暇更好一点儿；-）
Tolerance towards not understanding a lot of what you're reading might be an important key. I remember reading Frank Herbert's Dune for the first time and not having a clue about what was happening in entire scenes. I avoided looking up words on principle and kept on reading and some twenty novels later I came back to Dune and got it all easily.
That was probably a very hard book to read! How did you do with it?
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet It was a long and arduous journey indeed, but I was infatuated with the idea of finishing an entire novel in English, especially a science fiction one. Also, the parts I did understand were so enchanting and rewarding for me that they outweighed the difficulty I experienced with comprehension.
@@willhelpforfree I'm trying to read the entire Detective Conan series (100 books). I hope my vocabulary improves too.
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet Are you doing it in Japanese to learn Japanese? If so, I would consult with some expert (unless you are an expert yourself?) before taking this leap of faith, because a quick glance at the Japanese writing system page on Wikipedia tells me it's a completely different system from the English alphabet. I'm not sure incidental vocabulary learning through pure reading is the same with such writing systems.
@@willhelpforfree Yeah, that's no problem. I just have a weak vocabulary. Too practical and not enough function.
Professor I couldn’t agree with you anymore. I just used this extensive reading method and I got quite good progress which I found myself gradually improving on each aspect of the language . To summarise, learning language is just about immersing and familiarity. It’s not such a big difficulty but you need both patient and time. I’m now working on English and Russian. It’s a huge fun getting to know different other cultures. This is my vast motivation of acquiring other languages. Looking forward to my harvest. Just keep up!
Just a heads up, there's a big difference between "I couldn't agree more" and "I couldn't agree with you anymore" The second one makes it seem like they went too far and you no longer agree, whole the first means you agree completely.
@Cat-ox2ih I also read you as saying you no longer agreed with the professor in your first line.
I just finished reading 'The Alchemist' in my target language. I estimate that I knew about 95% of the words and I'm currently at an intermediate level. I used the method of re-reading each chapter in my native language of English, to ensure that each forthcoming chapter was as comprehensible as possible. I acquired a lot of new words in the process, and I did so incidentally.
what is your level ? b2 ?
@@Sosui2 I'm probably more B1 but I'm close to B2. My motivation to improve is still there, so I know it's only a matter of time. What language(s) are you currently learning?
@@Tehui1974 B2 ish. Learning Spanish :) I am Norwegian and my English is at a C2 level.
@@Sosui2 Legend...
@@Tehui1974 What are you learning and what do you speak ?
In my view ,yes we can expand our vocabulary by reading books, i'm also doing it and does work ... my english is improving day by day , my level of vocabulary is increasing .😁
Can you tell me which books u read
Thank you for good discussion and informative lecture
Reading is great to learn a language. You get the vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc. There is something to be careful about. You need to pratice your pronunciation. Mimic native speakers. Have a native speaker correct your pronunciation. With lots of reading, you might be mispronouncing the words in your head and this becomes a bad habit, fossilization. There is research support for this. Keep reading but also practice pronunciation to keep this from happening.
The complex linguistic talent being a uniquely human neurological characteristic is of interest to longevity researchers like me. Reading is linked not only to examination passing but in mastery of cognitive maturation and mental sophistication. There is a likely benefit to develop multiple vocabularies by becoming a polyglot. I got carried away and now juggle 21 languages. One recommendation is to learn 7 languages and spend one day of the week learning or mastering a new language. It would help with cognitive capacity and neurogenesis. So, in my case it is 3 languages each on new weekday. Another benefit of reading about health-related issues is that exposes one to adoption of those health promoting strategies. So that is the ultimate benefit of reading at a personal wellness level and longevity or healthspan expansion. Benefits of expansion of vocabulary in one language might be ameliorated by becoming a polyglot.
"As an English learner for 30 years, an English teacher/instructor for 18 years and as a PhD candidate, I have been following Stephen Krashen's videos etc esp on the importance of Reading, and very very very luckily just today when I googled Stephen Krashen again, on the right handside I saw some other names one of whom was Paul Nation whose name I definitely remember from many articles. I said "let me go through Paul Nation,too". Oh my God, Oh my God.; an unbelievable man.; Oh God, take him to your paradise/heavens pls.; he has already deserved it. What a prolific, hardworking and generous professor. I salute you sir.. in my culture we kiss the hands of our elderly and respected people.. if u allow me, I would like to kiss your hands. I thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. May God/Allah bless you.. May He protect you and your beloved ones from any trouble here and in the after life. I wish I could contribute to our ELT world as much as a drop of your ocean. You are an ocean sir. Thank you."
Idris Sari same here! I applied to a applied linguistics master degree and saw lots of books written by professor Paul Nation!
@@mokkrit1 dear how to get linguistic lectures and books there is online I am from somalia
thanks brother give me information is there online learning?
Nice explanation, very informative lecture and very useful lecture sir
I apologize in case I misunderstood something about the question at hand, but I believe it has already been decided a long, long time ago: What we call the Arabic language is really a combination of a colloquial, regional dialect (عامية) and a written language (فصحة), which itself comes in several historical levels (MSA, Quranic, and pre-Islamic). Every Arab child grows up speaking a colloquial language, and then as they grow up, they add MSA (Modern Standard Arabic). MSA and the colloquial dialect share some vocabulary, depending on the region, sometimes with differences in pronunciation, orthography, *and* meaning. But the grammar of MSA is quite more complex than that of any regional dialect. And yet, readers of graded texts in MSA shall progress to full fluency in the written language.
Put simply: Arab children progress from learning the alphabet to full fluency of MSA, essentially by reading. It is true that MSA is studied in school, but in principle, reading graded texts, starting from children's books and moving on to ordinary books for adults, should let a learner develop a large, active vocabulary.
Very interesting! Could you recommend a course of such reading? Scholastic (school) books are usually hard to find either through commercial booksellers and even more so overseas. They tend to be (I think) very specific to a single country.
Interesting and practical subject.
Actually I can tell the question : how much to read to get enough repetition for learning 9000 words in English.
Ans: It’s about 2-3 classic novels.
I wrote down each new words while reading. Hence I know exactly the number of words that I acquired.
I’ve done “The little Prince “ ,” The old man and the sea” and now working on “the Christmas Carol “ as well as “ the Call of the wild “. That’s my path.
🙂 I really enjoy these learning process , it’s simple , however gave me satisfaction of enhancing my knowledge ,whatever the world general insights or the language skills.
Knowledge is power is real . I’m so glad and fortunate to be in nowadays which I can access all I need via the high-technology. Grateful for God and for all human being which has contributed the world.
A few to several thousand high frequency words can be acquired from input without too much emphasis on vocabulary learning, but to learn less frequent words like 10,000 to 30,000 words, you have to memorize words deliberately in addition to encountering such words in reading or listening from my experience
Appreciate for you full statistic of research. You elaborate the factors and principle of learning language process. Vocabulary is the king in language learning . Just keep adding your vocabulary , you can make steady progress for sure. No short cut . Just keep going slowly but surely. This is my opinion.
Wide reading and practice by writing on wide topics.
As you read widely you will know words repeatedly and in context. And by writing on wide topics also make you to recall words of not on a one topic then may be on another topic, slowly you will embed words in mind.
For reading, you need to come across a word 54 times and so for fifty thousand words to come 54 times will require to read 50 minutes a day for 365 days a year.
For writing practice, if you write 150 words each paragraph story on 100 topics daily, you will write 7500 words daily. And in 365 days in a year you will be writing more than twenty lakh words. So you will be practicing a word 54 times in a year of fifty thousand words.
So reading 54 times and writing 54 times a word will definitely make you memorize the word and that too in various context.
Extensive reading helps to add on to our vocabulary. Nowadays audiobooks can also help us .
Thanks a lot for sharing these videos of learning vocabularies through extensive and intensive reading. It is so useful for learners.
Words in the foreign language is only part of success.
More important are phrases, collocations...
Useful session about vocabulary
-Dr Virenkumar Pandya
BDK ARTS AND COMMERCE COLLEGE GADHADA
Thanks, Mr Nation, I got your al of series of your book. I guess those word will help me improving my english. When I will finish those book, I will write comment again under this video.
Well explained thank you sir
Wonderfull video & very usfull i like it's Mathed 👍🙏🏼
This has been said already but I say it too. People underestimate pleasure reading. Boy, let me tell you how many unknown words there were in Star Wars Darth Plagueis but I didn't care. I got a few and moved on, didn't ruin anything for me. Oh yeah, and people, read fiction, amazing input. Tja
This is a very useful and informative lecture
really good information, i wonder why this video does not have many viewers.
If you understand 98% and enjoying your book, you will never need to look up every unknown word in the text. I think, that of those 1000 words, you'll infer the meaning from the context. That what's happened when I learned English. There are a large number of words that I understand and can use but have difficulty to translate into my native lang.
You are 100% right that this worked in L1, but the conditions in L1 are VERY different than they are in L2. VERY.
useful session on extensive reading
Nice presentation. Thank you sir
Very good discussion thank you sir.
It's a nice and interesting lecture but ebooks with audio are the best options for learning from reading.
I would say that it's definitely easier to pick up words the more words you know. That's less true in English, though, than in most other languages because English is Frankensteined together from multiple other languages (that's why our spelling/pronunciation makes no sense). But most languages have evolved naturally over a very long period of time and they have root words that, with the addition of prefixes and/or suffixes, make very logical related words.
I've learned that Polish is really good at having root words and I'm picking up words just by saying, hey, that looks similar to a word I already know; I think it might have a related meaning.
Vocabulary will be improved by extensive reading. Very interesting video
That’s for sure .
The Pimsleur Method, which is based on the behaviorist methodology of cognitive psychologist Sidney L Pressey, who created the first programmed-learning textbook for teaching psychological terminology, would be the best method to take a learner through the first most-frequent 9,000 words of the target lexicon were it not for the fact that so many repetitions of the learned words at each stage would be required to move the learner through the successive sections. There must be a way that a servo-mechanism could be devised to take the learner back through the previous sections after a few hundred new words were learned, before going on to the next plateau, without boring the learner with simple repetition. Clearly there's an opportunity there for some individuals with excellent object-oriented software skills, but the input of a linguist or two would probably also be required. It has to be kept in mind, however, that learning enough vocabulary to read a really important book in the target language is almost the job that was required for the native speaker to learn the target culture. How would you test for comprehension of Homer's Odyssey in his original Greek, for example, if even Modern Greek were not your mother tongue? We should be grateful for a scholar like Paul Nation who has taken his discipline to the level at which he knows its real boundaries.
Good information
Well explained,Thank you Sir🙏
informative session
Thanks very much for sharing.
Very useful vidio
Nicely presented.
Thx for sharing this video
Very informative session
Really good ininformation
in short: in order to learn the 9000 most frequent words you would need to read 1h40 mn a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year for one year (see at 15:07 mn)
You need this time to learn only the ninth thousand words, and not all nine thousand words.
@@Green-jb7jm No comprendo.
@@AngelaRodhas the 9th 1,000 words means the last part of the total 9,000 words. (So they are frequent, but not as frequent as the first 8,000 words...if that makes sense.)
@@melissat9120 yes it does. Thanks
Very nice
Very informative. Thank you sir
Excellent speech.
Helpful session
Good learning.
I’m reading Japanese novels for at least an hour a day since I’m no longer studying from textbooks anymore. I’ve given up on studying grammar
Is it helpful?
Where do you find the novels that are at the appropriate level for extensive reading (98 percent comprehension) given that there don't seem to be many graded readers available.
@@moyga try bookwalker.
@@narsplace From English learning perspective I say it’s totally and completely helpful. Before I tried to learn English through textbooks and through academic way, but it was so demotivating and absolutely unproductive and because of that I gave up several times. Then I just decided to learn through comprehensible input and started reading slowly and watching hundreds of English related videos, movies, podcasts and many more. And it helps me to improve tremendously day by day.
Very informative
Amazing lecture
Very interesting
Good session
finest lecture
Very nice video
I would consider this performance a good job if it was in Tatar
In my mind at first it needs in translation a great numerous words with transcription
33:58 The Art of War by Lao Tzu :D
By Kostya Tzu
Excellent
How can you calculate your total-number-of-known-words?, is there a formula?
47:46 for my reference
What’s he got against rob warring?
Thank you
Congratulation prof.
Very helpful
Someone please help me, I have some questions, do we have to read out loud or read in our minds in extensive reading. And also for eg I want to learn Japanese through ER reading so in what language shall I read the Japanese book, do I have to read a book written in Japanese alphabets or written in English but with Japanese words.??? So confused please help me
Read the book written in the Japanese alphabet. Also I'd suggest to read silently in your mind, although some say it's better to read out loud.
I hope there will be a link to the first 9000 words in English so that learners like me could check their vocabulary level.
Check this out.
www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation#vocab-lists
@@atila2030 Thank you. What a lovely link!
Reading could be useful but Speed reading course maybe not efficient way to improve language proficiency. The reading speed couldn't speed up by some method, it only increase when people really get the words. And the reading with question following up may ramp out the anxiety. Yeah, student maybe read faster but may lost their interest for the reading. Mr Stephen Krashen claim he discourage the question after reading, which really converted the fun to burden. Coz people always wanna faster and finally exhausted excessively .
good
Now that ChatGPT is here - it is possible.
Nice
I read every day in the morning. It usually takes from 30 to 45 minutes a day.
My vocabulary is not too smart. Just about ,15,000 to 20,000 words. I think people have to read to expand their vocabulary. My practice was like that: firstly reading for the gist, secondly reading for every word's meaning is clear.
An average person uses about 20,000 words, knows a maximum of 30,000 - 45,000, a well-educated person knows about 65,000 words ... So 20,000 is a lot.
I know about 20,000 words but still i can't speak fluently
@@lavishlyenigmatic
20k words can be more than many children know, u need pronunciation + gramma drills thats all
@@lavishlyenigmatic I think what you need is to speak 🗣 or do a lot of writing so you learn how to put sentences together and build the context.
Great habit.
I think there is an error with this. Some authors will use certain rare words frequently, and a few authors take great pleasure in only using rare words. With those authors you'd learn a ton of words quickly, if you didn't get too frustrated.
Also, who cares about knowing 10000 words in a new language if the words are rarely if ever used? You'll learn the words you care about quickly.
Good
May God/Allah bless you Stephen Krashen
good morning
48:05 I don't believe this at all. I don't think you need deliberate learning to learn a language. It might not hurt, but I'm almost certain that language is 100% subconsious, no matter what that study showed. One thing for sure, you can't learn an language to a really good level of fluency with 100% deliberate study, but you can do it with 100% unconscious learning (via immersion). That should tell us something. Every single person on the earth who speaks a language did that with at least one language; there were no exceptions. That's a HUGE clue if you ask me.
thank u
Halle miss❤
It's quite disappointing. Before discussing something you need to agree on the exact definitions of the words you are using.
What does "to learn" exactly mean? To this guy "to learn a word" means "to recognise the word in the text and manage to recall its meaning". Does it mean automatically that you can recognise that very word off the text and context? The answer is "no". Does it make you able to use that word impromptu while writing something, leave alone speaking. No again. So, what exactly is this guy talking about? In certain terms, about "placing some words into your so called "passive vocabulary"" which, by any standard is far from "learning".
The speech is full of baseless assumptions, like "12 repetitions", why not 20? Basing on that "exact" figure he builds the whole construction. Every point of the speech is actually speculations, guesses, unproved theories etc. Nothing that a teacher or learner can rely on and use in the process of learning. All he said boils down to a simple fact - the more you read the faster you learn, which is, no doubt, correct and very fresh, only about 5000 years old. Amazing result!
Good information
Very good video
Thank you
Nice
Good
good
good