Why reading is a secret weapon for language learning

[Music] for me reading kind of feels like a secret weapon like like something that because i i started off with a super intense language super different difficult language i never really got into it um but now i'm kind of like you know the gates are open i'm like wow it's a whole world out here i'm curious what what uh what benefits do you see reading having that other mediums just don't have you're not alone in experiencing this with reading as well i mean i think certain people are natural readers other people are not that's just the way the way things go and a lot of it i think is down to to school and um and how we're taught so the thing about reading is there's a couple of things right the first thing is that reading is where people who who write really take the time to craft beautiful sentences in the language people who people who write they they have ideas they formulate their ideas they put them into um into into the into written format then they go back and they edit them writers take take pride in crafting beautiful sentences beautiful language in a way that you don't have when you're just when you're trying to like make a netflix show for example where you're just trying to communicate with with the with the masters everything that's possible within the language beautiful language exists in books like that's just always the way it's been there's a reason that uh well i guess uh i was gonna talk about jane austen and shakespeare where they couldn't run podcasts podcasts or netflix even if they wanted to right but but you know the written format is there because we can take the time to craft beautiful stuff in the language when we speak we use something like ten percent of our of our known vocabulary and so whenever you're whenever you're watching or listening to people speaking you're only getting a tiny fraction of everything that's available in that language yeah so as soon as you as soon as you you start to read you unlock like 90 of the language that's not used on a regular basis which by itself should give people like real pause pause for thought but the main thing for me is actually as a as a medium for studying reading is just far more effective than or far more it's far more dense maybe i was gonna say it's far more accessible than listening because there's a people say yeah you can turn on subtitles on netflix or on youtube and like you can but i don't know about you but when i'm learning a language i wanna i wanna have a page in front of me that i can read through that i can go back and forth re-read a sentence easily like mark up highlight words make little notes in the margin i want to be able to see stuff in front of me so i can go back and forward up and down and take my time the trouble with listening or watching movies and stuff is it's a very impractical format for studying you've got to always be rewinding you may or may not have the words on the screen and if you see a sentence on the screen you can't see what's coming up next unless you is just practical and so for a combination of all these reasons you know the fact that people have taken the time to craft beautiful language using a wide range of vocabulary and you can study it and you can find anything that you want in any topic in books true that's for me that's that's where it's at there you go yeah i i think i think it depends on how dedicated you are so for example that kind of sitting in front of a book and there's a whole page and you just said that you prefer to kind of have that kind of big page where you can kind of stop and start and go to search up words that you need to and you can kind of go at your own rhythm as opposed to netflix where you have to kind of go you know back and forth if you miss a word what what not i think that the the trade-off there is i guess fun because a lot of people would prefer just to learn less and have more fun as opposed to learn more and have less fun i but i guess the the the caveat to that is finding material that is actually inherently interesting in the in the language that you're learning especially if you're reading a book and the plot is super interesting then you it force it doesn't force you but it motivates you to kind of continue with it because you want to see what's at the end of the the the kind of proverbial uh tunnel you know it's intriguing and it's it's um it's one of those reasons that i've started recommending people to kind of really read manga as well so manga i've kind of never i was really never a fan i was like no i watch anime i don't watch manga or sorry i don't read manga but for language learning purposes manga or comic books or webtoons they are so uh just powerful because often times the stories are so intriguing it's almost as good as watching a netflix thing but it's a lot more uh you get a lot more comprehensible input out of it so it's it's it's super interesting to hear your thoughts on it considering you have a huge massive series on on on reading and and all that

Channel: Ikenna

Views: 38,194

Keywords: why reading is important, reading for language learning, learning languages with reading, olly richards, ikenna, olly richards short stories, language learning, benefits of reading, benefits of reading books, importance of reading, how to learn a language, language learning tips, olly richards story learning

Id: Td2Y_d__DZs

Length: 4min 53sec (293 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021