5 reasons Reading is the Fastest Way to Learn a Language
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Contents
1.) It’s the fastest way to learn new words
2.) You absorb the grammar naturally
3.) Reading makes understanding what you hear so much easier
4.) Reading improves your speaking
5.) Reading makes you forget you’re even learning a language
I’ve experimented with a lot of different language learning methods over the years.
Looking for the most efficient ways to learn a language.
When I discovered the power of reading, it was a complete game-changer for me.
My vocabulary skyrocketed. My listening ability and understanding of native speakers got so much easier. Even my speaking got better! Without me having even spoken a word in my target languages for months.
And maybe best of all - by choosing the right things to read (for you personally) you forget you’re even learning a language. Learning and getting more skilled in your target language becomes a by-product of immersing yourself in your interests and passions.
You’re doing what you love and getting language gains automatically.
Reading is also such an easy thing to do no matter where you are. All you need is a smartphone (or a tablet, computer, or even a real physical book if you prefer).
We all want to make the best use of our time and waste as little of it as possible. Reading will make your language process much faster. You won’t see a difference overnight, but as you stick to it you’ll make more progress than you can even imagine.
The reason why reading is the fastest way to learn a language is because it hits so many things at the same time. Here are the 5 top ones.
1.) It’s the fastest way to learn new words
What most often keeps you from understanding native speakers is simply one thing:
You don’t know enough words.
The main thing when learning a language is to acquire new words. Expanding our vocabulary.
There are other components to it too, such as an intuitive and innate sense of the structure of the language. But even this you will start to get better by learning more words in context.
By reading.
The more words you know the more you will be able to guess the meaning of other words.
Let’s say you hear a sentence that has 10 words in it. What if you only know 3 of 10 words? It’s not gonna be easy to make sense of that sentence, is it? How about if you know 9 of those 10 words in that sentence? You’re now much more likely going to be able to guess the meaning of that one word you don’t know. Just based on the context of knowing those other 9 words.
The more words you know the easier everything in your target language is going to be.
Reading is the most effective way to acquire new words. When you read you’re exposed to high-quality language. There’s much more diversity in vocabulary compared to spoken language. A wider range of words than that of everyday speech.
When reading you also see these words on paper. The visual aspects help the words to stick to your mind faster and easier.
High-frequency words tend to repeat often, so you constantly get repetition of key vocabulary, making them second nature to you before long.
2.) You absorb the grammar naturally
I’m not someone who likes to study grammar. It’s fine if that’s something you’re interested in, but when I decided to learn Finnish (which is grammatically one of the most complicated languages in the world) I wanted to go about it differently than your typical “open up a grammar book and learn all the rules”-type of approach that I saw everyone else taking when learning the language. I just believed there was a more efficient and faster way of learning.
Reading became my one-way ticket out of Grammar Land.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to learn grammar. You do. But grammar can be acquired without having to learn the rules. If you happen to know a rule, that’s fine. But it’s not necessary.
Reading lets you naturally see and learn the language in context - the word order, how verbs change, the relationships the words have with each other, and so on.
Without actually having to understand why.
When you ask a native speaker about grammar (like why something is said or written a certain way) you often just get the answer:
“I don’t know. It just feels right”.
This feeling that native speakers have is because of all the exposure they have gotten to the language.
They have heard things said “the correct way” so many times. As soon as something is incorrect their inner language compass goes off. They know it’s not right because of the thousands of times they’ve heard or seen it correctly.
You can get this inner compass by reading, and reading a lot.
With enough time spent with your target language, you’ll begin to obtain this “6th sense”. This “intuition” that native speakers have. I started noticing it with my Finnish where my first intuitive thought was usually the right one. Once I start thinking too much about it I was more likely to make a mistake. This is even true in my native language Swedish.
The only difference between you and a native speaker is the number of hours they have been exposed to the language.
Your primary focus should just be on getting a lot of reading in. Not analyzing too much, but just letting the language just wash over you. Until it’s not strange or weird anymore. IF you do this long enough it will eventually be as natural as your native language (if this is your goal).
Even if you’re not going for a native-like level in your target language, reading will take you to whatever level you’re going for faster.
My favorite app to use for reading is LingQ get an extended free trial+ 37% off). It makes it so much easier to read content that is interesting, keep track of my progress (like how many words I know) and so many other things. I literally use it every day for all the languages I’m learning and have been for years.
Other options for reading are Readlang or Migaku.
Would you like to know my secrets
to learn any language successfully?
3.) Reading makes understanding what you hear so much easier
Even though we’re talking about reading here, I actually don’t think it’s the most important skill when learning a language.
Wait, what?! I thought this was about reading?
Hear me out for a second.
Most of us are learning a language to be able to talk to other people. Or maybe it’s watching your favorite Korean drama and understanding it with ease.
The barrier to both of those is in lacking listening comprehension - not understanding what is being said. It’s very tough to have a conversation with someone and reply to their questions if you don’t understand what they’re saying.
When you read a word, you not only read it but you also say it out loud in your head. You’re training yourself to “hear it”. You’re actually also listening when reading.
To get good at listening, you do need to practice only listening as well. That’s a huge key to your language improvement. However, listening is one of the most difficult things for people to practice. Because you have to tolerate so much ambiguity.
Reading (and reading a lot will make listening so much easier). Once you know the words by reading them, you only need to give your mind a chance to pick up on them through your hearing.
Reading is going to make listening to your target language less painful, more fun, and more fulfilling.
“The only difference between you and a native speaker is the number of hours they have been exposed to the language.”
4.) Reading improves your speaking
Why would reading a book help me speak better?
Reading and speaking might seem somewhat unrelated, but they’re actually closer than you think.
When you’re exposed to the language through reading, you not only learn new words but you strengthen the words you already know.
It’s not that you either know a word or that you don’t. It’s a lot more nuanced than that. There are levels of knowing a word.
For example, you can know a word to the level where you’ll understand it when someone else speaks it (passive vocabulary). But that doesn’t mean that you know it well enough to use it in your own speaking (active vocabulary).
To be able to use a word when speaking you need to have been exposed to it so much that it’s so familiar to you that it’s right at the forefront of your mind. To get a word from passive to active vocabulary you don’t need to speak it enough times (although that doesn’t hurt). You just need to have been exposed to the word enough times.
How many times you need will depend on the word. Some words stick right away. Some of them (for some strange reason) you need to hear 50 or 100 times before they stick. But eventually, they will.
When reading you will come across important words again and again. Each time you read the words they will become stronger and stronger in your mind and memory. Without even having to memorize anything.
Recently I had a lesson in Cantonese. I had not spoken the language at all for a good 4-5 months. So I came to my iTalki lesson thinking I was gonna be a bit rusty. To my surprise, my speaking was actually better than before. Because even though I hadn’t spoken it for months I had been very consistent reading in the language every day.
It was quite an eye-opener that really displays the power of reading.
5. Reading makes you forget you’re even learning a language
To get the benefits of reading it really doesn’t matter what you read. So why not read something that you’re super interested in and curious about?
In Cantonese and Finnish, I have read personal development books, books on organizing, fantasy novels, Christian books, autobiographies, you name it. Anything I was just interested in reading and learning more about. Not for the sake of improving in those languages, but just for the topic itself.
I would just take things that I would normally read in English and just read them in my target language instead.
It’s very powerful because when you’re reading about something you’re already interested in, language learning becomes a by-product of that.
You forget you’re even learning a language! You’re just immersed in a good book and the learning happens automatically. You just keep reading and turning the pages. No need to even repeat anything. You’ll get the repetition you need by just seeing the words in new and different contexts.
Using LingQ makes this process very enjoyable and easy.
I for example started reading the first Witcher book in Finnish after me and my wife watched the TV show. It was easy to just get lost in the story while at the same time learning a ton of new words. It was very enjoyable.
So why not kill two birds with one stone? (一石二鳥 jat1 sek6 ji6 niu5, as the saying goes in Chinese)
BONUS Tip (#6) - You can do it anywhere in small chunks
Reading, especially when using an app on your phone, is very easy to do in small chunks. It’s easy to do during otherwise wasted time - sitting on the subway, standing in line at the coffee shop, or any kind of small break you have during the day.
Just read a few sentences and then pick up where you left off next time you read.
It might not seem like much if you just read for a few minutes. But let’s say you read for 5 minutes each time you have a moment. And you do this 6 times a day. That’s 30 minutes of reading at the end of the day!
Try reading for 30 mins every day for 6 months and see what it does to your vocabulary. I guarantee you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Are you someone who likes reading? What are your favorite things to read? (in any language)
Comment below!
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