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  • Hey guys welcome to Fingtam languages today

  • 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

  • If you like the video then feel free to subscribe with the subscribe button down below

  • I make new videos every Monday and every Friday

  • And yeah, that's it. Thanks for watching my video. I'll see you guys in the next one

Hey guys welcome to Fingtam languages today

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