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Reading extensively or intensively ?

  Tags: Reading
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
24 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
Cavesa
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 Message 17 of 24
13 January 2014 at 11:15am | IP Logged 
Bao mentioned quite a common trap of the intensive reading (coincidentally, I've been discussing exactly this with a friend recently). Second guessing yourself. The moments you stop looking up everything you don't know (or are unsure about) and you begin to look up everything. "What if I understand it wrong?" approach leads to hours and hours spent on known material. No fun, no new things, nearly no progress in the story.

If I was to name a common and similarily dangerous trap of the extensive reading, I'd say wrong choice of the books. And the second most dangerous is expecting the results too soon.

About the 1 four times vs 4 once: I'd take the four books and read them once. I like to reread some beloved books and I always take something new from the language there (something I had forgotten since I last read the book). But I need a larger gap between rereads in order to keep the book enjoyable.
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albysky
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 Message 18 of 24
13 January 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged 
Ok guys , i thank you all for your insights . I will keep reading with a pencil handy , then i 'll decide later on
if i look the words up or not .
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Jeffers
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 Message 19 of 24
13 January 2014 at 2:25pm | IP Logged 
Besides intensive and extensive reading, there is also a third option (or variant):
narrow reading. What
this means is reading a lot of books by the same author or on the same topic. In the
article, he suggests going for easier books rather than more difficult, with the
overriding principle that if it isn't engaging, drop it. I like this quote:
Quote:
The goal is to find material that is so engaging, and so easy,
that you will forget that it is in another language. You want reading material that
requires no self-discipline to read.

Krashen says that he reads a lot of Star Trek novels in French and German. He says:
Quote:
They are inauthentic, have no cultural information, and make little
contribution to my intellectual life. But they are easy to read (I have a great deal of
background knowledge in this area), and very pleasurable.


I think the intention is to study it like extensive material, that is without looking
much up. But because you are reading a lot of different things by the same author or
on the same topic, you get over the "first few pages" hump quickly and don't have that
initial problem at the beginning of each book.

EDIT: here's another, more detailed, article about narrow reading. This one focuses
on the advantages for vocabulary acquisition.
Narrow Reading

Edit2: the second link didn't work, but here's the url only:
http://www.norbertschmitt.co.uk/uploads/schmitt-n-and-carter -r-(2000)-the-lexical-
advantages-of-narrow-reading-for-second-language-learners-te sol-journal-9-1-4-9.pdf

Edited by Jeffers on 13 January 2014 at 5:51pm

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patrickwilken
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 Message 20 of 24
13 January 2014 at 2:52pm | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
What
this means is reading a lot of books by the same author or on the same topic. In the
article, he suggests going for easier books rather than more difficult, with the
overriding principle that if it isn't engaging, drop it.


Narrow reading, whether intensive/extensive makes a lot of sense. You can also read longer books for similar results - or for maximum results read something like all five books in the Game of Thrones quintilogy (with two more yet to come!).

TV shows, as opposed to movies, are good for a similar reason for developing listening skills.

Here is the link to the second article: The Lexical Advantages of Narrow Reading for Second Language Learners

This article also mentions the five-finger rule for self-selecting appropriate text for ER:

An alternative suggestion would be to encourage patrons to self-grade their reading material using an approach like the Five Finger Rule. The Five Finger Rule is well known amongst teacher-librarians working in primary schools, although little seems to have been written about it in the literature. Indeed, most references to the Five Finger Rule can be found on school and library websites in regards to holiday reading programmes, but only one article could be found suggesting its use in a language learning context--Darby's (2008) paper regarding her library reading programme. Using the Five Finger Rule, a reader would open a book to a page with a large amount of text. For every word they did not understand, they would hold up one finger--two to three fingers would indicate the book is at an appropriate level of difficulty, three to four fingers would indicate it may be too difficult, while five fingers or more indicate the book should be left, for the time being, in favour of an easier book (Padak and Rasinski 2007).

Not sure if this is correct though. If there are 250 words on a typical paperback page, then a five-finger rule would imply 98% comprehension. Perhaps a 10-finger rule would be better?

Edited by patrickwilken on 13 January 2014 at 3:15pm

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Cavesa
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 Message 21 of 24
13 January 2014 at 3:43pm | IP Logged 
Well, I believe interest in the content matters much more than the number of unknown words. I've seen it when it comes to children learning to read in their native language around me. And it applies the more to adults.

I think the idea of narrow reading is a very good one (I totally agree with the comparison to tv series vs. individual movies). If you found an author or subject suiting your tastes and needs, there is certainly no reason to exchange it before you take everything you can from it.
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Jeffers
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 Message 22 of 24
13 January 2014 at 5:41pm | IP Logged 
I like that 5-finger rule, patrickwillen. It sounds vaguely familiar (I am a teacher, so I may have come across it in a school library). It does sound like it is oriented towards children's books, so for adults 10 fingers might be more sensible. Of course interest matters as well (possibly most of all). But you don't even bother to pick up a book to count from if it doesn't interest you.

I was thinking about getting the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series in French for my kids. Now I'm thinking about getting it for myself!

I have actually done a form of narrow reading and watching with learning materials. The few easy readers I have bought have mostly been policiers, and when I watch French TV series I mostly watch policiers as well (my favourites so far have been Un Flic and Cain).

Your corrected link doesn't take me to the article, by the way. EDIT: I've tried again to correct mine. For some reason when you click on it, it removes the brackets () from around the 2000 in the middle, so the link doesn't work. Sometimes this forum software is so frustrating!

Edited by Jeffers on 13 January 2014 at 5:52pm

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lichtrausch
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 Message 23 of 24
13 January 2014 at 6:47pm | IP Logged 
I don't know if someone has already mentioned this method, but I have found that the most effective way of reading for me is somewhere in between intensive and extensive. I look up a word if I have already seen it before but don't know its meaning, or if the word somehow strikes me as interesting. I think this method combines the best part of intensive reading (learning many new words) with the best part of extensive reading (you keep up a good pace). Incidentally, this is also how I read in my native language.
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frenkeld
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 Message 24 of 24
14 January 2014 at 6:34am | IP Logged 
My choice of extensive versus intensive reading has evolved to be almost fully medium-driven. I find it rather
hard to resist looking up an unknown word or expression when reading on an e-reader with a good dictionary,
the flip side being that it now feels like quite a chore to look up a word when reading a paper book. So, I
stopped fighting the natural order of things and use paper books for extensive reading, while looking up as
many words as feels right when using an e-reader.


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