Is binge-reading really efficient?

[Ольга]

I am reading lots of books, but I rarely check the translation of unknown words. It makes me think that my binge-reading is not efficient.
For instance, such words as: jauntily, sash, swarthy.
Will I memorize the words somehow, if don't check and double check each of them?

[zenmonkey]

Reading The Three Musketeers?

Is it efficient in terms of time spent versus something else?
Or do you mean is it effective?

I find binge reading to be overall very effective in reinforcing usage, structures and vocabulary. In this sense it helps in overall language learning significantly. It is enjoyable and creates a growing success in the L2. And some of the incidental vocabulary increase that does occur might be in words that you do not notice you are learning. But for clear words where you do not know the meaning and cannot guess it contextually then it cannot be really considered efficient.

Sometimes it is quite useful to look things up either during the reading period or afterwards. It is generally why you will see many people suggest you mix both intensive and extensive reading. Extensive reading is reported to be more efficient for the more advanced learner where one has 5000 to 8000 lexical items learned... I'm personally not sue about that and start extensive reading earlier with graded readers or simplified texts where I can artificially limit the new terms encountered.

Extensive reading may have other benefits - but reading "He wore a red sash" a thousand times tells you a sash is something you wear, but nothing about what might actually be. A "red sash like a bloody slash across the chest" might be more useful.

[smallwhite]

You may enjoy binge-reading the forum's wikia about learning techniques!

[Ольга]

You may enjoy binge-reading the forum's wikia about learning techniques!

WOOW! It's just WOOW! Running to read.

[Cavesa]

I am reading lots of books, but I rarely check the translation of unknown words. It makes me think that my binge-reading is not efficient.
For instance, such words as: jauntily, sash, swarthy.
Will I memorize the words somehow, if don't check and double check each of them?

If you encounter the words several times, and preferably in various kinds of context, you will.
If you encounter them rarely and just in literary descriptions and the same combinations, who cares? You are unlikely to miss anything important in the story and you can always learn them later. Of course, if you want to write stories in the langauge, using rich vocabulary, than the situation is different.

One of the best things about reading is the natural SRS process. You see the words many times. The more common or important a word is, the more often you'll see it and the more likely you are to learn it. It's that simple. Of course, there are some limits, for example the tons of "everyday" words you are unlikely to encounter in books, but they are not in courses either. That is a common learners' problem.

Unlike zenmonkey, I believe one learns much more than some incidental vocabulary. You learn a lot of vocabulary in context, you develop the feeling for correct use of the language, you get used to thinking in the langauge. The vocabulary can improve significantly, both in terms of amount, and in the ability to use it correctly. I have been correctly using vocabulary I had encountered just in books before, it is not exceptional.

But I totally agree with zenmonkey about extensive reading being much more useful to a learner, who has already acquired some basic vocabulary of a few thousand words. We are often seeing two extremes among the learners. Those, who never take the leap of faith and pay for more and more "advanced" graded readers (some publishers found a nice way to make money by convincing C1 learners they need graded readers), and those who expect to read quite comfortably having studied half a beginner course. And they really become disheartened and ready to quit learning sometimes, as "it obviously doesn't lead anywhere, if they are still unable to read a book having finished Duolingo."

Realistic expectations are the key, as usual.

Just as with extensive listening, it is important not to underestimate the amount of material you need to digest, in order to see the results.
From my experience, you are unlikely to see much of a difference during the first 300-500 pages (unless you already know a related language). After that, there should be some noticeable progress. In order to become really good, you need something like 10000 or more pages. Perhaps much more in very distand languages. Super Challenge is your friend

About binge-reading: I find it much more efficient to find one evening per week, and spend it whole on reading, than to read two chapters per day. Too small amount read at once simply won't let you enjoy the biggest advantage of extensive reading, which is immersion. But of course, if you can fit some more shorter reading sessions in a day, on top of some longer ones, it certainly won't hurt.

[zenmonkey]

Unlike zenmonkey, I believe one learns much more than some incidental vocabulary. You learn a lot of vocabulary in context, you develop the feeling for correct use of the language, you get used to thinking in the langauge. The vocabulary can improve significantly, both in terms of amount, and in the ability to use it correctly.

But I totally agree with zenmonkey about extensive reading being much more useful to a learner, who has already acquired some basic vocabulary of a few thousand words. We are often seeing two extremes among the learners. Those, who never take the leap of faith and pay for more and more "advanced" graded readers (some publishers find a nice way to make money by convincing C1 learners they need graded readers), and those who expect to read quite comfortably having studied half a beginner course. And they really become disheartened and ready to quit learning sometimes, as "it obviously doesn't lead anywhere, if they are still unable to read a book having finished Duolingo."

We aren't saying different things here. I'm not saying one only learns incidental vocabulary but that one does not learn specifically the missing vocabulary words which pop-out most egregiously to which one has no contextual hooks. And I completely agree that your vocabulary will improve significantly with contextual reading.

All I'm saying is that there is a use for both intensive and extensive reading. Use both. Different tools with different purposes that can be actively mixed together.

[blaurebell]

I have actually made the direct comparison between only extensive and only intensive reading. I learned Spanish in an immersion context so my listening comprehension developed more quickly than my reading comprehension. After about 10 weeks of immersion I had learned enough vocabulary in classes to start reading extensively. I never looked up words and simply read fun books, scholarly books and comics. I never really enjoyed reading in Spanish much though, because I always felt that my understanding was somewhat imprecise. After about 4500 pages read extensively a page of dense landscape description is still a bunch of words that I can basically guess, but nothing more. Shiny, maybe? Tree-like perhaps?! That must be some sort of rocky thing! It's uncomfortable because you always wonder whether you may miss something important. I can't really listen to audiobooks, because I feel like I'm lacking half the literary vocabulary. It's like walking on shifting ground because vocabulary that goes beyond a very limited core is imprecise. Basically it's uncomfortable to read when you built your core vocabulary on TV shows and spoken language rather than on books.

With French my approach was very different and I started with intensive reading with Learning with Texts. The integrated dictionary lookup helped a lot and I filled up the internal dictionary by typing the definitions. Reading my first 5000 pages like this has given me a very precise core literary vocabulary, so I feel like I have a solid foundation for reading. I can listen to audiobooks without feeling lost and I enjoy reading extensively for fun without a dictionary, because anything that is not part of the core literary vocabulary is unlikely to be very important. I still try to extend my vocabulary by reading partly with the kindle, which is midway between intensive reading that involves typing and just reading extensively. I don't think I'm losing much when not looking up those words though, since they are all low frequency words. With this experience I now always start new languages by reading 5000 pages intensively with typing and only then move on to more extensive activities, like reading with a kindle or paper books.

I'm currently trying to fix my Spanish reading comprehension by reading the next 5000 pages intensively and what's really interesting is that some of the words that I think I can guess I actually get wrong! Sure, I can follow the plot of a story just fine and never get lost, but I actually misunderstand certain mildly important words. This actually surprised me since I thought it was just a "feeling of imprecision" when in fact I really get certain words wrong. I suspect that I could fix these imprecisions with a lot of extensive reading, since I never read intensively for English and at some point the feeling of imprecise understanding just went away. However, I think I must have read about 20,000-30,000 pages in English to get to the point where I was with French after 5000 pages of reading intensively.

So, to answer your question: No, extensive reading isn't efficient, but at some point you can have the confidence to leave gaps and just have fun. 5000 pages of intensive reading is enough for precise understanding of most books without specialised vocabulary. The only words that might give you trouble after that are low frequency words that aren't that important for understanding and often only nuance the quality of known words. For example it doesn't matter whether you don't understand the words "glinting" or "sparkling" when you were already given the information that there was "sunshine".

The question whether you should read intensively too depends how comfortable you feel reading and what kind of words give you trouble. If they appear frequently and make you feel uncomfortable, look them up. Low frequency words like those that you mentioned certainly wouldn't make me feel as if I need to pull out the dictionary though. In general you won't enjoy reading an awful lot if it's too uncomfortable or if it's too much effort to look up all the unknown words and type them in. In Russian reading a single page intensively still takes me 20-25 minutes and it's a fairly tedious experience for pages with more than 20% unknown words. Russian is a language where I can't read extensively yet and I use intensive reading to learn vocabulary. In comparison I need about 3-5 minutes per page for Spanish and 2 minutes for reading a page of French, all intensive reading of course. Reading intensively becomes faster and more and more enjoyable over time as the number of unknown words goes down. It's not very tedious when you only look up 5-10% of the words, but anything beyond 10% seems like work.

That said, reading 20,000-30,000 pages for fun in bed or at the beach without worrying too much about "jauntily" or "sash" is a very different experience from intensive reading. It doesn't really matter whether reading intensively is more efficient objectively, since the most efficient activity is of course the one that you actually enjoy doing more. If you dread intensive reading then of course it's inefficient because you will avoid doing it! In Spanish I find intensive reading more enjoyable than extensive reading right now, because the imprecision of my understanding makes me uncomfortable. In French I enjoy reading with and without the kindle equally much because there are so few words to look up anyway. And in English I never worried much about efficiency at all and just read whatever I wanted. Over the years I have read more than 100,000 pages in English, all extensively and I never once worried about efficiency, because I was simply reading for fun or work and I was never pressed for time. With Spanish, French and Russian my motivation is entirely different because I actually need to reach a fairly precise reading comprehension with a rather limited amount of time and effort. If that weren't the case I'm not sure I would have considered intensive reading as an option at all! So the answer to your question depends entirely on your learning needs and preferences. Just do what you find fun. Both methods will eventually lead to a very precise understanding if you simply read an awful lot. As Cavesa said 10,000 or even 20,000 pages should be the goal, no matter whether you mainly read intensively or extensively.

[s_allard]

Reading The Three Musketeers?

Is it efficient in terms of time spent versus something else?
Or do you mean is it effective?

I find binge reading to be overall very effective in reinforcing usage, structures and vocabulary. In this sense it helps in overall language learning significantly. It is enjoyable and creates a growing success in the L2. And some of the incidental vocabulary increase that does occur might be in words that you do not notice you are learning. But for clear words where you do not know the meaning and cannot guess it contextually then it cannot be really considered efficient.

Sometimes it is quite useful to look things up either during the reading period or afterwards. It is generally why you will see many people suggest you mix both intensive and extensive reading. Extensive reading is reported to be more efficient for the more advanced learner where one has 5000 to 8000 lexical items learned... I'm personally not sue about that and start extensive reading earlier with graded readers or simplified texts where I can artificially limit the new terms encountered.

Extensive reading may have other benefits - but reading "He wore a red sash" a thousand times tells you a sash is something you wear, but nothing about what might actually be. A "red sash like a bloody slash across the chest" might be more useful.

I agree totally with zenmonkey here and I want to emphasize the phrase "...very effective in reinforcing usage, structures and vocabulary." In essence, binge-reading is great for revisiting things you have already seen before but now in a different context, possibly with new meanings or nuances.

But is it effective or efficient for learning new material? Here I have my doubts. When we talk about binge-reading, the reference is nearly always to vocabulary. The goal is usually to pump up one's vocabulary to some desired threshold by repeatedly reading words. The problem is that texts are not wordlists. Every line is a combination of content words and grammatical words put together according to very precise and often complex rules of form and meaning. If you don't have at least a good idea of how the whole thing works, you are basically in a fog where certain items seem familiar but the overall picture is murky.

Conventional wisdom says that if you see enough of this murky stuff it will eventually become clear. This is where binge-reading can be effective. But I think it is inefficient in the sense that time can be better spent by specifically studying the grammar and vocabulary of small samples of the target texts. Then the binge-reading takes on a new effectiveness because everything is so much clearer.

Let me give a concrete example. Trying to binge-read Spanish court judgment is a total waste of time if one does not have a good grounding in the workings of Spanish legalese. It's no different from what I see in English and French. It is a very formal and rigid language often full of references to points of law or legal doctrine. This is what I would call turgid prose. Reading 10,000 pages of this stuff if you are not familiar with the language is no different from reading 1 page.

As turgid as this stuff is, there is a common style and terminology. So, the best approach is to intensively study some sample texts or articles to get a basic familiarity with the language. Then do all the binge-reading you want to reinforce everything.

[Cainntear]

I am reading lots of books, but I rarely check the translation of unknown words. It makes me think that my binge-reading is not efficient.
For instance, such words as: jauntily, sash, swarthy.
Will I memorize the words somehow, if don't check and double check each of them?

If you encounter the words several times, and preferably in various kinds of context, you will.

I think "you will" is a bit strong. Personally, I find that if a word pops up lots of times, it won't take long for me to notice that I keep seeing it and look it up in a dictionary.

That's really my trick with reading novels -- words like "jauntily" tend to get skipped, because adverbs are rarely important to the plot. Generally I only look up important words on first encounter, and repeated words when I notice they're being repeated.

If you encounter them rarely and just in literary descriptions and the same combinations, who cares? You are unlikely to miss anything important in the story and you can always learn them later.

Agree 100%.

Unlike zenmonkey, I believe one learns much more than some incidental vocabulary. You learn a lot of vocabulary in context, you develop the feeling for correct use of the language, you get used to thinking in the langauge. The vocabulary can improve significantly, both in terms of amount, and in the ability to use it correctly. I have been correctly using vocabulary I had encountered just in books before, it is not exceptional.

I don't really believe in "incidental" learning of vocabulary as effective. Until I have a solid understanding of a word, my brain tends to be very sceptical of any assumed meanings (and I've seen academic papers saying this is normal). The incidental learning that occurs is more in terms of usage, common collocation with particular words etc.

Just as with extensive listening, it is important not to underestimate the amount of material you need to digest, in order to see the results.
From my experience, you are unlikely to see much of a difference during the first 300-500 pages (unless you already know a related language). After that, there should be some noticeable progress. In order to become really good, you need something like 10000 or more pages. Perhaps much more in very distand languages. Super Challenge is your friend

There's a very steady progress in books, in my experience. The further you get through, the less new language you encounter, and the more you've seen the words before. This means that you're always gathering pace* as you read. As it's so gradual, I don't think you can put a line where progress starts or becomes apparent, as everyone's experience of what feels like progress is likely to be subtly different.

* (gathering pace -- getting faster. The metaphor is something big and heavy rolling down a hill. It starts off slow and only gradually speeds up, but it keeps getting faster and faster.)

[zenmonkey]

In this subject, there is actually a bit of research in the area with rates of vocabulary acquisition and a threshold of knowledge needed for it to be effective (and other research that disputes that ...)

I'm only phone, can't remember where I read that but will look it up if there is a real interest.

Edit:
See James Cody book on Second language vocabulary acquisition