Yesterday Robin uploaded a video that I am certain might have a HUGE impact on the way I study languages. I am pretty sure everyone watched that already, but for those of you that have not had the time, it was pretty much about a paper that explains how the perfect system for language learning must be. In the video, he metioned the name of the author (Paul Nation), and since then I have been researching about it and just finished reading one of the many articles he has related to this topic we all here love,learning foreign languages.

The paper's name is " Principles guiding vocabulary learning through extensive reading" (it is not the paper Robin was talking about , but I am pretty sure it is important too), article published online on 2015 by Paul Nation. My intention in this post is to write a resume about it (will be leaving the referenes on the bottom just in case any of you is interested in a specific part).

Reading is an activity that has been recommended for language learning for long time, but usually the main obstacle to building it as an habit is that we get frustrated by not understanding a reasonable percentage of the words written, so we end up understanding nothing at all about the story. Hu & Nation (2000) found that for a successful extensive reading this percentage of unkown words must be 2% and, since that is a pretty tiny amount, Nation (2015) suggests graded readers-the same Robin talked about on one of his YouTube videos, right know I do not recall the name - as a powerfull tool for rewarding reading sessions.

For extensive reading, this article (NATION, 2015) discusses several activities that usually are related to reading itself. One of these is the use of the dictionary. The last century, Luppescu & Day (1993) established that searching each and every word you do not understand in the book you are reading takes time enough so regurlarly you end up losing the focus you might have had previusly, so it was not definitely something good to do; on this same page, other authors (PIGADA & SCHMITT, 2006) have found out that guessing from context enhances the knowledge of words you might have an idea of. So, here is the question: if getting to know the meaning of a certain word can take just seconds nowadays, and we have no idea of what a word might mean, is it wrong to search over on a dictionary?

Several studies (Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Knight, 1994; Laufer & Hill, 2000; Peters, 2007) have highlighted the benefits of dictionary look-ups as a vocabulary learning system. Mondria (2003) emphasizes that there were no big improvements between deliberate learning after guessing and deliberate learning with no guessing, so for the case you are reading a graded reader that fits your level, it looks like it might be good to actually just look out in a dictionary for the definition of that word.

Nation (2015) also advises a certain way for using the dictionary, which basically consits on reading all the senses the word could have in order to find out a core that runs through all of the senses. As several dictionaries also contain examples, another good practice might be reading them as well. For the case of lower proficiency learners, the use of bilingual dictionaries is proposed.

In order to get the most of your reading sessions, another suggestion is made by Nation (2015): putting this unknown words on flashcards (we have memrise and anki now).

Nation & Wang (1999) found that the minimum amount of reading should be one graded reader every two weeks, regardless of the number of pages since usually for a beginner it will be harder to read X pages if compared with an intermediate student, whom in the same amount of time could easily read X+Y pages. Nation (2015) also shows a Table which shows the ideal amount of time to spend in reading, but I will not write about it since in my opinion, everyone reads according to (a) his interest and (b) the availability of time they have.

Another cool conclusion about this was made by Nation (2013), whom established that another technique to enhance your vocabulary and keep the words you learn is to talk or write about what you have read; a list of activities that could be developed regarding this are suggested in his article (NATION, 2013).

After having read the whole article, I think it will be better if I just copy-paste the best conclusions (in my opinion):

*Include an extensive reading program as a part of your language course.

*Support vocabulary learning from extensive reading by getting the learners to do dictionary look-up, preferably while reading electronic texts.

*Support vocabulary learning from extensive reading by getting the learners to note unfamiliar words on word cards for later independent study.

*link some of the extensive reading to extensive listening, and to speaking and writing

about what has been read.

Well, I have already decided which article I am going to read as soon as I can (will be making a post about it too). Let me know what you think about it. :)

REFERENCES

Hu, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a

Foreign Language, 13, 403–430.

Knight, S. M. (1994). Dictionary use while reading: The effects on comprehension and

vocabulary acquisition for students of different verbal abilities. The Modern Language

Journal, 78, 285–299.

Laufer, B., & Hill, M. (2000). What lexical information do L2 learners select in a CALL

dictionary and how does it affect word retention? Language Learning & Technology, 3,

58–76.

Luppescu, S., & Day, R. R. (1993). Reading, dictionaries and vocabulary learning. Language

Learning, 43(2), 263–287.

Nation, P. (2013a). What Should Every EFL Teacher Know? Seoul: Compass Publishing.

Nation, P., & Wang, K. (1999). Graded readers and vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign Language,

12, 355–380.

Mondria, J. A. (2003). The effects of inferring, verifying and memorising on the retention of L2

word meanings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 473–499.

Peters, E. (2007). Manipulating L2 learners' online dictionary use and its effect on L2 word

retention. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 36–58.

Pigada, M., & Schmitt, N. (2006). Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: A case study.

Reading in a Foreign Language, 18, 1–28.