What is extensive reading?

Extensive reading is reading as much as possible, for your own pleasure, at a difficulty level at which you can read smoothly and quickly without looking up words or translating to English as you go. In other words, instead of spending a half hour decoding a tiny part of one book (also known as intensive reading), you read many simpler books that are at or slightly below the level at which you read fluently. This lets you get used to reading more complex sentences with ease, reinforces the words you already know and helps you learn new words from context.

What are the principles of extensive reading?

Start with stories that are well below your fluent reading level, and while reading, follow these principles:

1. Don’t look up words in the dictionary.
2. Skip over parts you don’t understand.
3. If you aren’t enjoying one book, toss it aside and get another.

(loosely translated from Kunihide Sakai’s tadoku.org)

Finally, keep track of your progress: I estimate the number of words I’ve read. You could also keep track of page counts or number of books read; a service like 読書メーター (Reading Meter) will let you do that for free.

Why start at such a basic level?

• It helps you get used to reading quickly; since you should know most of the words already, you hardly have to think about them.
• The sentences are simpler, so you can understand them immediately, and as you start reading more complex sentences you’ll have an intuitive sense of how they fit together.
• It helps you learn to use the information in the text to figure out unknown words, instead of a dictionary.
• You get a sense of where your fluent reading level is, so as you improve you can tell when a book is too hard or too easy.
• Words that are part of basic books are basic words themselves, and as you see them over and over, you learn them quickly; when you progress to more advanced books, you’ll know those basic words without having to think about them.
• You can finish books in a reasonable amount of time, so you don’t get bored with one book.

Why not use a dictionary?

Stopping to look up a word, even if it doesn’t take you very long, breaks your concentration, but if you read many basic books without a dictionary, you gain the ability to figure out words from context almost instantly and read quickly.

How do you find books at the right level?

First, get familiar with the classification system: once you know what your fluent reading level is, you can use it to tell almost immediately if a book is at the right level for you. A good rule of thumb is to read a page and count all of the words you don’t know. If there are more than three or four, try a simpler book.

Is it boring to read a lot of easy books?

No, not at all! Each book, no matter how simple it is, reinforces something you already know and teaches you something new. I hope to compile lists of particularly good books for adult readers, as well.