Can You Avoid Reading When Learning A New Language?

When you start learning a language you will quickly realising that focusing on all of areas of the language is hard, you might ask yourself if you can avoid reading.

Honestly, you might be able to get away with this for a while and only focus on listening; however, you will be seriously limiting yourself.

If you want to take your language learning seriously and you actually want to see results then you will need to read. It should not be avoided and instead should be actually focused on.

Reading Is Input

The main reason you cannot avoid reading is because it is a form of input, which is what you need to learn the language.

When you are learning you do not know anything and the only way to change this is to get some input, you literally need to put the language inside you. Once you have started inputting the language you can then go on to output it yourself by speaking and writing.

If you are going to avoid one of the best forms of input then you can see how this may be a problem, you are never going to be able to produce the language yourself, let alone understand it.

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You Need Reading To Learn A Language

You just need reading to learn a language, you cannot avoid it.

Reading allows you to have the exposure you need to the language. You need reading to get enough repetition that you can become comfortable with it. You are going to see things over and over again and while this sounds boring, this is how you learn and this is how you get things to stick in your memory.

If you read enough you will see how things work in the language. You will see grammar in action and you will see new words that will allow you to expand your knowledge. To try and avoid this, is just limiting yourself you really well not get anywhere.

You can try and get this exposure from other places, but really reading is one of the most efficient ways to do it. You can sit there and read and just allow yourself to absorb the language. You need it for success, you can’t avoid it. 

(You can read more about – How To Overcome The Fear Of Reading In A New Language)

You Can’t Write Without Reading

I think it’s very important to point out the fact that you can’t read, if you can’t write.  This means if you avoid reading, you are completely sacrificing your writing ability.

You may think that doesn’t matter as you will never really need to write, but it does matter.

Just stop and think about how many people you have communicated with today through some sort of text message or email …it’s probably quite a few.

You will really limit your communication abilities if you ignore reading. It really is an important, basic skill and it should not be avoided in any languages you are learning.

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Reading In A Second Language)

You Will Miss Out On Culture If You Avoid Reading

Avoiding reading is also going to mean that you avoid a lot of culture. While you can still get a good chunk of culture from video and music, you still need reading.

So much culture is done through reading, especially the more traditional forms of culture, which may only be found in written form, such as classical novels.

Language and culture are very intertwined so you will be limiting yourself if you avoid it.

Reading Helps Other Areas Of Your Language Learning

Reading might just seem like some sort of boring thing you can do when you are bored, but it actually helps the other areas of your language learning.

It is of course going to show you new words as I’ve already discussed, but it can actually help you get better at listening and speaking.

Reading and speaking often use similar parts of your brain. Just think about when you read, you are basically talking inside your head. This is very similar to actually talking, which of course is just talking out loud so reading is basically training half this process.

You can also read out loud, which is really going to help your speaking skills directly as it will get your mouth muscles moving.

Reading also uses a lot of the same brain areas as listening. You either see words or hear them, but no matter what, you brain needs to recognise them and understand them. If you are reading a lot, you are going to become more comfortable with the language, so you will in turn find it easier to hear the same words, as you will be used to recognising them as such from the reading.

(You can read more about – Reading Resources For Language Learning)

You Can’t Avoid Reading

Basically you can’t avoid reading when you are learning a language. You can certainly attempt to, but I am telling you now, it will be extremely detrimental to your progress.

If you ask anyone who has learned a language, the usual story they will tell you is that they were doing okay, but then they decided to read more and suddenly they got way better at the language.

There really is a link between every time someone starts to read more and their overall progress. Reading more will bring you results.

I really think you should not be avoiding reading, you should be doing way more than you even think. It will only help you, so the more, the better.

(You can read more about – How To Practice Your Reading Skills In A New Language)

Conclusion

As you can see throughout this article I have said that you cannot avoid reading. I don’t think I can make it any clearer.

Reading is important, do it and do a lot of it.

If you are going to avoid reading you may as well just give up on learning your language today. You are never going to get the results you want without reading.

Reading isn’t difficult, so just start doing more of it. You will thank me, and more importantly yourself later when you actually see the results.

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