Can You Learn A Language Just By Reading?

Learning a language is complicated and there are a lot of different parts to focus on, but if you just took a new language and tried to learn it only though reading, how far could you get. Could you actually learn anything?

Well, like most things it’s not that straightforward and I can’t give you a definitive answer.

It’s a strong Maybe as it really depends on a lot of things.    

In general, reading in your target language will do a lot of good for you, it can really expose you to a lot of the language and it can help bring up your overall ability.

However, to only focus on this may not be ideal and at times it may be pointless.

You Need The Basics Of A Language Before You Can Read

Trying to just start reading a new language will be too difficult without knowing some basic knowledge of how the language works.

Picking up a book and just going for it is going to be impossible. You need to be able to comprehend some of what you are reading or you will get nowhere.

Initially you are going to have to get this understanding through your own language. It makes sense to cover the basics before you start reading. You should find out how the sentence structure works and other basic grammar rules like this as well as learning some vocabulary.

I know this is boring, but when you open the first page of your new book and try and read something, doing this first is actually going to help you quite a lot.

If you are just blindly trying to figure things out on your own it can take a lifetime to start recognising patterns in the language, which you could have taken you only a few minutes to learn about elsewhere beforehand.

You don’t need to know everything, but having a core, foundational knowledge is going to save you a lot of time.

(You can read more about How To Learn A Language From Scratch)

The Alphabet Is Important

The alphabet of the language will really determine how successful you will be. If the alphabet is different, you will not get anywhere trying to read right from the start. No matter how hard you try, you will get nowhere.

For me, a language like Japanese was just a bunch of lines. I did not have a single reference to what any of it meant. I couldn’t recognise one letter form the next and I have no idea what sounds they might be.

If I just picked up a Japanese book and started reading, I would fail miserably, luckily I did take the time to learn the basics and that included spending a few days just learning the alphabet.

These basics have given me a fighting chance of now actually being able to learn Japanese fully.

However, if you give me a Spanish book, I can at least read it already, and while that is helpful, as I already said, it’s not enough. I would still need some basics to start understanding what I was reading.

Reading Doesn’t Help With Pronunciation

Pronunciation sounds like it shouldn’t matter when you are reading, but it does, in fact it’s vital.

If you where to give me a French book it would look like there were a lot of English words in there.

However, they are all pronounced differently. Even if you are reading in your head, you need to know the proper pronunciation. If you start looking at the silent letters or how some of the verb endings are pronounced (or not pronounced) you can very easily get nowhere if you’re just reading everything as if it was in English.    

You might start to be able to piece the language together by reading it, but the second you hear someone speak you will have no idea what is going on, so it really makes sense to know the basics and understand how the language should actually sound before you start reading. 

(You can read more about – What Is Learning A Language By Immersion?)

Reading Will Help You Learn A Language

If you are studying the language and covering all the main areas, such as speaking, listening and writing, then reading will help you with all of these other areas.

Reading is a form of input, which you really need when you are learning a language. Input will allow you to absorb the language and start understanding it. The more input you can get the better, so reading is beneficial at any stage of your learning.

I am a big fan of the immersion method, which means lot of input. I prefer to listen, but you could do reading instead, or a combination of both.

The problem is that your immersion material needs to be comprehensible input. This means that you need to be able to understand most of what you are reading. If every word is meaningless to you, it’s almost pointless and if the text is too easy, it’s not pointless, but you are not expanding your knowledge.

This means if you just pick up a book in a different language that you have no prior knowledge of, you are really not going to learn much.

However, if you are studying the language in other ways, such as learning vocabulary and covering the basics, then you can take what you’ve learnt from these lessons and use it with your reading.

Likewise, you will find that when you start reading a lot, can take what you’ve read and use it to better your other areas of study.

(You can read more about – How Can Reading In A Second Language Improve Your Overall Language Skills?)

Reading Really Only Helps Reading

While reading is great and you can learn a lot form doing it, especially early on, it’s not perfect. If you are only focusing on this then you are neglecting the other areas of the language.

Reading will help your overall language skills, but only to a certain point. At some point the rest of your language skills will plateau and you will only get better at reading. Your speech, listening and writing will not improve. The only way to improve these is to also practice them.

While this sounds worrying, it’s actually not the end of the world. When you do start putting some effort into these other areas, you will very quickly improve on them.

It is almost like the advanced reading you have done will act like a strong foundation to improve the other areas.

There are many accounts of people who became very advanced at reading, but could barely speak a word, however, once they focused on this it didn’t take them long to get their speaking to a similar level as their reading.

(You can read more about – What Are The Benefits Of Reading In A Second Language?)

Should You Only Read A New Language?

No, I don’t think you should. If you are starting out with as a new language you should focus on listening and reading.

Personally I prefer listening and doing a little reading, but it’s down for you to decide what you prefer to do more of.

I would do a lot of this initially, in the form of immersion, to make sure I get a strong understanding of the language and then once I have reached this point, I would look at writing and speaking. 

If your goal is to only be very good at reading and you’re not worried about anything else, then keep reading, you will get very good at it you will be able to understand most of the language from only doing this.

However, if you want have a good overall knowledge of the language then you will need to focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening at some point to make yourself well rounded.

(You can read more about – Should You Learn to Read or Speak A Language First?)

Conclusion

Reading is great and you should be doing it often and it should be a large part of your language learning.

However, will reading alone be enough to learn a language?  Maybe, it’s not impossible, but you will probably need to focus on some of the other areas of the language too, even if it’s not something you do initially.

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