What Are The Benefits Of Reading In A Second Language?

When you are learning a language, reading can really bring you a lot of benefits.

It is something you can do pretty early on, and as you progress you will be able to do more and more and the benefits you get will only grow.

I will go though some of the main benefits you are going to get from reading in your new language.

Reading Will Expose You To The Language

One of the biggest benefits of reading is the fact that it is a form of immersion which means that you can be exposed to a lot of the language.

Reading is a great form of input and the more you do, the more it will benefit you. You are going to see so much of the language from doing this one simple task.

Your subconscious is going to be processing everything you see and you are basically giving yourself a blueprint of how the language works. It is literally all there in front you, in black and white.

You are going to come across so many different aspects of the language just from reading and this alone makes it a very powerful tool for learning and it really can benefit your progress by doing as much reading as possible.

Reading Gives You The Grammar

Reading will also give you the grammar of the language too. As I just mentioned, reading is like giving your subconscious the blueprint of the language, which means the grammar is also there too.

Every sentence you read will have grammar in it, so you can quickly see how reading a few pages is going to expose you to a lot of grammar. Even if it is a lot of stuff that you understand, seeing more of it is only going to make you more comfortable with it and your confidence is only going to go up and your understanding of it is really going to become an automatic process.

Being exposed to grammar like this is so much more enjoyable than sitting down and actively studying it, which makes this a great benefit to your learning.

Reading Will Build Your Vocabulary

Reading is also a great way to increase you vocabulary. You are just going to be exposed to a lot more words through reading and the best part is that everything will be in context, since the words will be appearing in sentences, which is a real benefit.

You will usually find that a wider vocabulary is used in books, compared to things like films or TV. This is because they can just rely on just showing you whatever is going on, where as the books will need to describe it, and by default this means they will use a lot more varied vocabulary. 

You can even see that this happens in your own language. Those who read a lot tend to have a larger vocabulary, simply as they are exposed to a wider amount of words. 

You Can Work At Your Own Pace

One of the great benefits of reading is that it allows you to work at your own pace. You can read as fast or as slow as you like. You can also pause to think about things and even go back and re-read something to make sure you have understood what is going on.

This can really allow you to just process things at your own speed which can be really helpful. This is much harder to do when you are listening. If someone speaks too fast for you, the information is gone.

If it’s a recording you can of course replay it, but it still needs you to reach the same speed and go at that pace, so that you can understand it. You can’t just go at the speed you want to set.  

Reading Will Help With Your Other Skills In the Language

If you focus a lot of time on reading, you will still find that your other areas of the language improve too.

Of course your reading will increase the most from reading more, but it can still help with your other skills indirectly, which means reading can actually benefit your writing and speaking skills.

It might not help with your listening as much, but if you are reading out loud for example, it can actually help a little bit.

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

You Have An Endless Supply Of Reading Material

A real benefit to reading is just the simple fact that you will probably never run out of material to read.

Every language is going to have had things written down for hundreds of years, let alone all the things that will have been translated from one language to the next.

You shouldn’t run out of material no matter how much you read, which makes it a very sustainable way to study and practice your language.

Reading Can Connect You With The Culture

Reading is also very beneficial for your acquisition of the culture. All you need to do is read plenty of things written by native speakers, for native speakers, and you will soon start to pick up on all the little cultural differences.

This is really going to be obvious to spot in the local fictional story books. Just think of how much Japanese culture you can pick up from reading manga.

Of course is you are reading Harry Potter in Spanish …you are probably not going to get a lot of Spanish culture from this, but if you stick with more local stories you will start to see a lot of the cultural shine through.

Reading Is A Fun Activity

Reading is actually quite fun and you can really get immersed into some cool stories. If you are learning a language and just enjoying what you are doing at the same time, this can only be beneficial.

Of course you can end up reading some really boring or dry stuff, but if you pick material that you like and are interesting in, then you are going to enjoy it. The fact that you are also practicing a second language at the same time just makes it even better.

Conclusion

So as you can see, you can get a lot of different benefits from reading in your second language.

It really is a great way to grow your language skills and just get comfortable with things and build your comprehension and confidence.

I will be honest, I still prefer immersing by listening, especially in the early stages, but once you start getting a good grasp of the language, the benefits of reading are very clear and it is something you need to be doing.

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