Transcription
If you're learning a new language, then I'm going to show you how to get fluent faster with a simple reading habit. Because most people think that they have a speaking problem or a memory problem or they just need to know more words. But that's not actually what's going on.
See, in my 25 years working as a linguist and a teacher, I've seen over and over that this is one of the most powerful habits in language learning. And it helped me fix a problem in many languages that I didn't even know that I had. So, in this video, I'm going to show you why this is so effective, no matter what language you're learning, what the research says about it, and my exact six-step method so that you can start doing this right away.
But first, let me show you some proof that this actually works. I want to tell you about the night that reading saved my life. I've been struggling learning Spanish for over a year. I was obsessing over grammar and so on, the usual study overkill, but my Spanish was still a complete mess. And it all came to a head on holiday in Madrid.
See, I was out with a local friend that I knew from London. I was visiting in in Madrid and we were there with some of her friends and I realized I couldn't understand a thing that they were saying and next thing I know my friend starts translating into English for me. It was so embarrassing. I wanted to just die on the spot. But I could not understand why Spanish was not getting any easier for me in spite of all my studying and it made me feel absolutely horrible about myself.
Fast forward 6 months or so, I was in Argentina. I was up in the mountains and in the middle of the night I got severe altitude sickness and I couldn't breathe and I was too scared to go back to sleep. So what I did was I grabbed the nearest thing that I could find to distract myself which was a Spanish novel and I just started reading and the strangest thing happened.
See even though it was a real struggle reading this book in Spanish I could still I could get the gist of what was happening. I was guessing words from context and because I didn't want to go back to sleep. I was too scared. I just kept reading and it turns out I could understand a lot more than I thought. And I remember thinking, this is the first time that Spanish has felt like an actual language to me, not just an object of study.
Well, over the next few weeks, I read constantly. I finished that book that I started up in the mountains, and my Spanish transformed almost before my eyes. Over the course of a few weeks, it went from a language I could barely operate in to a language where I actually felt confident. I was following a long conversation. Spanish finally started making sense directly off the back of starting to read. And it turns out there's a very good reason for that, which I'll show you in just a bit. The science is fascinating.
But first, let's get into the actual steps what you do. Now, step number one, and this is the most important thing of all, is to choose material that is at your level. Because when people struggle with reading in a new language, it's almost never about ability, your ability in the language, right? Then it's just because you've picked something that's too hard for you.
Think about what happens when you pick up a a a novel written for native speakers too early. Just like if you try to watch a a movie when you're just a beginner. It's too hard. It's way over your head. You're not reading. You're just drowning. And every sentence is a new problem. You work out one word and then another. And then by the time you've sorted it out, you've completely lost the thread. This is not a recipe for effective learning at all. It's just demoralizing. But it's also avoidable.
The rule is simple. You should understand at least 80% of all the words that you read. If you can follow the plot, even loosely, then you're at the right level. You can get the gist of what you're reading without having to understand every single word. If you can't follow what's going on, you're not going to get much benefit from it, are you? Because all these words have to exist in the context of a story. If you can't follow the story, it's all for nothing. The words aren't going to stick.
Now, for most beginners, that means graded readers, short stories written for language learners, like my books here, with real plots, real characters, vocabulary that won't completely drown you. Really, anything at the right level is fine. If you get this simple step right, everything else after is going to work. But if you get that wrong and you choose stuff that's too hard for you, nothing else is going to work. So, this is step one, choosing material at the right level.
Now, look, I'm going to give you five more steps now, and they're all simple on their own. But here's the thing. When you're actually sitting there with a book in front of you, it's easy to forget what comes next. Like, do I do I stop here now? Do do I keep going? Do I look up words now or later? And that hesitation is what kills the habit before it even starts. That's why I made you a one-page guide with all these six steps laid out clearly so you can print it, stick it next to your reading spot, and never have to wonder, "Wait, what am I supposed to be studying today again?" It's completely free. You can scan the QR code on the screen or grab the link in the description below. download it, print it out, and suddenly this whole method becomes automatic because when the steps are right there in front of you, guess what? You will actually do them.
Now, let's get into step two. Step two is to use context clues before you even start reading. So, before you even read a single word of the story, just look at the page. Now, that sounds simple, right? But I want you to think like a kid here because this will take you a few seconds, but make a big difference to how easily you follow everything that comes next. The idea is that the story you're about to read isn't just words on the page. is everything around it as well. The cover, the title of the chapter, any illustrations. These aren't just random decorations. They are clues.
So, take my books for example. You've already got a lot of information about what's coming just from the cover. You can tell something about the characters, the setting, what might be happening. And inside, you've got more. You've got illustrations. You've got you've got the the the titles of the chapters. There's hints everywhere. Point is, your brain doesn't have to start from zero with the first word at the top of the page. It already has a rough picture and now it's filling in the gaps. Think about a newspaper. The photo on the front page tells you half the story before you even read a word. And that's why they put it there. Now, imagine opening it and starting to read with no context at all. That's what most learners do when they pick up a book in a new language. But if your brain already knows what it's looking at, everything becomes easier to follow.
Problem is, as soon as you start reading, there's always a temptation that will slow you down instantly because from the very first paragraph, you will want to stop and look things up in the dictionary, right? And that's why step three is the one that makes everything else work. You open the book, you start reading from the first word, and then guess what? You carry on reading. When you start a chapter, your one job is reach the end of that chapter. You don't stop and look up words in the dictionary. No, your job is to get to the end of the chapter. That's it.
Obviously, that doesn't mean reading an entire book in one sitting, but it does mean reading one chapter in one go. So, you should be choosing stuff where that's actually possible. If the chapter you're about to read is 50 pages long, you've probably got the wrong book. You want short, manageable chapters. And each time you sit down, your aim is just to get to the end of a chapter because that's what actual reading is. We're reading for information. We're reading for pleasure. We're not reading for study. So don't look up words. Don't check grammar. Don't highlight things. Just read.
Because the real big picture benefit of reading, the thing that actually makes you fluent is what's called extensive reading. Which means reading a lot and reading for enjoyment. the kind where you get lost in a story and suddenly an hour has gone by. And you can't build that habit if you're stopping every 30 seconds to look up a word. All you build is frustration. So the mindset is simple. Follow the story, ignore what you don't understand, just keep going and get to the end. That's exactly what worked for me in Argentina. I needed to know what happened next.
Which is exactly why when you reach the end of a chapter, the worst thing you can do is just barrel straight on to the next one. So before you move on, stop. Think about what you just read. What actually happened? Who are the characters? Where did it take place? Was there a cliffhanger? What might happen next? In other words, step four is to pause and summarize what you just read in your head. Stop to think about it for a second. You don't need much time for this. Just take a minute to gather your thoughts.
Because the thing is, when we read in a foreign language, we don't bring our native level reading skills along with us. This is counterintuitive, but we don't. You could be a highly proficient reader in English, but as soon as you read in a foreign language, you leave those skills at the door. This has been proven. And we tend to fall into this word by word trap. One word, then the next, then the next, then the next, translating everything. And suddenly, we've lost the thread of the story completely. You get to the bottom of the page and you be incapable of telling someone what just happened on that page.
I did this all the time in the beginning when I first learned French. I remember sitting in cafes in Paris with this French novel that I just bought from one of those book sellers by by the edge of the river, you know, and I sat down and I remember reading the first page of of a book and I and I was looking up the words that I didn't know and there were a lot of them and then I finished the end of the first page and I checked my watch and I've been there for like an hour and I just got through one page. But that wasn't because my French was terrible. It was because I was so focused on the individual words I forgotten to follow the actual story and just enjoy it. Look, there is no point reading a story if you can't even figure out what it's about. And this step trains you out of the habit because then you can move on to step number five, which is go back and read the same chapter again.
And this is where it gets interesting because the second time feels completely different. And I love this step because it feels like discovery. See, now you've read through a chapter once. You've got an idea of the gist and your brain isn't working as hard to follow the story. So suddenly you notice more details that slip past you the first time start to stand out. Words, patterns, word order, sentence construction, bits of grammar, and noticing things. It's act of noticing is one of the keys to learning a language. This is what I call reducing uncertainty. You're not studying any harder. You're just giving your brain another pass and watching how much more it picks up.
Now, this is the point where a dictionary is allowed, but only in a very specific way because we don't want to be unrealistic here. There will be some words you bump into that are absolutely key to understanding the plot. For example, if you're reading a story about a candle and you don't know the word for candle, well, you're in trouble. So, some words do make sense to look up. For example, let's say you're reading a Japanese story and you keep seeing the word da where the characters are at a da. You know what even is that thing? You don't know and now the whole chapter doesn't make sense. So, here's the rule. Only look up a word if you've seen it five times. Not twice, not three times, but five times. Because if a word keeps showing up, it's likely it's going to matter to the story. And dyaku, well, just that one word could make the whole scene a lot clearer. Ah, they're talking about university. Well, that was worth the interpretation. Everything else, well, just let it go. And the fantastic thing about this rule is that it does two things. It stops you disappearing down the dictionary rabbit hole, and it makes sure you only focus on what actually matters. And this means you can keep learning and actually get some benefit from the reading because the final step, step six, is where it all comes together.
But first, I know you've been waiting for the science bit, right? Well, look, here's what they found out. When you're hooked on a story, your brain releases oxytocin, the same chemical linked to trust and connection where you bond with a person, you feel excitement, curiosity. A story can trigger those same responses. and the tension of not knowing what happens next. Well, that releases dopamine, the chemical linked to focus and memory, all from words on a page. And because your brain starts treating it like real experience, you're not just following a story. You're actually simulating it. Which means every word you meet inside a story arrives loaded with emotion, tension, meaning, and your brain flags it as worth keeping.
Now, imagine trying to memorize a list of words. None of that good stuff happens. There's no tension. There's no emotional pull. and the context. Your brain knows very well that it's just a list and it treats it like one. You're not getting any of that boxy stuff here, I'm afraid. That's why stories are where the magic happens. And once you've got that working well, there's one last thing that makes this all pay off. You read the next chapter. Yep, that's it. Next, keep reading the story. Same process. Find out what happens next in the story. Nothing else matters. Don't stop to study grammar. Break it all apart. Dissect it. Make a long list of work. Don't do any of that stuff. Just keep reading because the ultimate goal here, the one that matters more than much more than any individual word or rule, is to build a reading habit in your new language that feels exactly like reading in your first language. But you pick up the book because you actually want to know what happens next and you're not even thinking, oh, it's Japanese reading practice time. No, you want to get to where the language just fades into the background and the story is the focus in your mind. That's the moment that you stop studying Japanese or Greek or French and just start reading it. It's my favorite part of learning a new language because it opens up a whole new world of wonder and understanding.
So, six simple steps. Read at your level. Use contextual clues before you start. Read all the way through without stopping. Pause and summarize in your mind. Go back and read it again and only look up words that appeared five times. And then move on and keep going. Do these six things consistently and reading stops feeling like hard work and starts feeling like the best part of your day. But there is still one thing that will trip you up. Translating everything into English in your head. That's where so many people get stuck. And if you don't fix that, this whole system falls apart. So in this video over here, I will show you exactly how to stop translating in your head. See you there.