Today a fellow Spanish teacher, Moisés S. Ricón from Podcast from Spain and Spanish Reading will talk to us about the benefits of reading in Spanish.
Do you like reading?
Are you a little lazy and don’t dare?
Well, Moses gives us some good reasons why you should start reading to improve your understanding.
Reading comprehension is one of the skills that all students say they can do better in the early stages of learning a language.
Therefore, it is usually one of the tasks that they eliminate very early in their study plan.
But what many of them forget is that the benefits of reading are very great when it comes to learning a language.
Reading every day in Spanish will help you improve all the skills that you must master when you learn a language. And I’m going to explain why.
Why is it important to read in a foreign language?
Below we will describe at least 7 of the most important benefits
Expand your vocabulary through reading.
Surely this is one of the benefits that everyone is most clear about. Through reading you can learn many new words.
Books, articles, or any other reading material are endless sources of words to learn and new phrases to remember.
Depending on the type of vocabulary you are interested in learning, you could choose from different genres.
The more you read, the more you will enrich your vocabulary.
And as you surely know, this is one of the most important tasks for any language learner.
With reading you can put the vocabulary in context
Whenever you read, you contextualize. So reading allows you to practice the target language in its context.
This is because words and phrases are never isolated.
The new vocabulary that you can find is always surrounded by other words and ideas that help you understand it, so you can make connections with it in your brain and remember it more easily.
Learning vocabulary in context is much more effective than trying to remember lists of words (like the ones you used to study for exams in school).
Context makes reading a powerful tool for finding new vocabulary in its natural “environment.”
Exposure to useful and natural language
Reading allows you to immerse yourself in useful and natural language.
As the vocabulary comes up over and over again, this frequent repetition of the language is going to be key to memorizing words.
Obviously, you shouldn’t just limit yourself to reading, because audio resources are also very important to broaden your language skills.
Reading is easy because it can be done anywhere
As a Spanish teacher and language student, I am the first to say that you have to speak to learn and master the target language, pronounce better and be able to imitate the rhythm or music of the language.
You can talk to yourself, in your head; and in fact, it is something that you have to try to do every day.
But if you’re not confident with it, you can always read. When we read we reproduce our voice in our heads so it is a good way to practice the language.
If the text you read also has audio, much better to read and listen at the same time.
For introverted people it is a good way to start and for the least it is a good way to continue improving the language.
With reading you can reach a higher level
It is common to notice a plateau in the journey of learning a language.
And that can happen no matter how long you’ve been learning a language.
To solve that problem: read a lot in a foreign language.
Read about various topics. This is one of the most powerful strategies to overcome that impasse.
Reading a little every day is perfect.
Articles are good because they tend to be very repetitive. They talk more or less about the same topics and use the same words and expressions.
The downside is that you don’t come across as many topics, and newspapers are usually written at an advanced level.
Luckily, there are websites that solve this problem. spanishreading.online is a site where you can find texts that are based on real newspaper articles.
The site team modifies the originals to adapt them to the different levels. All articles have audio and even some video. And the best thing is, everything is free.
Improve your language skills
Surely you already know that to master a language you must learn four main skills.
You have to understand what you hear. You have to be able to speak. You must understand what you read. And you have to know how to write.
It is therefore not strange to say that the more you read, the better you will understand what you read. But also, when you read a lot you will also improve your writing.
This is because whenever you read something, you are passively learning the structure of language, the ideas it conveys, and the rules of grammar.
But we should not stop there, these activities are also very beneficial for your speaking and listening skills.
All language skills are linked, because if you enrich your vocabulary by reading, you will also have more vocabulary to speak more precisely but also to understand the vocabulary of a conversation.
Reading gets you into the language and connects you with the culture
Another benefit is immersion.
Reading just 10 minutes a day will not only allow you to immerse yourself in the language, but it will also help you connect with the culture that surrounds it.
Excuses like “I won’t be able to learn this language because I won’t have the opportunity to use it in everyday life” are often heard.
But if all those students read a little every day, they would think differently and make a real connection with Spanish.
Did you like the article?
Have you encouraged yourself to read more in Spanish?
What kind of reading do you like?
Follow Moisés on his pages, he has very good and level material that will help you improve your Spanish.
I also leave you the entry of another article where I tell you about other ways to practice your Spanish in summer
What books or readings do you like?
Do you have any recommendation for us?
Do you like reading with activities?
Leave your comment and let’s talk!
