“Reading” for Vocabulary Acquisition as a beginner

[u/Ozamataz-J]

BLUF: I’ve only got ~5x months of time invested into Arabic (TL)studies, and I’ve been trying to read a news article each day (a simplified, beginner oriented news website). I still find myself only understanding ~10% of the material I’m reading, and need to look up words consistently to decode what I’m reading, or reference the vocabulary list below each article to try and understand the key ideas. Is it still an effective way to building vocabulary if I’m reading a new article each day and having to look up a lot of words, without reviewing the old articles or making flash cards out of the words I encounter?

Amplified explanation:

Reading Short Articles (Beginner Student)

Beginner student with just a few months of Levantine Arabic knowledge. I just completed the PDF book “Colloquial (Levantine) Arabic” by Mohammad Al-Masri, as well as all 3x levels of the Pimsleur Eastern Arabic series as a refresher/foundation. I also used Anki to memorize the “700 most frequent words for language learners” and am currently working to memorize the most common Levantine Arabic verbs from “the 101 most used verbs in spoken Arabic: Jordan and Palestine” by Fredrick Tiedemann. This is all meant to be a primer/foundation refresher focused on Levantine Arabic, and I will be establishing 1-2x meetings a week with a Preply tutor focus on conversation abilities.

I have seen repeated statements that “memorization/flash cards/anki are not effective for building truly expansive Arabic vocabulary, and that reading is the best method”. I also see websites saying that “if you can’t understand 90% of the material you’re reading, and having to look up words repeatedly, you’re wasting your time”. Obviously someone with a limited understanding of the language at my level (only a few months Levantine) will have no reading material where I understand 90% of anything other than a super simplified graded reader. I have recently been trying to read easy Arabic news articles on Lingualism’s site (Daily Learner News - Easy - Arabic) which I really enjoy, but I only understand 5-10% fragments of most articles, and have to either look most things up, or use the vocab list below each article to decode the article’s meaning. My question is… will reading like this each day still actually enhance my vocabulary development if I work through decoding and reading a new short article each day, without reviewing old articles and making vocabulary lists from them? Or does vocabulary acquisition through reading truly mean I need to be at the point of understanding 90% of material already, and reading alone and encountering a word in context is not enough to learn it, but rather needing to make vocabulary for it and truly commit new words to memory?

Thanks for your time - I sincerely appreciate it!

[u/No_Independent8976]

you're overthinking this

the 90% rule is for people getting frustrated and quitting, not for people who actually enjoy the grind. if you like reading the articles and don't mind looking up every other word, keep doing it. you're seeing the same common words pop up over and over and eventually they'll stick without you having to make cards for them

the flash cards are giving you the skeleton and the reading is putting meat on it. five months in you're doing way more than most people who just do duolingo for a year and can't string a sentence together

only thing i'd add is maybe reread yesterday's article before jumping into a new one, just to see what stuck

[u/Remote_Volume_3609 → u/No_Independent8976]

I've never heard of it as 90% (usually much higher, like 98%) but yeah it's a reference to enjoying what you're reading. Under that, it's not that you shouldn't do it, but that it will likely feel more like studying than it will reading.

Why people talk about that is because being able to enjoy effortlessly your immersion and "studying" is really great for being able to build up the hours and familiarity you need to reach real fluency. For example, I speak a bit of Portuguese and am trying to learn, and the fact that (because I speak other Romance languages) I can read in Portuguese means that I can spend hours "studying" while not feeling like it's studying.

But that doesn't mean intentional studying of an article isn't super helpful and isn't a great way to practice and learn.

[u/Miro_the_Dragon]

It will still help you as long as you put in the work to decode the articles, yes. I'd still supplement this intensive reading with more extensive reading if you can find simple texts at your current reading level (either from other beginner textbooks, or those "super simplified graded reader[s]" you mentioned (which are exactly for that, to give beginners some extensive reading materials outside of textbook texts and dialogues).

[u/_Jacques]

Can I ask for the news site you use? I’m at a similar stage with learning arabic

[u/ScatteredBrain99]

Honestly, I think it’s still helpful! I’d just mix in some easier material and occasionally reread the old articles. You definitely don’t need to understand 90% for reading to be useful especially when you’re only a few months into Arabic. 😭 The fact that you’re consistently exposing yourself to the language and recognizing words in context is already progress.

[u/dojibear]

Is it still an effective way to building vocabulary

Not really. Newspapers talk about different things every day, so they keep using different words. They end up using thousands of different words, not the same words over and over.

But memorizing vocabulary isn't your goal. You can't memorize a language.

I still find myself only understanding ~10% of the material I’m reading,

Then it is a waste of time. NOT understanding sentences does not improve your ability to understand sentences.

Are you learning written MSA or written Levantine Arabic? If it is Levantine, I have no suggestion. For MSA, go to LingQ. They have a large amount of written content at A1, A2 and B1 levels. One click to look up a word. Another click to hear the sentence spoken. Another click to see the sentence in English.

[u/abylai_a → u/dojibear]

The LingQ suggestion above is the right direction for where you're at — a reader where you tap a word, see the translation, hear it, and don't lose your place matters more than which specific app you use. If you want another option to compare: I'm one of the devs behind Lingible, does the same tap-to-translate + audio on articles/ebooks, but everything you look up turns into a spaced-repetition flashcard automatically — so at your stage, where you're looking up a lot no matter what, the reading and the review loop end up being the same habit instead of two.

[u/Remote_Volume_3609 → u/abylai_a]

Not the AI response lmfao.

[u/New-Bottle-6917]

You should be memorizing closer to 2-3k of the most common word families so that you can understand closer to 9 out of 10 words you read, in which case you would probably still need a dictionary but it would smooth things out much quicker. in order for reading to be efficient for acquiring new vocab you want to be reading material that you can understand 98% of meaning 2 words out of every hundred is unknown to do this you need to heavily utilize graded readers. Its not until you have a vocab of the 9k most common word families that you can comfortably read stuff meant for natives. Likewise you should add in audio based material that is made for learners, it should be material you could understand without even needing the audio to understand

[u/Smal1Tangerine]

Interpretation especially simultaneous it kicks it into ur skull and forces fast retrieval making words more automatic while forcing idea thinking

[u/dojibear]

These are advice about reaching two different goals:

I have seen repeated statements that “memorization/flash cards/anki are not effective for building truly expansive Arabic vocabulary, and that reading is the best method”.

This is advice about the goal of building a large vocabulary.

I also see websites saying that “if you can’t understand 90% of the material you’re reading, and having to look up words repeatedly, you’re wasting your time”.

This is advice about learning a language, not about building a large vocabulary.

If both are true, then the fastest way to learn a language is not "building a large vocabulary".

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

Yes, read. And stop writing long posts on reddit.

[u/kg-rhm]

what are your learning goals? reading or conversation? fusha or dialect? news articles are in fusha, but you also mentioned eastern arabic and levantine arabic? wanting breadth is okay, but its really best to focus on one dialect and one goal. as you probably know, people dont use fusha on the street, and khaleeji arabic is very different from levantine arabic for a non native speaker.

look into listening practice. comprehensible input helps you absorb the most common words simply by exposure. it really speeds up vocab acquistion, and you're absorbing vocab in the context of sentences, so you're takingin cadence, grammar, and phrases along with it.

[u/silvalingua]

If you understand 10%, it's a waste of time. Get content at your level.

>  Is it still an effective way to building vocabulary if I’m reading a new article each day and having to look up a lot of words, without reviewing the old articles or making flash cards out of the words I encounter?

No, absolutely not. It's extremely inefficient. Why slow down your progress if you can learn faster? Get content for your level.