English Practice (Luyện Tập)

Compare and contrast: intensive and extensive reading

As we know, reading is one of the four main skills of learning language. But most learners don't bother regularly reading the native texts in any meaningful way. How to read to be able to absorb knowledge or vocabulary effectively depends on the reading method of each person. And here we often know two methods that are Intensive Reading and Extended Reading.

Not all reading methods have the same effect. But the similarity of both intensive and extensive reading is two extremely powerful tools in your language learning arsenal, which will fuel your ability to acquire vocabulary indefinitely.

Conceptually, intensive reading is a reading method wherein learners are supposed to read the short text carefully and deeply so as to gain maximum understanding. While extensive reading is an approach to language learning in which long text and a large amount of material are read by the students for general understanding.

If intensive reading requires you to strive your mental effort and concentration so that you can understand the text in the most detailed way, as well as know more vocabularies and grammars related to the problem you want to learn more deeply, and help you improve your reading skills. Then, extensive reading is simply reading as much as possible, without being overly concerned with small details or unclear details, and the purpose of this approach is to help us get the main content of the text more quickly.

In short, no matter whether intensive or extensive reading is more helpful, they are basically just learning tools. Whenever and wherever you read in your target language, if you know which of these tools is the right tool for the job, you'll be able to maximize your learning, and take your language skill to new heights.

#Tugney, 18/12/2020