Are word lists with concrete aims more effective than free reading with no concrete aims? This is the question I’d like to write about in today’s blog post. As you may be able to guess, this is going to be a one-sided argument!

25 intermediate verbs. 10 idioms about food. 20 common phrasal verbs. They all promise a lot. They are attractive. You can find something out that you didn’t know before. In 2013, I studied at the MSLU for a few months. My motivation to learn Russian was quite high at the time, I started to create word lists in an application called Quizlet. It probably took me about 2 hours in total to remember 20 words. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there, 5 minutes in the metro, 5 minutes waiting for the bus etc. I felt a sense of achievement. But could I remember one of these words in the middle of a conversation? Could I f**k! My brain had no access to the memory.

Although, I still believe lists can be useful, especially if they are personal to you, but their overall impact is limited.

Context is everything. We get so much more information about grammar and lexis if it’s in a wider context. Take the beginning of this blog post for example, hopefully you already knew the word “aims” (goal, target etc), but, perhaps, you didn’t know the word “concrete” could be use before this word. But now you know and you didn’t need a list for this! I also knew that there is a similar word to concrete in Russian (that’s why I didn’t hesitate to use the word, although I hesitated to use the word hesitate here) ;)

Humans see patterns very, very well. 1…2…4…7…11… Did you see the pattern? Did you also notice that after “Did you” we need a verb in the present simple:
”Did you read…”
”Did you go…”
”Did you try…”
”Did you finish…”
”Did you enjoy…”

As a native, we see these patterns and imitate them. Reading helps us find these patterns without us even knowing it. We just need to have a bit more faith in its power.

Ok. Well, maybe you need a little bit more than just blind faith. A Japanese study in 2010 found that students who read around 1.8 million words has the same test results as students who studied for two years and lived in an English-speaking country for 10 months. Another study found that students who had read more than 300,000 words showed big improvements in their test scores. That’s only 1,000 words every day for ten months. Easy!

The important thing is to find something you enjoy and something that isn’t difficult to read. I hope that this blog is both, but will be happy if it’s just one out of the two!