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How to read hard books without stopping at every word.
You can read a hard book comfortably when you know about 98% of its words, one unknown in fifty; below 95%, one in twenty, reading becomes decoding. The trick is not to look up every word but to tell the two kinds apart: the words that block the sentence, which you look up at once, and the words that color it, which you read past and let the book teach you. Here is how, and why books are still the best vocabulary lesson there is.
Why books are hard, and why that is the point
Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich counted rare words, words outside the 10,000 most common, per thousand in different kinds of language. Adult books had 52.7. Children’s books had 30.9. Prime-time television had 22.7, and the conversation of college graduates 17.3. Print is richer than any talk you will hear, which is why reading predicts vocabulary even after you control for how clever someone is (Cunningham and Stanovich, American Educator, 1998). A hard book is hard because it is doing what no conversation does: using the long tail of the language. That is also what you came for.
What “hard” means in numbers
Paul Nation measured how much of a text you need to know to read it with ease and found the threshold at about 98% of the running words, one unknown word in fifty. For novels and newspapers that takes roughly 8,000 to 9,000 word families; at 95%, one unknown in twenty, comprehension drops and reading slows to decoding (Nation, Canadian Modern Language Review, 2006). So a quick test on page one: count the words you do not know in a run of fifty. One or two, and the book will carry you. Four or five, and you need a method.
The method: two kinds of unknown word
Blocking words hold the sentence hostage: the verb, the noun the paragraph is about, a word repeated three times on the page. Look these up at once, in the moment, because the sentence around them is the context you will remember the word by. Coloring words add shade without changing the sense: the adjective in a description, the fourth item in a list. Read past them, and if one comes back a second or third time, it has earned a lookup. This single distinction turns a page with eight unknown words into one with two interruptions.
Guess, then check
Before you look a word up, guess from the sentence and from the pieces of the word: circumspect is circum (around) and spec (look). A few dozen roots will give you the ballpark for most learned words. Then check, because a confident wrong guess is worse than no guess. The check is what makes the word stick: a guess that turns out right is a small triumph, and a guess that turns out wrong is a surprise, and memory keeps both.
Keep the words, not the list
Do not write words in a notebook you will never open. Keep each one with the sentence it came from, because the sentence is the memory. Then let the words come back: a day later, a few days, a few weeks. That schedule is what makes a looked-up word yours instead of a word you once looked up (here is why).
The tools
On an iPhone, select any word and tap Look Up for a quick built-in definition. For books you read in Safari or in an app with a share sheet, Gloss, which we make, explains the selected word in the style you read and keeps it with the line it came from; its Quotes feed does the reverse, giving you a line from Thoreau or Shakespeare with the hard word lit up, so the book comes to you. A paper book and a pencil work too: underline, keep reading, look up the underlined words at the end of the chapter, with the page open.
Which hard book
One a step above you, not three. If page one fails the one-in-fifty test by a wide margin, pick a different book by the same author, or the same book in a few months. The goal is a book you finish; the vocabulary is what finishing leaves behind.
Questions people ask
How many words can I not know and still enjoy a book?
About one in fifty, which is 98% coverage; that is where reading feels comfortable in Nation’s research. At one in twenty, 95%, reading becomes work.
Should I look up every word I don’t know?
No. Look up the words that block the sentence, the verb or the subject or anything repeated; read past the ones that only add color, and look them up if they return.
Does reading really improve vocabulary more than talking?
Yes. Adult books carry about 52.7 rare words per 1,000 against 17.3 in educated conversation (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998), and reading volume predicts vocabulary even after controlling for general ability.
What is the best way to look up words while reading on an iPhone?
Select the word and tap Look Up for the built-in dictionary, or use a dictionary with a share-sheet action that keeps the word with its sentence and brings it back later.
Sources
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