How reading develops your Spanish vocabulary

With a short definition you can get started on a Spanish word. When you read, you see what writers do with it.

You might learn realizar as “to carry out”, then encounter realizar una investigación in a news report. Elsewhere you find realizar un sueño, meaning to fulfil a dream. From the new setting you understand the word better.

This is one reason to read alongside vocabulary practice. When you read, you become familiar with words in connected language; in deliberate practice you choose which answers to work on.

What one encounter can teach

Sometimes a meaning is clear from the context. Sometimes you can only narrow the possibilities. A person susurra something so as not to wake a child. You might infer that susurrar means speaking quietly, then check that its usual English equivalent is “to whisper”.

Treat a guess as a guess until you can confirm it from the context or a reference. When you come across the word later, you may confirm the meaning, find another use, or find that your first interpretation was wrong.

Researchers have found that people learn vocabulary from reading. For example, Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt measured several aspects of word knowledge after learners read a novel. The gains differed across measures. Seeing a word in a story did not mean every learner could then produce it.

Check what you can do with a word after encountering it. Can you understand it in a new sentence? Can you use it to describe something yourself?

Give yourself enough context

A passage is easier to learn from when you can follow its subject and most of its sentences. If you repeatedly cannot understand what happened because of unfamiliar vocabulary, choose something easier or work through a shorter section with help.

An easy text is still worth reading when you already know its words. In it you still practise following Spanish and seeing familiar language used together. New vocabulary is one of several things you get from reading.

A graded reader is written with learners in mind, and some of its vocabulary and grammar is controlled. Ordinary articles, stories and books vary much more. Read a sample rather than assuming a category will fit your level.

Notice the words around the word

In Spanish, words often go together in familiar ways. These combinations are called collocations. Prestar atención means “to pay attention”; tomar una decisión means “to make a decision”.

If you save an example, keep enough of the phrase to preserve the useful pattern. From a note with only prestar on it, you may not remember prestar atención. Equally, if you copy a long paragraph, you can lose sight of the small piece you want to practise.

You can also notice who uses the expression and where. A word from a legal notice may be appropriate in formal writing and unusual in a conversation with a friend. Context includes the situation the word is used in.

Decide what to look up

Look up a word when you cannot follow the passage without it, or when it keeps appearing without becoming clear. If a minor descriptive detail does not matter to the story, you can leave it for later.

You can combine dictionary use and inference. Guess from the sentence, check when needed, then reread the sentence with the meaning in mind. There is no reason to preserve an incorrect guess for the sake of avoiding a lookup.

Bring useful words into practice

After reading, choose a few words or phrases you expect to need. Try to produce them from their meanings, check the answers and return to them later. You can also write a brief account of what you read and see which words you reach for.

In Vozelu’s reader you get meanings and audio, with word practice elsewhere in the app. How reading encounters and recall attempts are recorded differently is on its method page. When you come across a word, you see it in another context; when you produce it, you find out what you can recall at that moment.