How To Learn Vocabulary Quickly And Easily From Stories

Wondering how to learn vocabulary from stories? If you’re using stories to learn a new language then you have accidentally stumbled upon the best way to expand your vocabulary into the stratosphere.

But you probably still have questions, like:

• How often should I look up words?
• What should I focus on?
• Should I actually try to memorise words? 

Look, if you care at all about expanding your vocabulary in the language you’re learning, this is a post you need to pay close attention to.

Now look, a word of warning, if you are new to learning languages with stories, this is going to be very different from what you’re used to. So make sure you stay to the end to get a full picture of how this works,

Memorising? No. Translation? No. Vocab tests?

Definitely not. 

If you prefer to read, keep scrolling to read about how to learn vocabulary from stories. If you prefer watching videos, hit play on the video version below.

What Should I Focus On When Reading?

New vocabulary or something else?

The basic answer is no, you're not going to focus on vocabulary, you're going to focus on the plot instead. The ultimate goal with reading is to read for enjoyment. So focusing on anything else is missing the point.

Because to understand plot, you have to get through the words first. And understanding the words helps you understand the plot.

Now obviously, to learn the language, you need to learn words, so you might see no difference.

So should I focus on the plot or the vocab?

Here’s crucial difference…

If you focus on the plot of the story, you learn to read independently 

If you focus on vocab, every new word becomes an objective – something you have to learn. This derails you and stops you from just enjoying the story. Plus you DON'T need every word in order to understand.

So focus on reading for enjoyment, and then eventually you'll be able to read naturally and eventually without limits, then the vocab follows just like native reading as a byproduct.

When Should I Look Up Words?

Here’s my process – I'm assuming you’re reading stories with short chapters.

1. Read through chapter through to the end – this will be hard but focus on the story
2. Go back and read it again 
3. Read the chapter summary – my short stories books contain these
4. Look up key words – using a word list rather than a dictionary to help you unlock your comprehension and follow the plot
5. Read again until gist is clear – get the main plot elements

Thanks to this five step process, you'll find that your comprehension will creep up. The first time you read, you might only understand 50%, then 55% the second time, 60%, 65%, or even 70% the third time.

In this process you’re NOT looking up words at the start.

If you want to look up words, you should do it only once you feel you can’t squeeze any more juice out of reading alone – perhaps on the 3rd or 4th time through the chapter.

Remember, you want to push yourself, you want to struggle. And only when you can’t get any further do you look for help. 

It's a bit like cooking a stew. If it's too dense, add water to loosen just enough. You'll also only look up words once you've pushed yourself as far as you can go on your own.

Looking up words and memorising them isn’t the point. And you’re not trying to militantly avoid translation, it’s just to facilitate understanding and build your capacity to read independently.

What Level Of Comprehension Is Best?

When is enough to move on to the next chapter?

The answer is simple: you need to understand just enough to get the gist of the story and derive value from it.

You're not aiming for 100%. It's perfectly fine if there’s a LOT you don’t understand. The ballpark is around 60-70% minimum.

Remember – you can understand a lot without knowing every word!

And it's just like when I discovered StoryLearning® on top of that mountain in Argentina. I had no choice but to read that book because I was too scared to go back to sleep. I really struggled and strained to understand, but I pushed through and that's what led to my breakthrough.

If it's too easy then you're reading below your level!

How Can I Read As A Complete Beginner?

This brings us to a key point – you need to read just above your level. Otherwise known as comprehensible input.  

At every stage of learning, from beginner to mastery, the stories need to be at the right level, meaning that with effort you can understand the gist.

If you're a complete beginner, the same applies. You need to use material written for beginners with simple vocab and tonnes of repetition.

You've seen this in your beginner textbooks with simple dialogues. At StoryLearning® it's similar (but more fun than dialogues!) – the stories are written for beginners with simple language and lots of repetition.

Check out an example below from Spanish Uncovered.

Then the process is the same. In the first few days of learning a new language, you have to learn basic words, like “he”, “she”, “go”, “want”.

But every language has core of 100-200 words which account for 50% of everything you'll ever read.

They repeat SO often, that you'll learn them automatically simply by reading stories at your level. And once you've learned this core vocabulary, it's a stepping stone to unlocking your comprehension and reading more interesting material.

The Process For Complete Beginners

So the process for beginners is a combination of:

• a very simple story
• learning a minimum core of words 

But there's more here as well because through this basic reading you discover other things:

• how basic verbs change
• cognates which can unlock tons of vocab you already know

It's normal at this stage to read over and over again. You'll need lots of repetition to get familiar with the language. You might read these basic stories dozens of time – it's perfectly normal. You're just getting used to the language.

But you'll be amazed at how fast you can understand a lot – check out my Italian project for how this happened to me as soon as week 1!

Some languages will of course take longer to get to grips with than others, but the process is the same. And the key is reading stories at your level.

How Do You Balance Repetition vs New Input?

In other words how do you know when you should keep reading the same thing or when it's time to move on.

Let’s contrast complete beginners vs fluent speakers of the language.

When you're in the very beginning stages of learning a language (this doesn't last long by the way), you're at a unique stage where you're reading the same things again and again and getting lots of repetition. This is because you're just trying to get a foothold in the language.

At a high level your situation is rather different. You can do free reading for pleasure, just like you do in your own language. You pick up a novel to read it for pleasure and then you move on. This is the ultimate aim, because the volume of input means you learn naturally.

So what happens in between when you're neither a complete beginner nor a high-level learner? It's a gradual shift where you move away from lots of repetition to not much repetition.

Your aim is to be able to read for pleasure – that's how native speakers read. And in our first language, we grow our vocabulary by reading. The shift will happen as you gradually improve your comprehension.

It's impossible to give exact numbers for how many times you should read or re-read a chapter – it depends on level and material. Don't forget, if the material isn't at your level all of this goes out the window! If it's too hard, it won't work.

As a rule of thumb though, I recommend that you aim to read each chapter 3-5 times.

The first time you read it, it'll be a struggle. The second, third and fourth times you're noticing new things, decoding the language, looking up words. And the fifth time you read through you can follow the plot and understand and enjoy the story. 

Remember for the StoryLearning® method to work, you need to cover a lot of ground. The advice I give to people in my StoryLearning® courses is – move on before you’re ready, because you’ll learn things naturally with time. 

And as ever, for the process to work, the material needs to be at the right level. But do get comfortable with being uncomfortable and moving on before you're ready.

What About Memorising Vocabulary?

So far I've talked a lot about process, but what about actually memorising and learning the vocabulary. How often and how should I review the new words I have learned?

At school we’re used to memorising lists, and the point of memorising is to keep reviewing the words till we know them.

But reading is natural review!

Well-written material or material about the same topic, will repeat key words and ideas, even grammar, a lot.

So the best approach is to KEEP READING, and you’ll review the words that matter naturally.

And when you see important words over and over, in context, you learn them naturally, which you don't get from lists or flash cards.  

Speaking of which, a common question I get is: should I use flashcards or memory techniques?

I’m a fan of flashcards – used right. But it's very difficult to use them right. The big problem is that it takes so much time and management of your decks.

So why not stop with the flashcards and plough all that time into more input – more reading?

Remember rule #1 of StoryLearning® – trust in the process. Keep reading and trust that you’ll learn the words you need naturally, as part of the process.

But if you’re going to use extra devices like mnemonics or flashcards (and I do), the main thing is to be HYPER SELECTIVE.

Only focus on learning “life or death” vocabulary, and then get back to reading. You want to spend 5% maximum of your overall time spent on flashcards. Think of the stew analogy – you just need a little water to loosen it up, and it's the same with flashcards.

What About Low Frequency Words?

So what about low frequency words? The ones that you don't see all that often. How would you ever memorise those?

Low frequency words are a case where things like flashcards or memory techniques can actually come in handy. But you should only use them at higher levels, when you're at intermediate or upper intermediate stage where you can already read quite confidently but you just need a bit of help.

You could memorise those words that you don't see that often. But the better strategy is to read around your areas of interest. So for example when I was learning Japanese a while back I remember spending a lot of time reading about language acquisition because it's something that interests me.

And at first I would come across difficult vocabulary words in that topic area of acquisition like “acquire”, “cognition” etc. And it was really hard for me. But I kept reading on that topic and again eventually I learned them naturally by reading paper after paper after paper on that topic.

Again the key is to read at your level. If you're reading at a comfortable level that's when you can relax enough to actually acquire new words.

How Does Listening Help Me Learn Vocabulary?

Lastly, what about listening in all this? How does listening help you learn vocabulary from reading?

Don’t think of listening as separate activity. Think about adding listening as enhancing your reading.

When you hear what you read your brain is getting more engaged, so there’s more to hang on to

I told you earlier about how I was reading in Japanese about language acquisition. Well I was also listening at the same time – and that really sped things up…

Certain words are just more memorable when you hear them –kakutoku suru has a RING about it! 

And when you hear and see it – it’s like crack cocaine for the brain! 

So just listen WHILE reading – you’ll remember far more words – and it doesn’t even take you any extra time!! What’s not to love?

Learn Vocabulary From Stories

But remember, in all this…

You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball

Because it’s so easy to slip back into old habits like reaching for the dictionary all the time, or wanting to memorise all the new vocab from lists.

But as you've discovered in this post, learning vocabulary from stories is all about reading and enjoying the book first. The learning comes as a nice bonus after you've immersed yourself in the story.

So put down that flashcard app or word list for a second and go grab a book in the language you want to learn. Just make sure it's at your level and interests you and you'll be able to learn vocabulary from stories before you know it!

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.