EXTENSIVE READING AND INTENSIVE READING

INTENSIVE READING

Intensive reading involves learners reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks. It can be compared with extensive reading, which involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills.

Example
The learners read a short text and put events from it into chronological order.

In the classroom
Intensive reading activities include skimming a text for specific information to answer true or false statements or filling gaps in a summary, scanning a text to match headings to paragraphs, and scanning jumbled paragraphs and then reading them carefully to put them into the correct order.

Extensive reading is an approach to language learning, including foreign language learning, by the means of a large amount of reading. The learners view and review of unknown words in specific context will allow the learner to infer the word's meaning, and thus to learn unknown words. While the mechanism is commonly accepted as true, its importance in language learning is disputed.

Extensive reading is contrasted with intensive reading, which is slow, careful reading of a small amount of difficult text – it is when one is "focused on the language rather than the text". Extensive and intensive reading are two approaches to language learning and instruction, and may be used concurrently; intensive reading is however the more common approach, and often the only one used.

Extensive reading has been used and advocated in language learning since at least the 19th century