Does reading build other skills?

Just wondering--

At the moment, my reading skills far surpass my listening skills, and my listening skills surpass my speaking skills...

How much does reading (short stories, magazines, anything) help in other areas? Of course, it's totally passive, but I'd think it is useful for remembering vocabulary, and maybe for "internalizing" grammatical structures.

I know I need more practice speaking (nothing can substitute), but it's hard since the conversations I can have are so bad... and require another person to patiently talk to me. Obviously reading avoids these difficulties.

Thanks!

david

Does reading build other skills?

Absolutely.

Why?

1) You must acquire a minimum amount of words in order to be able to make good guesses at unknown words in a conversation or written text. Reading is a great way to learn new words, of course. (See my post on the subject).

2) News and formal types of Chinese are essentially just written Chinese done in a spoken form. Getting a good grasp of reading is thus essential towards understanding news/formal Chinese.

3) As you read more and know more (in Chinese), you're ability to have interesting conversations (from a native speaker's point of view) will get better.

I think for Chinese learners, it's perfectly natural to be at a point in where "reading skills far surpass my listening skills". "Listening skills surpass my speaking skills" is also normal, since passive abilities often outmatch active abilities in very high ratios.

With all this said, I think it's worth pointing out that:

1) Listening can be a great aid to the reading process (ie. by finding texts and textbooks with audio, so that you can listen while reading along. this can be especially helpful for languages like Chinese, which have non-phonetic scripts).

2) Eventually you should aim to even out your skills. I was in the same boat for quite a long time. However, I don't think the problem is inherently bad. I would suggest massive doses of audio practice, or at least that's what I do.

I think it's perfectly natural for people who do lots of self-study. And I also find that lots of reading helps every other aspect of language learning.

It's not automatic though. Just reading won't magically make your conversational skills better. You'll need to invest extra effort in listening and speaking. But having read a few thousand pages already, it will be easier, in my experience.

I think as older learners it's usually much harder to pick up a language by listening, which is a pity because IMO picking up words with your ears is far easier than recognising a word first. Speaking, as you probably know is mostly mimicking and thus listening is crucial. For this reason being in the right environment will healp alot. Most of my mandarin grammar/words were first learnt by reading rather than natural listening. Only after 2 years could I start 'listening' to tv shows somewhat properly. On the other hand I know people who could listen and speak(but can't read/write) at respectable conversational level but couldn't understand the news properly. I am the reverse, and personally find it weird and always lacking.

Everyone is different. My speaking and listening (informal conversation) is far ahead of my reading (and writing.) So I spend a lot of time trying to improve the areas where I'm weakest, put probably will never achieve a perfectly-balanced skill set. Not that it isn't a worthy goal.

I think it does build other skills, but mostly indirectly through the addition of vocab and internalizing of grammar. To see a real improvement in other skills such as listening or speaking you'll need to work on things that will specifically improve those areas. As your core speaking and listening skills improve, you'll then be able to draw upon the extended vocab and grammar you obtained from reading.

Also, you don't necessarily need a partner to practice speaking. Practice reading aloud, recording yourself as you do. Compare your recording with a recording of a native speaker reading the same text. Repeat until you can read the text fluently with the same pacing and pauses as the native recording. Repeat the whole process again and again with a different texts.

This will get you comfortable speaking longer sentences with correct spacing and pausing, and will translate to improvements when speaking off the cuff.

Reading definitely builds writing skills, but you need to read a lot. But it's about quality more than quantity IMO. It's good to memorise beautifully written phrases/sentences so you can use them when you're writing.

It may help your speaking and listening, but it's definitely better to practise them individually.

The other thing I forgot to say, is that you also need to be looking up words you don't know when you are reading if you want to improve your vocab. I know this sounds obvious, but it's very easy to get to a point where you can basically understand 90% of what you're reading (e.g. missing maybe 1 word in 10), and because you can more or less understand things you then don't bother looking up words you don't know. What then happens in that you always sit at the 90% understanding mark and never make progress. You don't need to look up everything you don't know, but definitely make an effort to learn some of them each time.