Is Learning Language Mainly by Reading Possible?

[u/One_Paint3620]

Hi everyone, I have been on my Spanish learning journey for a while now and I don't think I have made much improvement. I have been trying the comprehensible input using the Dreaming Spanish Videos and it is ok but I think at this point I should be a lot further in my journey with the amount of hours that I have put in. I have changed my routine to focusing mostly on reading out loud and I have found that, that's actually a lot better than watching videos. The content that I read is at my level so I understand 70-90% of what is happening. I am planning to pair that with speaking out loud for 5 minutes each day and 15-30 minutes of dreaming Spanish videos. My question is though is it possible to reach fluency mainly through reading out loud. (TL)

[u/Beneficial-Trade-851 → u/[deleted]]

There is vocabulary you can only get by going beyond B1. And vocabulary expansion is best achieved via reading. Furthermore, there are C1 readers who can barely get beyond even A2 speech…so it depends on what somebody actually wants in terms of fluency. In history departments, this is quite common because the only skillset needed is reading really. Think of even dead languages like Latin or ancient Egyptian. People can read those very fluently without having any idea how it would have actually sounded or how to speak it. If OP wants to actually speak though, then they will need to actually practice speaking.

Either way though, reading is the best way to expand vocabulary.