Is it Better to Look up Unknown Words While You Read or After?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Todd Vaneo calling from Dallas, Texas.

Welcome, Todd. What’s going on?

Well, a couple weeks ago, you on your show mentioned looking up words while reading, and I wanted to know what process you guys use for that, because I find myself wanting to look up words while I’m reading, but kind of interrupting the flow to do so always kind of keeps me from doing that. And so I’m just kind of curious, what techniques do you guys use or do you recommend to people while reading to look up words?

Good question, Todd. How do you do it then? Are you there with your phone looking up words, or what do you do?

Sometimes, yes, I’m using my phone to look up words. I prefer paper books when I read. And so, you know, I can’t use the technology of an e-reader to look up the words. So depending on the book, I’ll either look it up on my phone or I will jot some notes down, like in the back of the book, assuming it’s not a library book. That’s kind of the technique that I use. If I’m entirely honest, it’s kind of like flossing. It’s something I should do, but I don’t always. So that’s part of the problem.

So while you’re reading, you look them up or you save them to the end?

Usually while I’m reading, I will look them up. But again, there are some books that that’s just not really a conducive method for, you know, like what I read, The Last of the Mohicans. It always took me 20 minutes to kind of get into the flow of the language as it was written then anyway. So stopping to look up words really doesn’t work in a situation like that, in my opinion.

Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s a challenge. And Grant and I may have different approaches here.

Yeah, we’ve talked about this. I think we do.

Yeah, I read the way you do, Todd, reading books rather than electronically, usually. And I usually have my phone nearby and I use onelook.com to look up words as I go. And I always make sure to look at the etymologies because I think that way, rather than keeping a list that you look at arbitrarily toward the end, you learn the history of the word, and sometimes that can help you recognize it later. So etymology has always helped me.

I have tried in the past to make a list of the words and look them up later, but then they’re out of context for me. And it’s hard for me to remember what I was reading about. The only time that I end up reading something all the way through is if I’m reading Spanish. I think there’s something to be said when you’re reading a foreign language for trying to get the gist of something.

Sure.

I don’t think we’re that far off. I do what you and Todd do. The whole idea of breaking the narrative, that’s really important to me. If I were reading The Last of the Nohicans, I understand exactly what you’re saying. Just having that interruption to the flow, sometimes not understanding completely is less of a problem than not being able to get back into the narrative. Particularly if you are looking it up in a digital device and you’re distracted by the other things that are happening on your phone outside the dictionary.

Well, there’s that problem, yeah.

Right. But I do find that some books it’s easier for me just to make a list or mark the page. I developed this system, if it’s a book that I own, where I fold the lower left or lower right-hand corner down. But I fold it in such a way that the corner point as it’s pointed over either points more to the bottom of the page or more to the upper part of the page. And then that tells me when I go back to those bent corners to where to look for the word that I missed. Does that make sense?

So it’s kind of a physically represents where on the page the word is going to be. And then I reread that part and I find it again. And then I can look it up. But it does require, like you were saying, you have to go back and do it and hold yourself to that standard of learning the words.

The other thing I wanted to say, I do agree that onelook.com is great for looking words up, but Martha really hit on something super important, which is when I was making dictionaries and we were working on an advanced online dictionary, we looked into the studies that have been done about people and how they look up words and what happens after they look them up. Most people, when they look up a word, do not remember the definition 30 seconds later.

Interesting.

And I catch myself with that as well. And one of the ways I do it, and since I’m old school and read paper books, I also believe in the whole moving your hand to remember things. And so often I will write the word down and a short definition, and that often helps me remember the word. So mendacious has become one of my favorite words of late, and it’s because I wrote down what that definition was when I ran across it.

I will say the digital tools, I love the fact that my Kindle tracks what words I look up. I have long pages of words there. I use an open source app on my phone that looks up things like on WordNet and a few other open source dictionaries. It also keeps track. So I can actually go back, and I do have that running list, and it’s fascinating to see. And one of the things I discovered about myself is that I frequently look up words that I think I know just to make sure that I actually know them. So I’ll look into onelook.com and see what that is like as opposed to the dictionary that’s built into my phone. Look searches a bunch of dictionaries all at once, which is why it’s great.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much for your help.

Todd, really appreciate it.

Thanks, Todd.

Yep. Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d love to hear how you read. What are your strategies for remembering words that you have to look up while you’re reading? Or how do you look up words while you’re reading? Or afterward, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your observations about language in email to words@waywordradio.org.