Reading an English Dictionary for Language Learning: Beneficial or a Waste of Time?

I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s a lot of vocabulary in the language that is essentially never used and not worth comitting to memory, and it sounds boring as hell too.

What is your goal in this? A dictionary contains ALL words that can be used, even if many are incredibly rare. If you want the widest possible vocabulary, then yes, reading a dictionary would introduce you to many words that you would otherwise not see. If you want to interact with regular people, then you would be better off reading a few English books and looking up words as you come across them.

Waste of time. Expanding your vocabulary is more than just knowing a lot of words and what they mean. You also need to know when/how they are used, which you can only get by reading literature and practising regularly.

Waste of time. Read literature instead (with a dictionary on standby for any words you're not familiar with).

Huge waste of time. Many of the words listed are ones you might never encounter in a lifetime. For example, as a native Spanish speaker, I can flip to a random page in a Spanish dictionary and find numerous words I've never heard of. It’s like wanting to eat some grapes but filling a jar with both sand and grapes. Then, you have to dig through the sand with your fingers to find a single grape. How productive is that?

If you really want to do this, I would recomend trying to learn just a few words from the dictionary every day. See if you can incorporate them into your speech for that day and it may help you internalize them.

without context, it might be hard to remember how to use the words in real conversations. It's better to balance dictionary reading with other activities. To learn effectively, mix up your methods by using the dictionary along with reading books, watching movies, and listening to music in English. Set specific vocabulary goals, such as learning ten new words each week, instead of reading randomly. When you learn new words, actively use them in sentences or conversations, and consider writing them in a journal to help reinforce your memory. Remember, language learning takes time, so be patient with yourself and don't worry if you don’t remember everything right away.

Maybe a children’s dictionary because more than likely it’ll be filled with simple words that are used often. But when it comes to an actual dictionary most of those words will be useless in your everyday conversations in English.

I'm learning English too and I find it completely boring. And you can't keep a habit you don't like. Also, in a dictionary you are just reading lots of words without any context, so you're missing the way to use them properly

There are many words that aren't used commonly or that are specific for certain trades or specializations. Then, I would put my efforts into the latter. That's more fun because it's something that you know and use. The rest of the dictionary is useless unless you want to play Scrabble or any other related game. Think about your own language. How many different words do you use? Have fun!

Waste of time. Try reading magazine articles with a lot of pictures and captions, like National Geographic or a mainstream news magazine. One advantage of reading over podcasts is that you can go as fast or slow as you like, pause, re-read, look up a word, etc. You might try the video version of podcasts so you can see the speaker’s mouth move and see their facial expressions. Also turn on captions when you start with videos.

I once had a friendly and helpful Korean colleague, but his English was so so. Interestingly, he had scored a perfect 120 on the TOEFL. When he left for a new position, we cleaned the office and I found a Korean - English dictionary, with every word highlighted or underlined. He had memorized the dictionary!

I started to learn french from an anki deck of the top 5000 most common words, it was enough to get me reading books for adults and it only took 70 days to memorize all the cards. No grammar, pronunciation, or context of when you should use the words but if you're looking to brute force, my method is better than reading the dictionary, thanks to spaced repetition.

It's best to learn by using vocabulary. Not just memorising it.

I disagree with it being a total waste of time, but it is a bad way to learn the language if you're not already proficient in it enough to read an English dictionary for vocabulary. There are a lot of words that translate between languages but only work for certain meanings of those words and not all of them. Reading the entry in an English dictionary will better explain how it is used in English. The reason why I say it isn't a total waste of time is you will learn some vocabulary and if you choose a good dictionary it will tell you what words are rare, dialectal, archaic, or obsolete. Even these words can help you when it comes to certain literature and films, but generally it's more efficient to look up the words you don't understand than to preemptively learn them all. Of course if you love words and etymology like me, you might find more value in reading the dictionary, but I wouldn't read it cover to cover. Spending about 10 minutes a day reading random words is more likely to result in you remembering the words.

Unless you plan to enter Scrabble Championship, not recommended. A English champion, Nigel Richards, from New Zealand, decided to try his luck in French. He read the dictionary. He won that twice but don't expect any table talk. He then won the Spanish championship with the same method.

I think checking the dictionary occasionally, when you can't figure out a word based on context, is fine. Literally reading the dictionary and trying to memorize is not a good use of time. Read things that are interesting to you, preferably things that you can comprehend most of without a dictionary.

Waste of time, unless like my 10th grade English teacher you - on Friday nights - correct the mistakes.

A friend of mine said he learned English watching TV with English captions on.. Not always 100% accurate, but gives you an idea on English phrases etc. ....

That's probably the worst way to try and learn. It's dull, not engaging, and unless you have a photographic memory, you're unlikely to retain even a fraction of what you've read.