Why is it so important that you begin to read more extensively? Adult learners of a foreign language don’t have the luxury of learning to speak the way babies do. To a great extent, we must absorb a foreign language via written texts. The linguist Ferdinand Saussure tells us that written language is merely the external representation of speech; the spoken language is the basis of the written language. Thus, for a student of a foreign language, who usually doesn’t have as much verbal linguistic input as a baby has, reading is a way of getting familiar with the nuts and bolts of the language, a shortcut to developing an intuitive “feeling for the language” (Sprachgefühl in German, or, in Chinese, yǔgǎn 语感). And this path is what has, up to now, been very difficult for Chinese learners.
David Moser making the case for reading as a means to improve your spoken language. In the past, beginning to read Chinese was an arduous process but with the abundance of digital tools now available it’s far less time consuming for the adult learner. From The new paperless revolution in Chinese reading.
Steve Kaufmann also shares similar views in a couple of videos: How I went about learning Mandarin & 学语言的7个原则