I.S.P. Nation, "How Large a Vocabulary Is Needed for Reading and Listening?", PDF
It is interesting that this article raises the example that native speakers do not know all of the words in their mother language. It is sure that a native speaker has the ability to understand the meaning without reading whole sentences. When they encounter the words they don't know, they might skip the words and they can still understand the meaning.
On the other hand, however, a learner of English as a second or foreign language might be stuck when they encounter a word which they don't know. The unknown word might block their reading process.
It is also interesting that the article compares the difference between literature and newspaper. While an article in the newspaper is a report based on the fact, literature requires the ability to read tone, metaphor, rhythm, and point of view. Especially, considering that some literary works are written in unique poetic styles, interpreting the text in a deeper level will be difficult even for native speakers.
Interpreting literary works will be difficult for the people who are not good at inferring something whether the reader is a native speaker or not. Given this context, I think that reading method based on skimming and scanning and intensive reading is very effective to learn how to read. Acquiring skills to capture general ideas can be helpful to read the text without being blocked by unknown words.
