What I do (and don't) get from Paul Nation

According to Wikipedia, Paul Nation is a "leading language teaching methodology and vocabulary acquisition linguist researcher". 

Which is probably true.

Paul loves words (a word man). He places emphasis on knowing most of the words in a particular text to be able to read it. He recommends that you know greater than 95 to 98% of the words of a particular text so that it is accessible.

And that may well be true too, but I'm going to disagree. I disagree strongly in fact. But that's okay. It just means that, by analyzing why exactly I disagree, I gain clarity about what I do believe in. That is a positive that I can thank Paul for in a roundabout way. If that makes sense.

Here's what I think is the reason for insisting that text must be 95 to 98% known before we use it as reading material: I believe that generally people are that nervous about language learning that they need a psychological 'crutch'. Understanding almost 100% of a text provides the reassurance that they crave. (See Krashen elsewhere for affective filter).

In my view, I feel that it is better learn how to become more comfortable in  language environments where we have only 90, 80, 50 or even 5% understanding. We need psychological muscle!

To conclude, however, I'd like to finish up on a positive note, and so I'll state that I do like Paul Nation's fluency activity: 4-3-2