Do I have to stop at each word I don't know?

It can be very frustrating to have your reading interrupted by an unknown word. If you find too many words you don't know, it breaks into the flow of your reading.

According to research, you should understand the majority of the words in the text without a dictionary. If you don't, this means the text is above your level and is too hard. You may feel very frustrated if you try to read the text.

Find a text that you feel comfortable reading without having to go to the dictionary every second. And when you do find an interesting word or expression you don't know, your first step is to go back and re-read the entire sentence. Think about the content of the sentence. Do you understand the sentence without using the new word? Or is it incomprehensible?

Secondly, identify the words that you do understand. You can often use other words in the sentence to help you define the unknown word. Think about what else is happening in the sentence. Hopefully, this will help you figure out whether the unknown word is a noun, verb, or adjective.

For example, maybe you are looking at a sentence that says, "It was a very sultry day in the middle of the summer." You probably understand each word except for "sultry". Think about what you know about the summer. It is likely that "sultry" has something to do with weather.

In most cases, your  guess about the meaning of a word from the context will match with the definition from the Dictionary. As you practice, you will simply trust your instinct.

Only in rare cases when that word was so vital that the whole sentence or paragraph was unclear due to that one single unfamiliar word, would I stop reading to look it up. Then, you look it up in an English- English dictionary, and write it down in context, so that you have it for future reference.