Struggling with Vocabulary While Reading Books

This is literally the process of how to broaden your vocabulary. Many authors intentionally use *the big words* as part of their writing style. It's very common for native speakers to have to look up words when reading, unless they only read simple, basic novels. I mean, how many times in daily conversation or popular media would anyone hear the words "sardonic" or "perspicacious"?

I think you’re doing just fine. Stopping to look a word up isn’t a sign of weakness, but one of seeking out knowledge. It’ll build slowly over time and you’ll be able to put other words into context.

look for books that are specifically targeted at "young adults". that's roughly the same degree of fluency required for most movies.

I started out looking up every word individually which was super tedious. Now, I read a paragraph or so at a time and try to figure out meanings from the context. Then I double-check using Google Lens translate, which I can do quickly at a glance, instead of searching each word individually. 

This is literally the value of reading. You encounter words… You can see how they spelled… And you can look them up. A way to expedite this would be to read electronic books where you could click on words for definitions. I’m a native English speaker and I do this. Kindle includes a dictionary feature so you can look up any word. This is possible on any computer even without a physical Kindle . read.amazon.com

I would occasionally make the rule for myself when reading a book in a foreign language that I would only look up an unknown word the third time I came across it (or second time if it seemed really important).

You could try comics and graphic novels. English isn’t my mom’s first language and she said that reading those helped her a lot because she could use the pictures to help her figure out the writing. I also second someone else’s suggestion to read young adult / pre-teenage books. The writing style is simpler and the vocabulary would be common words. This is the path English language speakers take as well. No one starts off reading Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

>Any tips on improving vocabulary or reading faster without constant dictionary checks? You're already doing it. Reading books that put you outside your comfort zone is precisely how we acquire that kind of specific vocabulary. You'll struggle with your first few novels, getting used with literary jargon and unconventional sentence structure, but eventually you'll internalize it and be tackling classics with no problem.

When I was at the NSA I worked with a lot of foreigners. To a person, they all spoke English well. I helped one coworker on her GRE by having both of us read a book for work on terrorism. Oh, wow, was it filled with many words she didn't know. The vocabulary in a non-fiction book can be much higher level than normal conversation or informal online writing. In short, looking words up in the dictionary should be normal for reading.

It’s entirely normal for teenage/adults who are native English speakers to refer to dictionaries when encountering words not previously seen. I generally don’t need to now, but I have half a century of reading a wide range of texts. Having said that, I still have to look up the odd word - sometimes because it seems wrong in the context but I’ve misunderstood the subtleties of the word. Occasionally because I’ve just never seen the word before because it’s obscure or archaic. Using a dictionary is normal.

I am an English Teacher. I do a lot of work with reading articles with my students and learning new vocabulary. It will help you to be able to read books. let me know if you are interested in taking online English classes and I will send you my link.

If you read the book on a kindle (an e-reading device available in US), you can touch any word you don't understand and the definition pops up.

Honestly I don't look up words when I don't know them. If the words are used often enough in multiple contexts I'll get an idea of what it means.