Reading in foreign languages: enough with dictionaries!
I believe that reading should be enjoyable. Ditto language learning. In fact, an excess of unfun reading or language learning can kill motivation to do either one. And yet teachers often advise the (very unfun) use of dictionaries and laborious reading methods that are supposed to improve comprehension.

This bugs me, and not just for the reason I gave above. There are several other problems with this approach:
-looking up words is rarely helpful unless you understand the surrounding text quite well and have a vague idea of what the word means already (from having seen it before). Otherwise, not only will the definition not help you much to understand, but you won't remember it later.
-If you do it in a bilingual dictionary, it causes you to start translating, which impairs comprehension quite noticeably.
-it slows me down a lot. I want to get to the point.
-it makes me feel like I'm in class. This is stressful and makes me think in terms of numerical progress, though language learning does not work like that.

I think that for language learning, it's best to read things you enjoy in large quantities and as fast as is comfortable or as allows for acceptable (to you) comprehension. Only use the dictionary when you've seen a word repeatedly and it seems important but you're just not sure what it means (for nouns, an image search sometimes works better). I think this is the best way to become a better reader and writer in the language of your choice (and enjoy it, coming to like the language more).

I believe that Stephen Krashen has something on his site about how counterproductive teacher-imposed "reading strategies" often are. Khatz of AJATT of course writes a lot about the importance of enjoying the journey, but he's largely pro-dictionary.

Just a note - I'm not against dictionaries on the whole. I love looking up words and phrases that have been bugging me or to find out their origins. I think the way that words travel and change their meaning over the years is fascinating. For instance, "alley oop!" is from the French "allez hop!", and "entrée" is borrowed from French, but in French it means appetizer, not main dish.


EDIT: I forgot to add that eventually it's helpful to use monolingual dictionaries, in part because it teaches you how to define words, in part because you may need to know how to use them. I've also heard of people who learn to read and write in a language by working their way through a good monolingual dictionary.