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Judging Difficulty of Foreign Literature

 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading Post Reply
13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
ScottScheule
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 Message 1 of 13
25 March 2014 at 8:49pm | IP Logged 
I've been reading Spanish literature by starting at the easiest and working my way up. A useful way of doing this is going to Amazon, and searching for Spanish children's literature. Amazon allows you to specify which age literature you're looking for. This allows me to move gradually upwards.

Spanish is one of the easiest languages to do this with, giving the plethora of material available. I wonder how one would do something similar with another language, one where Amazon doesn't have such a wide selection.

I also wonder how to determine the difficulties of adult literature, some of which is of course easier than other. I wonder if there's any tool out there that allows one to determine the general difficulty of a work.

The other option is to just come onto the forums and ask everyone what authors are better for beginners.

Edited by ScottScheule on 25 March 2014 at 8:50pm

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sctroyenne
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 Message 2 of 13
25 March 2014 at 9:02pm | IP Logged 
In English there's Lexile which measures reading
difficulty. It'd be great if there's something similar in other languages.

edit: It didn't take me long to discover that Lexile measures books in
Spanish as well!

Edited by sctroyenne on 25 March 2014 at 9:03pm

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ScottScheule
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 Message 3 of 13
25 March 2014 at 9:09pm | IP Logged 
Perfect!
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hjordis
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 Message 4 of 13
25 March 2014 at 9:37pm | IP Logged 
Well I don't have any fancy tools that I use, but I do have a bit of a process I use to
order my books.

First, I look at font size and spacing. Books for older people, especially more
technical books, tend to be more scrunched together.

Second, I try reading a few randomly chosen sentences, just to test the waters.

Finally, I look at the subject matter. I do this for two reasons. First, it doesn't
matter how simply it's written if it's full of complicated ideas it's better left until
I have a stronger grasp of the language so I can focus on the ideas more than the
language. Second, no matter how easy it is to read, if it bores me it will be a chore.
Alternately, something a little difficult for me but super interesting might be worth
the effort.

Of course, these are just estimations and won't always work. It's good to remember that
if the book does turn out to be harder than expected you can always put it aside for
later. I suppose as far as ordering books you'd have to have a look inside feature like
on amazon for it to work well. I tend to stockpile books, so I don't have that problem.
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ScottScheule
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 Message 5 of 13
25 March 2014 at 9:44pm | IP Logged 
The more I think about it, asking on forums is probably the best way of doing it.
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Serpent
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 Message 6 of 13
25 March 2014 at 10:34pm | IP Logged 
Some relevant threads here.
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Wulfgar
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 Message 7 of 13
26 March 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged 
I'm spoiled now that I've moved all my reading to the computer. I just dump something in LingQ, and it tells me how
many unknown words there are. Divide by the minutes of audio, or number of pages, and compare with my metric.
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luke
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 Message 8 of 13
26 March 2014 at 6:58am | IP Logged 
For English readers, it can also be used to find easier or more challenging translations.

For instance, The Odyssey by Homer has several translations into English, some for children, some modern, and some difficult. That also leads one to the fact that although in the original language, a particular book may have been difficult (or perhaps easy), the translation isn't necessarily at the same level.

Le Petit Nicolas... Nicolas: 1070L

Even a book originally in English, like The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne has publishers that simplify the book and also a children's version.

Edited by luke on 26 March 2014 at 11:47pm



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