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How to bring up English from B2 to C1 ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5156 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 49 of 66 18 September 2014 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Finally someone gave mor realistic figures about extensive reading. I for once believe it's not practical as a technique for a non-transparent languages, since the road towards 96% of reading comprehensionactually accounts for the longest part of the journey. It's not like you can give yourself the luxury of working mostly with extensive reading for learning the 'unknown knowns' (correct me if I'm wrong, Serpent) when 96% is actually closer to the number of total words (or roots) you need to learn, given the shortage of cognates. So, once again I regret thinking extensive reading alone would bring me to a result in Georgian on Russian similar to the one I got with French. As a matter of fact, I may not even be elligible for extensive reading in French. I understand it's predictable to place an emphasis on going from B2 to C1 when most people learn languages that come with at least 50% of vocabulary bonus, but for the vast majority of languages the hard-work consists of learning brand new roots, so intensive reading should be emphasized into further stages. This or SRS. Naturally, because B1 happens much later than it does for French or Spanish. Since I don't like SRS, I believe intensive billingual reading accounts for my real SRS, by comparing line by line. But fopr this, you shouldn't worry about SC goals like reading 5, 10 or 20 pages a day. EDIT: IT's also important to mention that it takes a lot of time till you reach a level when you find something that's 'not so difficult for you' so you can do extensive reading. Not every language has a series of graded readers like Chinese does. Edited by Expugnator on 18 September 2014 at 10:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 50 of 66 19 September 2014 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, Prof Argüelles learns by reading extensively with a 80% coverage. However I do think that the *comprehension* should be higher than 80% - thanks to the grammar, context etc. And yeah, it can't be measured scientifically, but you shouldn't feel like you're missing something crucial with every single word you don't know. I'd say 80% coverage, 95% comprehension for an opaque language and 70% coverage, 85-90% comprehension for a more transparent one. But comprehension always wins. Oh and continuous text/long sessions are the best, as comprehension can increase thanks to flow and because the previous text is more fresh in your mind AND still relevant (=why short stories are less than ideal although they seem tempting).
Also, Russian does have quite a few loan words, as well as many potentially transparent derivations, so I think extensive reading (or semi-extensive with a popup dictionary or translation) should work much better for Russian than Georgian. As for SRS, sorry if I've already asked but have you tried something other than single words? I don't like SRS'ing single words either. (this season I've even SRS'ed the CL and EL groups btw :D) Edited by Serpent on 19 September 2014 at 3:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4244 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 51 of 66 19 September 2014 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In his Extensive Reading and Vocabulary Range video he recommends reading texts that you know 98% of the vocabulary of, and not just as close to 98% as you can get, but he cites a study saying that specifically passing the 98% mark greatly increases the rate of acquiring new vocabulary.
Though I think at some point he mentions the 98% is after accounting for words you can guess, so I'm a bit unsure if you're supposed to be learning the 1/50 unknown words you encounter, or if that's the maximum number of unguessable words you should be encountering to have enough context to make the guessable ones stick. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 52 of 66 19 September 2014 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I recently switched from reading 'Kraken' by China Miéville which I was finding a bit of a slog to 'Jurassic Park' by Michael Crichton which is an extremely easy read. I haven't bothered to count all the words, but for Kraken by vocabulary is at least +96%, for Jurassic Park +98%. Despite the relatively small differences, the experience of reading the two books is quite profound. Kraken is a hard read, with lots of passages I don't fully understand; Jurassic Park is an easy read that I can immerse myself in. I think the differences are not simply to do with vocabulary. JP is must more concrete in its use of language - dinosaur eats this, person runs there - whereas Kraken has longer passages, which tend more towards the philosophical. It's hard to show, but my sense is that a lot of the difficulty in understanding text at an intermediate level (like I have for German) is not simply about the number of words known (which is an easy metric) but about the complexity of the text in other ways, which are hard to quantify. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4243 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 53 of 66 19 September 2014 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My English improved immensely during my teens thanks to dialogue-heavy video games. I can not recommend them enough.
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| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4089 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 54 of 66 19 September 2014 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
For me it was hours upon hours of role playing on telnet. Befriending the really pretentious clique in which everyone was writing to impress was particularly helpful. ;) Edited by eyðimörk on 19 September 2014 at 8:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5049 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 55 of 66 19 September 2014 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Exactly. The vocabulary levels are only a rule of thumb. Extensive reading is best done when you can follow the content without any help, and thriller novels are often the best option for people who don't like to read children's books. I've always found thriller novels and contemporary popular non-fiction to be leaps and bounds more useful than high literature, which is harder to follow and much further removed from the language most people are going to be using. So, can you do extensive reading in an opaque language? Sure it's harder, but isn't everything harder in an opaque language? If you can find any content that isn't too boring and you can follow most of the meaning, then extensive reading will work. If you can't, you either need easier content, or your reading comprehension skill is still at beginner level and you need to study the basics more and/or use some intensive reading to bring your reading comprehension up to the level of your other skills.
Wow, those numbers are truly frightening to me. That reading total is probably close to my reading in all languages combined, and the movies is ten times more than that... Thanks for sharing your experience that extensive reading can work when used extremely, well, extensively. It also works as a small component of an overall strategy, for example if you read only three or four books a year, while spending time with other techniques. Edited by robarb on 19 September 2014 at 11:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 56 of 66 20 September 2014 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks. 10000 pages a year sounds a lot, but it's only 27 pages a day. 300-400 films/year is about 1.5 hours/day equivalent to TV viewing. What's become obvious to me is what a dedicated process language learning is. To make it doable you should pick what you are good at: I like reading and watching movies. ;) The first six months was a little rough until my language skills evolved enough to really start accessing native materials effectively, but after that it was about the slackest way for me to learn the language. Plus, of course, I live in Berlin so I have an unfair access to native materials. If someone was more an extrovert I would just perhaps getting a job in a local Kneipe (dive bar) and just chatting with locals over beer. If you are more analytic perhaps grammar drills are the way to go. --------- Also my long-term aim has always been to get to C2 in German. C1 is just a helpful halfway goal. Everyone I know who has got to C2 in English (the only language I can really judge) did so via extensive reading (with of course listening/reading/writing playing a role). So I thought I might as well get a headstart. Edited by patrickwilken on 20 September 2014 at 1:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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