Extensive vs intensive reading (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Extensive vs intensive reading
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11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

emk
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Message 9 of 11

05 July 2012 at 6:19pm | IP Logged

a3 wrote:

Sadly, the percentages are correct. ._.
It's just that I got enough of learning grammar and now I want to read some real
language.

I agree with the others. If you only understand 6% to 7% of a text, any kind of reading
will be frustrating, and probably not very useful. But on the other hand, you're sick
of studying grammar and you want some real language.

You can learn by exposure, if that's what you want. But you're going to need
some sort of trick. Basically, you'll need two things:

1. A text or audio source where you understand at least 80% of what you're reading, at
least in general terms. Some good sources for this:

- Graded readers, which start out like "See Dick. See Jane. See Spot. See spot run."
and gradually get more difficult. The drawback is that you don't really learn to
pronounce the language, which can cause serious problems later on.

- Assimil (or Linguaphone) courses, which have parallel L1 & L2 text, and L2 audio. You
use the native language text to temporarily boost your understanding of the L2 text and
audio, and then listen repeatedly until it "clicks"—maybe 10 repetitions of a 2-minute
lesson. I learned French this way, and I recommend it highly if you want to learn
through exposure.

- Listening/Reading with parallel or interlinear translations, which is sort of like a
do-it-yourself Assimil course. Google for more info.

- If you're really old school, you could get a grammar and a glossary and just
start translating native text through brute force and massive effort. Gordon's Old
Norse course works like this, for example. This is basically 100% intensive reading
from day 1, and it tends to be agonizing. It's mostly used by grad students who already
know several closely related languages, and even most of them start with something
easier.

2. Consistent daily (or almost-daily) exposure for a good six months or so. A daily
Assimil lesson gives you a short-term boost. But after a couple of days, you'll forget
most of it. This means that you need to develop the self-discipline to do something
every day for months at a time. Try buying a "year at a glance" calendar, and marking
off each day you study in red. Your goal is to build a nice, unbroken string of red
days. Google "Seinfeld calendar" for more information.

If you already speak a related language (English -> German, for example), then six
months of 30 to 60 minutes per day will probably allow you to read many native
newspapers or books with a dictionary.
4 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
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Message 10 of 11

05 July 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged

a3 wrote:

It's about Finnish. Give any random word, be it adjective, verb or noun, declined or conjugated in any random form and in most of the cases I'll be able to tell the dictionary form. The problem is, that I dont know the meaning of the word itself.
And I dont want to stop reading because I know little vocab - I'm reading in an attempt to expand my vocab, hardly anything else helps. I guess I'll have to go back to ymmärrä suomea.

Try finding something that really matters to you, like songs for example. find something on twitter too, tweets are short. You may want to try selkouutiset as well.
2 persons have voted this message useful

dampingwire
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United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

Message 11 of 11

05 July 2012 at 10:15pm | IP Logged

a3 wrote:

It's about Finnish. Give any random word, be it adjective, verb or noun,
declined or conjugated in any random form and in most of the cases I'll be able to tell
the dictionary form. The problem is, that I dont know the meaning of the word itself.
And I dont want to stop reading because I know little vocab - I'm reading in an attempt
to expand my vocab, hardly anything else helps. I guess I'll have to go back to ymmärrä
suomea.

I think my Japanese vocab is probably where your Finnish vocab is. I've picked up ~500
words from the memrise.com N5 course but it's just not enough to read anything
meaningful.

There's a screenful of "courses" there for Finnish. I've no idea which to recommend but
I found 30 mins/day got me ~500 words in a month or so. I've let that slide a bit
lately as I've concentrated on grammar but I'm going to go back and get going on the
Kore 2000 or Kore 6000 course. A few thousand words should provide a reasonable base to
begin to read something.

Of course I've no idea about Finnish grammar and sentence construction so you may need
much more or a little less.

1 person has voted this message useful

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