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How to Read 100 Books | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 12 29 January 2014 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
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(or: Lessons Learned from Super Challenge I)
We still have a couple months to go before the next Super Challenge starts, but I thought it would be a good idea to share our collective experience while SC-I is still fresh in our minds. Hopefully we can help more people cross the finish line at the end of 2015! Here are the things that helped me: 1. Get a head start. My reading speed was slow in the beginning. It took me a month to get through the 100+ pages of Le Petit Prince. Although the pages you read before May 1 won't count, the warm-up period will help you to make a strong start. And if you haven't done them, the Assimil courses are a great precursor to independent reading. 2. Start collecting materials now. Look through the old parallel text links, download all the free classics to your kindle, see what they have at your used bookstores and friends-of-the-library sales. It's nice to have a diverse choice of works to choose from. 3. Wait, you don't have a kindle??? Buy an e-Reader. The pop-up dictionaries are a wonder. I don't think I could've finished without one. 4. Start on May 1 & Don't Stop. This was a harder challenge than most of us anticipated, and it took everyone (I think) almost the full 20 months to finish. 5. Don't Be Afraid of the Classics. They can be long-winded, and it feels like it takes forever to finish them. I sometimes felt that I was sabotaging myself by taking 8 weeks to read a 400-page novel. But it pays off: when I later picked up more popular modern novels I could tear through them at a much faster pace. Another benefit of the classics is that it's easy to find English versions at the library. For modern books I was on my own: they weren't on kindle, and there were often no translations. It really helped me to have English books to check my comprehension against, or to assist me with tricky passages. 6. Harry Potter is Your Friend. I hated most of the books in translation I looked at, but the translations of the HP series seem to be high quality. It's also a straight narrative, which are much easier to follow than novels with a lot of digressions. 7. Novels are Easier than Short Stories. This seems counter-intuitive, but: I found that the beginnings of a book were always a struggle for me. There'd be new vocabulary, and a new style of writing. Then, after a few chapters, I would settle into the author's style, and my reading would start to flow. The last 100 pages of a book were always so much easier than the first 100. I never got this same flow when I tried to read short stories; it felt like I was always starting over. 8. Join a Book Club. I didn't ever participate, but I followed some of the conversations on GoodReads, and they helped me understand some of the more difficult works I tried. 9. Still Study. I did occasional FSI chapters throughout the year, and there was a nice synergy between the advanced chapters and my reading. 9. Pick One Language. This is the hardest part. Reading 100 "books" in 20 months took a lot of time. I tried to read casually on my lunch break, but that wasn't enough. I needed to dedicate actual time at night and on the weekends to reading. Which: I like to read, so this was fine by me. But there is not a chance I could have done this for two languages ... even though I'm kind of sort of tempted to try on Super Challenge II ... Edited by kanewai on 29 January 2014 at 3:04am 18 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 12 29 January 2014 at 2:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with all these points. I would add:
1. Quantity is as important as quality OR You need to crawl before you can walk. Don't worry about reading books beyond your range at the start. The challenge is to read X number of pages (or whatever) not X number of pages of high-level literature. 2. In the same way that novels are easier than short stories, series by the same author are easier than stand alone novels. I too found Harry Potter a good read. I also enjoyed the Percy Jackson series and the Hunger Games trilogy. 3. Set a daily reading goal. Try to read more than the daily goal each day to give yourself some slack when you sometimes miss your goal. 4. Make your daily goal in pages not minutes (i.e., don't aim to read for an hour, aim to read 10 pages that day). Edited by patrickwilken on 29 January 2014 at 2:21am 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 12 29 January 2014 at 2:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Great advice by kanewai.
I'd add a few points: a) Respect your tastes. If you choose books of a genre you are not interested in even in your native language, you are likely to start procrastinating or it will just take you long. And there won't be much pleasure in it, which is the worst part. Hate classics? Don't read them. Find the modern fantasy books stupid? Avoid them. And so on. And if you really dislike a book, just count in the part you read and put it away. I got stuck for weeks trying to get through an exceptionally bad crime novel before making the right thing! b) Get the sources beforehand and get lots of them of various kind. Allow yourself to always have a choice of what do you feel like reading next. Get texts of various genres you like and various difficulty. It is sometimes awesome to exchange classics for an easy book or an easier teenager aimed book for something more intellectual or non fiction. And never let yourself run out of books. Get to know your book sellers, eshops and libraries. c) Don't be afraid to start from easier books and good quality translations. Harry Potter is the most common exemple but there are more. It is, however, not that easy to tell quality of the translation beforehand or when you are not at a high level yet. But the translations in general are not just one huge mass of crap to be avoided. And look for advice on easier books. Some good quality sources are on the forums already or don't be afraid to ask for advice. There are many beginner/intermediate friendly classics and many really difficult low genre books. d) Don't take breaks. That leads to the next and last point: e) Think well about the load you can take on. Many of us had underestimated the challenge. My personal guess is that the amount of 200 x 100 pages is possible to reach for a passionate reader who has already learnt the basics of the language (really the basics, I don't think you need any high level to begin) and who doesn't take a few months break due to university exams as I stupidly had (and unnecessarily, I could have managed my time much better). If you know you are going to be busy or it already is a challenge to find some calm moments to read, keep to one SC, that is 10000 pages. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5265 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 12 29 January 2014 at 2:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Great post kanewai! I wholeheartedly agree, especially with the advice to get an e-reader. Having a pop-up dictionary makes reading in a TL much more enjoyable and comfortable. Used e-readers (in the US) can be had for as little as $40. Tablet vs e-reader doesn't have to be an either/or decision. Both have their own distinct advantages. A no frills used tablet can be had for under $100 in the US.
I would also add that along with the e-reader to download the free, open source, Calibre software in order to convert between formats and make your own e-books from the web. You can read online newspapers and blog text in e-ink format with the pop-up dictionary at your fingertips. I regularly read El País (España) and A Verdade (Moçambique) on my ancient kindle keyboard 3G. We really do live in amazing times for language learning. We just have to take advantage of it. Edited by iguanamon on 29 January 2014 at 2:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 12 29 January 2014 at 8:02am | IP Logged | ||
In addition to scraping freely available content from various newspaper sites using Calibre, you can also buy cheap subscriptions to various international newspapers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4277 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 6 of 12 29 January 2014 at 9:36am | IP Logged | ||
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As I love reading and as reading literature is my main learning method, I've considered taking part in a Super Challenge. However, there's one question I asked myself that helped me take the decision not to participate: Would I be able to read 100 novels in 20 months in my own mother tongue?
As the answer is "no", for a variety of reasons (lack of time mainly, but also my personal reading pace), I decided not to participate. Maybe that question can help others take a decision too. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 7 of 12 29 January 2014 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
But it's not really 100 novels. Book lengths vary, but by a rough estimate they are on average about 100k words long, which equates to about 400 pages. So the previous Super Challenge was for about 25 books in 20 months, so just over a book a month. There is currently some debate about cutting this limit in half anyway. Another way to look at it: 10000 pages - the previous SC - is on average 15 pages/day. Edited by patrickwilken on 29 January 2014 at 9:59am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 8 of 12 29 January 2014 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
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See this wikia page too. I wrote some parts with my blood... haha just kidding. But yeah it's an important project for me.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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