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Skipping unknown words when reading | ||
Tags: Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4661 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 17 of 24 14 September 2013 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Without highlighting words, why not just open a random page out of those you read earlier once in a while and look up some words, if you feel like you should be improving your vocabulary? As others have said before me, however, I don't think you need to do this. I don't look up everything myself; sometimes it's just more enjoyable to avoid it. However, out of what I read on the Internet, I look up all the words from a selection of articles. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 24 15 September 2013 at 1:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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If I would look up every unfamiliar word, as well as every vaguely unfamiliar word, it would take forever to get through the book. And if I (felt that I) had to look up everything, the level of the text would probably be a lot higher than mine.
Check Iversen's post about momentum: Guide to learning languages, part 1 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mountolive Pro Member United States Joined 4458 days ago 10 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 24 15 September 2013 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I do two types of reading. In the first type, where I am usually reading a graded reader or magazine (like "puntoycoma")that is appropriate for my level, I tend to look up every word I don't know. I have a pocket dictionary/grammar that I keep next to me while reading. When I find a word I don't know, I look it up, then I highlight the word in the dictionary.
If I look up a word I don't know in the dictionary and see that it has already been highlighted, indicating I encountered it before and still don't recognize it, then I make a flashcard (a physical one, I don't like the Anki-type systems). If I don't find the word in my dictionary-grammar (which is more of pocket-book and doesn't have every word) I will look it up in a larger dictionary and make a decision whether it is a word I want to know. If it is, I will make a flashcard. In the second type of reading, I use dual-language books (in Spanish there are a lot of good ones) and I just read the Spanish and if I really can't figure something out I will just look across the page. I really like dual language books because you can read real literature and you don't have to go to the dictionary/grammar book for every line. I find that I have to go through a dual-language book several times to get much out of it. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 24 16 September 2013 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||
When I do wordlists from texts I have normally used a format where I copy the text from a bilingual layout and leave a margen to the right on the paper for new vocabulary. To save time I often just note the words down with the translations used in the bilingual version, and else I look them up bulkwise a sentence or so ahead. And then I trnsfer the words to a wordlist while checking them an extra time in a dictionary whenever I feel there is some doubts (including doubts about morphology and syntax). For a long time I did my repetitions in the shape of a simpler word list no. 2, but I have realized that it is more logical to go back to the original text and check that I know understand all words in it. However one thing that always has irritated me about word collections from texts is that they are so unsystematic - I have to look words up all over the dictionary, and this is one of the reasons I have for learning words directly from dictionaries (though only after I have learnt the basic of a new language). The problem is that there is a trade-off when you learn words from texts: if there are too many unknown words you are bogged down with lookups, and you lose the momentum which is one of the two main reasons for extensive reading (curiosity about the subject is the other). And if you get your vocabulary lookups too easily - for instance from a popup dictionary or a translation - you just get your explanation and hurry on without really having memorized it. Trying to read both for content and for vocabulary is a fundamentally unstable compromise. But if you are struggling with a new language and just for a moment want to experience the feeling of truly mastering it then there is no better way than to grab some text you have studied intensively earlier and rereading it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4846 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 21 of 24 17 September 2013 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow... I am stunned at the replies to this thread. HTLAL is awesomeness on toast! Thank you all for the advice and encouragement.
Avid Learner mentioned flipping to a random page and looking up the words when I am able to. That sounds like a very interesting idea, and I'm going to try that! @osoymar - Yes, there is a Book-Off somewhere nearby. I went there before to buy a couple of comics and some CDs years ago, before my daily schedule became tight. I could make some time to go to Book-Off, but... I find myself to be quite frugal as I get older, and I feel guilty to even spend a few yen on books if there is the possibility that I won't like them. The upside, though, is that I get better at Japanese, so that is probably a fear that I'm going to have to terminate like Arnold Schwarzenegger. For library books, I thought about using some stickies/Post-Its to mark words that I feel I need to look up. Stick a few on the cover, and I have to only let go of the train handle a few seconds to remove the sticky from the cover and put it on the page. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 22 of 24 17 September 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As ever, gems of wisdom from Iversen, including, but not limited to this, which for some
reason stood out to me:
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4846 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 23 of 24 18 September 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
That stood out for me, too. That makes a lot of sense. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cpnlsn88 Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5036 days ago 63 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, Latin | Message 24 of 24 20 October 2013 at 1:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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This is a really important issue as reading is so important but can be fristrating if you're constantly stopping to look things up. For me the answer is different according to the language and particular book you're reading (in German I do look up every word - I can't stop myself!). It is a good idea to have some reading that is more intensive (articles/short stories) and some, at a lower level which one can read extensively, for enjoyment as it were.
I sometimes have a trick which is - if the book is sufficiently long, read the first 50 pages looking up most words (by this point the basic storyline of the book and its characters will be known to you so you can relax a little), thereafter only looking up words that keep cropping up, you see elsewhere or you remember after closing the book. After this I would then reread the last chapter or 10 pages etc and look up every word. There's a mix of different approaches, you still learn a lot of voabulary and can make some progress reading books that you enjoy. I sometimes will read a book where I have a 'quota' of words to look up (e.g. filling up one or two sides of A4) which once I've reached I can then read on without looking words up unless I keep coming across them or they stick in my mind after closing the book (always have a few reasonably small dictionaries lying around for after you've finished reading). The thing to remember is that if your vocabulary is growing it is like a snow ball and reading will cement what you already know. Of course you'll always get some words for free from context or because they're similar in a language you already know. Other suggestions mentioned are all good and worth trying: * use e-reader (find this very useful) * second hand book you can underline words in (so obvious but have never tried it!! I'll definitely be doing this) * books you've already read or know (Harry Potter, the Bible etc depending on tastes) * bilingual texts (a bit irritating for me but still worth considering. I do it with short stories in a new language and anything in classical Latin). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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