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How did you start using native materials? | ||
Tags: Native Materials | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bobb328 Groupie Canada Joined 4590 days ago 52 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 34 31 December 2013 at 6:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I know similar questions have been asked many times, however, I'm still confused as to when people devote most of
their time to native materials. I've been studying German for about a year and a half and still cannot read and understand most native material. I completed Assimil a long time ago, did some bits and pieces of courses, and am now lesson 5 of Living Language Ultimate German Advanced but I'm finding it incredibly dull. I can hardly keep my focus just listening through the dialogues they're so boring. In fact I find this the case with many "advanced" books with the exception of Perfectionnement Allemand but translating the French to English took WAY too long. I thought I'd take a shot at just using native materials just to see how it goes. I've tried just reading German books, however, even easy books like Hunger Games I can still only understand the slightest gist of what's going on. Although It's definitely more enjoyable than LL. So, I think I may just jump into native material as my main source of learning. I own Tintenherz (Inkheart) German and English editions with the German audiobook. Not having enough time for LR, I thought I'd try my own way by reading a chapter of the German while listening to the audio, not marking anything just reading and listening, then reading the same chapter in English while also listening to the German, then going back and reading the German again with audio. Basically, what I'm asking is when/how did you decide to mainly use native materials and does my system sound like a good method to use? Has anyone tried something similar? I have several YA books in both German and English that would be good to use. Or do you think it would be better to complete Living Language (god help me) and then move on to reading actual German material. Thanks! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 34 31 December 2013 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
You sound like you're ready to give it a shot. It's definitely worth doing. I've done similar things and found it a good way to start using native materials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4104 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 3 of 34 31 December 2013 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Go for it!
Personally, I don't think there's ever a perfect time to jump into the native pool with perfect ease. You just have to go for it, and if what you're doing isn't working for you, you try something slightly different. I'm no master polyglot who has developed a system that works for me. Instead I have done things very differently each time, and there have been different results each time: I learned English exclusively from native materials, some subtitled and some not. The first dozen times I had conversations with natives I hadn't had a single English class. Learning took a very long time, though. My mother will tell you that one day, when I was four or five, she just realised that I could kind of (actually, she doesn't say "kind of", but I assume she means to) speak a language that no one had ever taught me. Although I was reading and more or less understanding the classics (Brontë, Dickens etc.) before then I didn't reach a truly advanced level until I got an internet connection, around age 12, and got completely immersed in the language all day every day. I had six years of formal French lessons, not counting some months of tutoring before and after, before I ever consumed any kind of native material. I stumbled upon L'Étranger in a used bookshop not long after reading it for the world literature module in Swedish class. I remembered how incredibly plain the language was in the translation and said to myself: "I could read this in French, no problem!" At that time it'd only been two years since my last French class and there was indeed no major problem. Then I paused the language for a couple of years, and picked it back up with archaeology books and magazines. With Gaelic my only exposure to native material was a weekly cartoon on TV, while taking university courses. Didn't get much out of either. With Classical Greek we turned to native materials, in a classroom environment, after one month of laying down the basics. It was horrible, mostly because we were taught not to treat the language like a living language, but some code to break. Before we could figure out what a word meant we had to go through the horrible process of figuring out every grammatical detail about the word, getting to its root, and finally looking it up. Don't do this if you want to keep enjoying the language! With Breton, I started listening to subtitled native materials a week or so in which got me pretty decent at listening very quickly (it depends on the speaker, though). Two months in, after doing some grammar and vocabulary groundwork, I started reading my first translated novel with the English original side-by-side. In the beginning I read each sentence in each language. About 5 weeks in, I started using the English, every paragraph or so, mostly to confirm my understanding of the Breton version. Even then I was already picking up new vocabulary from mostly guessing (e.g. a 'pellseller' - 'farsee-er' - referring to watching night skies is obviously a telescope). It's been a lot more work than when I picked up my first French novel, but it has also been incredibly rewarding. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5135 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 4 of 34 31 December 2013 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Two important skills to master when using native materials early are (1) to be comfortable not understanding everything, and (2) to be able to make a quick guess and move on. Over time, things will fall into place. You'll be surprised how much you pick up without doing any actual work, just by getting constant exposure. I personally wouldn't bother with LR, translations etc. - too much work and too little fun. I prefer to just read and listen and let my brain sort things out over time.
I like to read books for young readers at the early stages. I especially like series. "Die 3 Fragezeichen", "5 Freunde", or books by Astrid Lindgren are classics in that regard. There are also science fiction series for kids, series about girls and horses, and much more. Another option is to start listening to (or reading) news, or a particular segment of it, and then expand from there. Everything that has many pictures is also very good as a starting point, for instance travel reports on travel forums, or do-it-yourself stuff (TV, books, forums), e.g., gardening, cooking, drawing etc. Richly illustrated encyclopedias for kids are also great sources of comprehensible input: you'll be familiar with the stuff already, there are many pictures, and articles are short and accessible. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4538 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 34 31 December 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm learning German too. I started in June 2012. Having lived on and off in Germany (but working and living in English there) I had some rudimentary vocabulary, but really not very much. I was somewhere around +A1. I started by re-doing my original course books from years before, and self-studied A1 and half of A2 in about six weeks; after which I gave up the course books as they didn't seem so helpful. At the same time I started doing the course books I started watching TV shows. I didn't understand very much at first (the only thing I originally had access to was South Park which was pretty crazy to listen to!) but I found it really helpful to hear the language every day. I was able to see and enjoy my first German movie without subtitles after about four months, and started reading my first German book after five months. I took me four weeks to read about 200 pages, but after that everything went faster. Now I could read 200 pages in about four days. A year and half after I started learning German I have read just over 10000 pages of books and 300 films. What was really helpful was using the Kindle with the Collins dictionary (best 8 Euros I have spent on language learning!). I would recommend not getting the Paperwhite, but the cheaper E-Ink version, which allows you to access the dictionary much easier. I know some people like to listen to audio books while reading. Personally I like to read at my own rate so I don't do that. I find the pronunciation in German sufficiently regular that I can read to myself and get the pronunciation close enough to be useful, and then rely on fine-tuning the pronunciation of words by watching films. It's not that my comprehension is perfect. I often come across parts of films that I can't understand, but it's good enough that I can enjoy and get most of the drift of most films. I have slowly worked up from children's books (Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series are good) to more adult literature, but I still have a way go before I can more easily tackle more complex German literature. You might want to consider participating the in next Super Challenge starting in May 2014. The last one, that's just finished, really helped me tackle native literature. Edited by patrickwilken on 31 December 2013 at 3:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3993 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 34 31 December 2013 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think one of the most important factors is being interested in the material/topic you are dealing with. You should be dying to know "whodunnit" if you are reading a novel or otherwise acquire knowledge about some topic you are very interested in. That's why I wouldn't recommend Hunger games because I assume you are already familiar with the story. If you know the outcome you won't be able to maintain your enthusiasm.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5014 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 34 31 December 2013 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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1. Take easy things at first. You are on a good way but if those are still too hard, get a graded reader or something to boost your confidence and get used to reading in German. Or take the German and the English version side by side. Or start with a comic book. Really, it is up to you to choose how steep learning curve you are going to experience. And a side note, a good quality translation tends to be a fine choice at the beginning, compared to "easy" books by native authors.
2.Choose only things you enjoy. That is huge part of the magic. Take things you know you would enjoy in English, things that will catch you and keep you going. You can even use things you already know in English, many people start their native materials adventure with translated Harry Potter. And there are others who hate fiction so they start with wikipedia or something and get to non-fiction books. AJATT once wrote a great article about it. Far too many people choose what everyone things is easy and good choice without respecting their own tastes and preferences. 3.Don't let first "lack of success" drive you away. Of course you won't understand every word and you'll be painfully slow during the first book, compared to your native language. Of course you will panic "I don't understand! help!" during the first one or two episodes of a tv series. Keep going, it does get better. You should see first signs of improvement quite soon. And huge improvement not that long after. 4.Choose between the intensive and extensive approach. The intensive approach is quite what eidimörk described as his Ancient Greek classes. A lot of people learn greatly with it, studying every word and grammar feature they encounter. But what you seem to be looking for is the extensive approach, which seems to be prefered by htlalers (and is definitely my choice). The key is the word "extensive". It doesn't mean lazy or easy. It means you need to consume a lot of content. Again, point 3, don't expect perfect results from your first book or movie. 5.What you describe as your system looks quite like the L-R technique described on the forums repeatedly. It works miraculously for some learners. However, I think you may profit from treating listening and reading separately at the beginning. Allow yourself to get immersed in the thing, either the audiobook or the book. 6.From my experience, a few large doses of the material, a few larger chunks of time devoted to it, are at the beginning more efficient than a small piece every day. Again, you need fun input to be able to get through this. 7.Looking up things during extensive reading. Look up only the words that are totally essential at the beginning. If you understand from context, you are doing fine. All the important vocabulary will get repeated, in both the same and other contexts. Not even the most creative author draws from infinite poll of words. Unless you want to read intensively (which is certainly a valid option for many learners), don't look up everything. At least in the paper book, emk has got great experience with dictionaries in kindle, which make the whole looking up process much faster and less boring and disruptive. So, don't lose courage, have fun, keep going. The results will come! Edited by Cavesa on 31 December 2013 at 3:38pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3993 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 8 of 34 31 December 2013 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with almost everything you say, except this. Of course we are all different, but I personally find re-reading something you already know too boring. For instance, I enjoyed Isabel Allende's novels in Hungarian translation, but when I decided to read them for the second time in the original Spanish, I very quickly gave up, because I wasn't motivated enough as I already knew what would happen in the next chapter. On the other hand I devoured books written in English about a historical period I was especially interested in, and couldn't find rescources about in my native tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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