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Acquire vocabulary through reading | ||
Tags: Reading | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 35 17 February 2012 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Let's say you have a certain amount of time to devote to reading every day. Which of the above options do you think will allow you to acquire the most
vocabulary? By acquire I mean to be able to produce/recognize the word instantly. I'm not suggesting that reading alone will allow this level of acquisition. What I would like you to consider is that this is the part of your language learning methodology that is devoted to reading, and that one of the ultimate goals of your entire language plan is to be able to produce/recognize the word instantly. I have intentionally limited this to 3 options, not talked about the merits of repeating shorter passages in the same time frame, not mentioned how these integrate into the rest of a language plan, etc, but feel free to discuss these. I ask this question because I have made a great error in my language learning. I have learned several languages to a not-so-high level, and have to spend a lot of time maintaining them. So I am going to reverse this error, first by taking my weakest language to C1, and then taking the other 3 there before learning any new ones. Before I considered myself to be a great language starter. Now I want to be a great language finisher. It is my destiny. My pertinent languages and approximate levels: Japanese - B2 French - B2 Mandarin - B1 Russian - A2 So I'm trying to find the best ways to "finish" these languages, or take them to C1. And this poll is one of my first steps in that endeavor. I hope that the ensuing discussion will shed some light on my situation. I am using LingQ as a tool to help organize my reading, so looking up words is pretty easy. I have found out that if I just read, I will not assimilate much, if any, new vocabulary. And it doesn't seem to matter what else I do on the side, or if the material is/isn't i+1. Unless I take the vocabulary and learn it separately, it just won't stick. And I suspect that merely looking up the definitions isn't enough either. I say this because I take conversation lessons over skype every week. I look up every unknown word, but don't remember that word later, and don't notice any improvement in vocabulary over the years. So for those reasons, I chose 3 above. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 35 17 February 2012 at 11:41am | IP Logged | ||
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The problem with looking up unknown words in dictionaries is that it takes a long time. It is even worse when we find we often look up the same word several times. Since looking up words is so time-consuming it cuts back on the percentage of time when we are actually reading. So, we often are forced to either read a small amount intensively, or work with much easier texts extensively. This makes reading less enjoyable than it should be.
If we can cut down the time it takes to look up unknown words, and never have to look up the same word twice, then the gap between intensive and extensive reading narrows. This is only possible with automation. This is precisely the advantage of software reading applications such as LingQ and Learning With Texts. They allow us to read texts that would previously been too complicated without being overwhelmed by time spent looking up unknown words. As a result, I now use these tools (LWT in my case) for a great percentage of my reading. I can get through a whole novel in the time it would have taken me before to read a chapter or two. This mass exposure does seem to have increase my vocabulary far more than when I was using the manual word-lookup method. Edited by Splog on 17 February 2012 at 11:42am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 35 17 February 2012 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I largely agree with what Splog said (Professor Argüelles has also chimed in against looking up every word). My tools of choice are parallel texts, and secondarily, pop-up dictionaries (they reduce the time to look up a word to a second, rather than the greater part of a minute).
Check out Arekkusu's self-talk exercise. Also, consider writing your thoughts down (or translating texts into) your target languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 4 of 35 17 February 2012 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I voted for just reading, but of course you can't learn EVERYTHING from the context without looking it up.
This depends on the level, you can't really have the same strategy for an A2 and B2 language. Well, depends on the strategy obviously. I recommend looking up mostly "known unknowns", ie words that you recognize and maybe can even reproduce. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4865 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 35 17 February 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I voted for "Just Reading" but I don't really believe that. But none of the other choices was better. My choice would have been "Reading while looking up the words you can't figure out from context, or which would make a big difference to the meaning of the sentence."
If you can sort of get the idea of what some adverb or adjective means from context, just let it slide for now. But if the word in question is a major player in the sentence (e.g. "John is a BLIPSNOP" and you don't know "blipsnop") then pause to look it up because without knowing it the whole sentence is meaningless. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4680 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 6 of 35 17 February 2012 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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The key for me is to re-read the material at least twice. The first time I just read and read, highlighting the words I can't understand based on the context. Before to read the text for second time, I look up all the words I have doubt about, and then I re-read the whole text. This time I really enjoy reading since I know what mean all the words. Edited by Heriotza on 17 February 2012 at 8:23pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 7 of 35 17 February 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I commented in another thread on this recently, IIRC. I agree that none of the stated options is best. IN THEORY, I think number three is the right answer. However, in practice, this is too difficult to keep up because you keep getting slowed down and can't keep reading smoothly. My approach is to consciously mix it up. Spend some time looking up everything and making flash cards for review. Spend some time just looking up key words that hinder understanding or keep coming up, and not making flash cards. Spend some time just reading, and make sure your dictionaries are locked away where you can't find them.
Not only does this keep things interesting, but I think it is necessary. A lot of the required reorganization of the brain for me occurs when I work to figure out words and nuances purely from context, but some words cannot be gained from context alone, at least not in the short term. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 35 17 February 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
@geoffw, yeah, exactly. i tend to look up unknown words in parts i like most. Sometimes it's even a necessity, if I add a sentence or two to SRS I prefer to know every word there. as for John is a BLIPSNOP, depends on where it is in the story. or what sort of sentence it is. "The sky was BLISNOP" is usually a sentence you can skip:) Edited by Serpent on 17 February 2012 at 10:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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