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Books to teach you to read | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4255 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 15 27 December 2013 at 11:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Elaboration might be necessary. I'm come across Prentice Hall's magnificent "X for Reading" series which are not about teaching you "hello, how are you?" in the first chapter, but for example French for Reading gets to scientific text at page 20. What I like most about these books is that they break all texts to sentences, explain the grammar as they go and make you deduce the meanings of unknown words, of which there usually is only one in each sentence.
I have very little interest in starting with "hello" and "good day" and I find most Teach Yourself books (for example) very trite and uninteresting in this sense. I have very little interest in speaking with people before I can read a novel. I didn't learn English by studying courtesies from a studybook and I don't intend to learn any other language that way either. Long story short, I'm certain there are other books like this, but where are they? So far I've found these books (to give you an idea of what I'm looking for) Prentice Hall: -Spanish for Reading -German for Reading -French for Reading I've also heard good things about "Living German" and "Reading Real Russian" but I've so far been unable to find these books. Can anyone provide insight? Edited by Henkkles on 27 December 2013 at 11:14am 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 15 27 December 2013 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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For what level learner are the Prentice Hall books most useful?
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 3 of 15 27 December 2013 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I also found that Deutsch? Warum nicht! introduced the usual topics in a very creative way. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4255 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 15 27 December 2013 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd say they can be picked up after being a solid beginner. This way one can breeze through the grammar only solidifying it and just enjoy the entire pages of TL that has been introduced earlier sentence by sentence. I had entirely forgotten about Deutsche Welle! I'll chekc their courses, no doubt about that. Edited by Henkkles on 27 December 2013 at 2:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 15 27 December 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is Reading French in the Arts and Sciences, which uses a systematic approach to grammar and vocabulary to teach the student to read.
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| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4054 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 15 28 December 2013 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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A very comprehensive book for learning to read German is "READING German: A COURSE BOOK AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR" by Waltraud Coles and Bill Dodd, published by the Oxford University Press. The texts and exercises move rapidly from the A1-A2 level to the C1-C2 level. The texts are referenced by number to a very fine grammar in the appendix. While it is, indeed, an excellent book, it might be a just little too challenging for an absolute beginner. Here's the LINK to Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-German-Course-Reference-Gramma r/dp/0198700202/ref=cm_cr-mr-title 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 7 of 15 28 December 2013 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for posting this, Henkkles. I have seen the X for Reading books on Amazon, and have been impressed by the excellent reviews. The one disadvantage of them (according to the reviews) is that they ignore pronunciation, since you don't need to know the fine details of pronunciation in order to read. This would be less of a problem with German and Spanish, with their regular spelling, but I figured I'd rather be fairly comfortable with being able to pronounce what I read in French before using the French for Reading book.
The other problem is that these books are very expensive, even the used editions. There's another series of books called Better Reading X (French, Italian and Spanish versions are available on amazon.co.uk). They seem to be more for students who have completed an introductory course or textbook, and just focus on the readings. They are about half as long as the X for Reading books, but about a fifth of the price. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4255 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 15 28 December 2013 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a firm believer that pronunciation isn't learnt from books, but by extensive listening to native material. Still, that is the reason why I said that I would recommend being a solid beginner before getting to these books, and I find them most useful that way.
One should remember that one book is always insufficient for teaching you absolutely everything, which is why two books like Assimil German and German for Reading used in conjunction would likely prove very fruitful. //I would also be most grateful if someone would let me know of books for learning Russian that use a method like this. As of yet I have not found any. Edited by Henkkles on 28 December 2013 at 11:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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