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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 37 27 January 2013 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Alert!
I'm from Gotland, live in Visby, and work at the main library but haven't read a single line from any of Jungstedt's books, nor watched even a split-second of the movies either - half of the cast was German, acted in German and was dubbed to Swedish (correspondingly, the Swedish actors were dubbed to German for the German viewers). (More about that HERE) Oh, the humanity. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4560 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 18 of 37 28 January 2013 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Haha, tänkte väl att du skulle reagera på det där. Av sökresultatena att döma verkar dubbningen ha blivit precis så dålig som man kunde förvänta sig. Jag måste erkänna att jag inte är speciellt sugen på att se filmen efter den introduktionen, men intressant var det i alla fall.
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| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4560 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 19 of 37 02 February 2013 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Mini-status update:
Spent the evening singing along to my Swedish playlist and shadowing some English. What an awesome time! It's been ages since I spoke English for any significant amount of time, so it felt really good to get my tongue and mouth moving again. I think I'm starting to get a better understanding of different North American accents and how those relate to the way I speak. Apparently I float between two distinct modes: one that most closely resembles what I understand by General American, and another that I've encountered among standard-sounding Illinois speakers. The most pronounced difference (pun intended) between the two is that my tongue is a lot further to the front in the latter. Fascinating stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 20 of 37 03 February 2013 at 12:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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About reading:
I usually try mixing different kinds of reading approaches. If you want to improve your reading pace, consider reading something slightly below your language level. I once heard that one should devote 25% of learning time to reading/listening to things that are easy to understand - I don't know how true this number is but it definitely got me thinking. It's also good to find a real page-turner - I recently read "Hunger Games" French and at some point my analytic reading style was gone as I just wanted to know what happens next :). About accents and shadowing: I recently shadowed some German because I felt like my mouth was forgetting how to move to form all the German sounds :). It's fun to realize what changes if you try to imitate another accent (or that you preserve some features from another TL region while shadowing the speaker). I wish I were that far with my English pronunciation! Edited by Julie on 03 February 2013 at 12:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4560 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 21 of 37 03 February 2013 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Julie:
I've been stuck with Fatta eld, part two of the Hunger Games trilogy, for more than a month now. I guess it's either not the right book for me, or my tendency to over-analyze is just a tad more persistent than yours. :-) On a slightly more serious note, the problem seems to be that I can't finish a chapter in a single session, which kills my momentum, and thus, eventually my motivation as well. I think I'll have to read the book in longer chunks, if I'm ever going to finish it, but it's not easy to find the time for that. While I see the logic in your anecdote, I wonder what that 'something easier' might be for me. I can't really think of anything that would be both interesting and significantly easier than what I'd otherwise read. The situation is even weirder with German, since I have plenty of latent passive skills, but there's very little that I understand effortlessly. As a result, I can read pretty much anything, but it's never a routine task, no matter how easy the text is. My current bed-side book is a crime novel by Mari Jungstedt that's written with thriller pacing, so the chapters are really short--sometimes just two or three pages--which makes it easy to keep reading, although I'm progressing rather slowly. In a way, this is the opposite strategy: instead of reading fast and gradually increasing the difficulty of the materials, I cope with harder content and gradually increase my reading speed. Or, so I hope. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I will have to think some more on this.
I wish I were that far with my German. ;-) Edited by sans-serif on 03 February 2013 at 2:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 22 of 37 03 February 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I should probably mention I've been stuck with part two of the Hunger Games for more than a month as well :). It was different for part one, though. The point is there are books you will read fast(er), you just have to find what works for you.
If losing the momentum is the problem, maybe try to find books with shorter chapters? This may sound like stupid advice but who knows what may work. (Here I continued with some examples but then I read your post till the end, including the part about Mari Jungestedt :)).
Have you tried some graded readers? There are quite many of them for German (I wasn't a big fan though so I can't recommend you anything specific). Maybe some more teen books? I remember that Agatha Christie was quite easy in German. "A Murder Is Announced" was one the first fiction books I read in German, if not the first one. I read it while listening to the audiobook (this may also help you to speed up reading). Another easy reading is Agota Kristof's "Die Analphabetin". I have it as an audiobook and always recommend it to intermediate learners of German; it's really easy and interesting (well, at least it was interesting for me). I suppose her other books are not very difficult either (I haven't read them, though). This actually reminds me I should look for the French originals :). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 23 of 37 03 February 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am all for graded readers at some point but graded readers are usually not that interesting and might not be
useful here as well, as sans-serif is a more advanced reader. What about comic books? Have you tried them? And it's a great log. And, please, keep adding those wonderful tips on what to listen or watch in the northern languages, especially Swedish. I really want to start with it in the second half of this year, once my German will have settled down a bit, and I am slightly desperate about not knowing much what to look for as soon as I'll be ready for some native content. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4560 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 24 of 37 03 February 2013 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is how I've done most of my reading in Swedish up until now, and I can indeed read many times faster like this: about 40-50 pages per hour, depending on how well the audio lends itself to accelerated listening. I'm also going to do a couple thousand pages of German the same way, but I doubt that's going to solve anything--it didn't with Swedish, at least. In my experience, conventional reading is a different skill, and there's little that carries over from listening-reading beyond purely linguistic abilities. In an earlier post I wrote:
"Good" was perhaps an exaggeration, but that's more or less my situation in relative terms. As I've said above, I like subvocalizing and find it useful, so that's the kind of reading I'd like to get better at. I also believe that it's my inability to produce the correct prosody fast enough that's holding me back. Of course, there was no way you could have known about any this, as I haven't been terribly verbose nor explicit about this stuff. As for graded readers, I've taken a look at couple but haven't found anything that caught my attention in a good way. I'll admit however that it's not an avenue I've pursued very actively, as (in my hubris) I like to think that I'm past that stage already. Still, I guess it couldn't hurt to read something really easy, for a change, to build some momentum in the spirit of tadoku. Thanks again for your input! I appreciate you taking the time to read my log. EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'm very comfortable reading subtitles in Swedish, which is a good example of this more visual kind of reading I talked about. Really, I just skim them with quick glance and focus on the other things happening on the screen. Edited by sans-serif on 03 February 2013 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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