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Acquire vocabulary through reading | ||
Tags: Reading | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4622 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 9 of 35 17 February 2012 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
For myself, I've also been trying to mix up the materials, as well (better vocab diversity, and to keep interest up). I read lots of news articles (online you can copy-paste words into electronic dictionaries, which is much faster than using paper dictionaries), wikipedia articles, kids books, etc. I'm currently going through a German translation of Lord of the Rings, so that's quite long, and I've learned words relating to medieval warfare, epic poetry and feudalism quite well by now. I've also been reading Kafka's short stories, so I can feel like I'm finishing something substantial on a regular basis, as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6531 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 10 of 35 17 February 2012 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, LOTR <3 I read it when I had just reached basic fluency in Finnish, and it definitely got more and more enjoyable as I understood more and more. You may want to read The Hobbit or Narnia as well. I'd personally also recommend David Eddings.
Tbh I'm also like that, with short stories. Sometimes it gets ridiculous - I got a book of vampire stories in Finnish, and I've been reading them starting from the shortest, those that are under 10 pages long. i mean hello, it's not a problem for me to read 100 pages in Finnish! I don't know why this preference:/ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5894 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 11 of 35 17 February 2012 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In order to keep the flow going while I read, I only look up words if I've seen them before or if they strike me as somehow interesting. Works well enough.
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| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4605 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 12 of 35 20 February 2012 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for everybody’s remarks and suggestions so far. I’m surprised at how many people think pure reading is
the better choice. I wish I could learn that way, but it just doesn’t work for me. I want to elaborate a little more about what I’m doing with the languages I've listed, so that I can address some of the replies better. This is what I’m doing now, but I’m always open to advice, so it’s not written in stone. I’m only maintaining Japanese, French and Mandarin - I read every other day. Day one, I read an article looking up every unknown word. This goes pretty smoothly with LingQ. I don’t review the new words. Then I listen to the audio that comes with it while reading, and finally listen to the audio by itself. Later that day, I listen to the audio again during my daily walk. Day two, I repeat this with the same article. I usually don’t have to look up as many words this time, and both reading and listening are easier. You might ask why I bother looking up words if I’m only maintaining. I’ve found that injecting some new material really helps the whole memorization process. It doesn’t take much to make a significant improvement over only maintaining old material. In addition to the reading exercise above, I have a 30 min conversation with a tutor on Skype once per week. I look up all new words, but don’t review them. I watch a TV show or movie for 1 or 2 hours per week, rarely using L1 subtitles, and if I do use them, never the first time around. I do flashcards for individual characters, words (Mandarin only) and core2000 L2 to L1 sentence for Japanese and Mandarin. No flashcards for French. Russian is the language I want to take all the way to C1 now. For reading, I’m going to do the same thing I do with the other languages, but do it every day. I’ve debated reviewing the vocabulary in LingQ, but decided against it in favor of reviewing vocabulary from other sources. It’s a time consideration, since I’ll be working full time, and will be limited to about 3 hours a day including review time. I don’t want too high of a percentage of my time to be used as review. I will have a 1 hour lesson twice per week, and a 1 hour language exchange. I will probably get homework from the lesson. Lessons will be all Russian. I will take down every unknown word and review it in an Anki deck. I will watch 30 minutes of a Russian movie or TV show every day. I will do my homework and reviews every day. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4622 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 13 of 35 20 February 2012 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ironically, I notice now that most people say "just read," I myself said "read, lookup, and review," and yet for the most part (though not exclusively), I tend to read, lookup, and NOT review--which almost no one thought was best. My thinking here is that 1) words that are at all common I will review by coming across them again in my reading, which is usually the best review for me and 2) it's faster to not write down and make flashcards and review.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5141 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 35 21 February 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Exactly my thoughts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4605 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 35 21 February 2012 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Even though I voted for the third option, I also find myself doing the second. Are you guys reviewing vocabulary from other sources at all? And are you finding that option 2 is giving you sufficient vocabulary assimilation? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6883 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 16 of 35 21 February 2012 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What I do is similar to the third one. I underline unknown words to look up later so as
not to interrupt the flow of my reading, and after I'm finished I go back and look up the ones I think might be interesting and/or potentially useful. Then, after I've reviewed the sentences with Anki for a few weeks, I read the material again with a much higher rate of comprehension. I don't do the second one because I have a really bad memory, so looking up something in the dictionary without noting and reviewing it would be a complete waste of time for me. I would be looking up the same word 5 times each chapter, forgetting it again each time. The first one - reading without looking anything up, or better, while only looking up words that come up repeatedly and can't be figured out from context - is actually what I believe to be the best option, so that's what I voted for. I say this because this method of reading seems to be a recurring theme among my polyglot heroes: Professor Arguelles, Kato Lomb, atamagaii, and many, many others. I also think that this would get me to read more, because my current system is a lot of work, and this sometimes causes me to avoid reading. This all-or-nothing perfectionist attitude is my worst enemy when it comes to language learning! But try as I might, I can't quiet the little voice in my head that says I'm wasting my time if I don't look everything up. I hope to give this voice the kiss of death by participating in at least one Tadoku challenge this year. Edited by Lucky Charms on 21 February 2012 at 2:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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