Wordlists and Novels (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Wordlists and Novels
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

22 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Raincrowlee
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Message 17 of 22

29 February 2012 at 3:47pm | IP Logged

Tortoise wrote:

Raincrowlee, keep in mind, that my main reason for reading the book is to use it as a source for wordlists. There's also an online Russian-English dictionary that is pretty good about sending you to the regular form of the word if you type in a noun in a different case, or a verb with a different conjugation. I also think it'll help me learn the endings to noun cases (of course, it's not going off and memorizing all of the endings, but it's a fun way to do it, and I think I'll learn it pretty well that way. I should also note that I intend on familiarizing myself with pronouns to a large enough extent to be able to half-way guess which case is being used). It's a lot of work, but I think it'll be fun.

That's why I did/do it, too. I'd just suggest doing it with a short story first. There is a LOT of words used in novels that you don't encounter in daily conversation, and most language courses have daily conversation as their aim. I tackled Maupassant short stories before I tried novels in part because I felt they were easier to get through and took much less time and effort to reread. This felt especially true in Chinese where looking words up in dictionaries is more cumbersome than in languages with actual alphabets. At least you'll have that going for you.
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Wulfgar
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Message 18 of 22

29 February 2012 at 7:43pm | IP Logged

Tortoise wrote:

I'm trying to decide if it's a good idea or not to read a novel originally written in my target language, and
using it to make a wordlist. I'm only an infant in the target language and don't know anything about sentence structure or
grammar, which is why I'm uncertain. The book is King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov (target language being Russian).
Any opinions on this?

Since you are mainly interested in vocabulary, I think it would be more efficient to go through easier material, and try to get
most of the core vocabulary under your belt as soon as possible. There is a lot of "learner" material, or just easier native
material with more common language available. I am thinking that you will have a lot of advanced vocabulary entries that will
take time away from you learning basic vocabulary. Not knowing basic grammar is also an issue, because that will mean you
will often not know what's going on, and it will make the fact that you're getting the words in context less helpful, and the
task may be less interesting.
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geoffw
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Message 19 of 22

29 February 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged

Wulfgar wrote:

I agree with this, but I also would suggest, given the OP's professed familiarity with Nabakov in translation, that Nabakov could be helpful much sooner than otherwise, because the familiar subject matter, plot, and even individual lines will provide a familiar context making it easier to absorb the material.
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Tortoise
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Message 20 of 22

29 February 2012 at 10:45pm | IP Logged

druckfehler wrote:

It probably depends a bit on how you go about it. The method Kató Lomb describes in "Polyglot: How I learn Languages" sounds somewhat similar. She read through one novel several times (also in Russian, by the way). At first she understood almost nothing, then gradually more and more words and grammar became clear to her through context. It sounds like at first she looked up words, but later abandoned that method and found reading more efficient without consulting a dictionary.

This is somewhat similar to how I learned to read English. The first real English book I read was "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I had a vague memory of the TV series/movie(?) and loved it passionately. At the time I was 13 and had had 2 years of rather crappy English instruction at school, so the book was way over my head. At the outset I understood at most 30-40% of the content, but I was too lazy to look anything up. In hindsight that was smart, because otherwise I would've abandoned the project. I think it helped me become more familiar with grammatical structure and I learned quite a few words (at least sort of - like what area they were from, not direct definition, e.g. for "exclaim" and "announce" I'd know that they have to do with speaking). Later as I read more their differences gradually became clear from context.

I don't think I'd be able to use the method at total beginner level, though, and would encourage you to start with something like children's books, unless you're so passionate about Nabokov that you're willing to go to any lengths. Also possible if you're content with sounding out the words and picking up very little meaning (it'll still be beneficial) or if you're very patient and can survive the intensive reading with dictionary method :)

I've just now finished reading "Polyglot: How I Learn Languages" and to be honest, I'm a bit confused. It seems that her method is (paraphrased) to buy an English-L2 (we'll just say Russian for now) dictionary and skim over parts but mostly reading international words (countries/cities, technical terms that, as she puts it "transcends language"), and then buy a course-book and plays/short stories in pairs. What I'm confused about is that during her first reading of the short story or play, she doesn't look anything up. She only writes down what she understands from the context. How would this work?
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MaksR
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Message 21 of 22

02 March 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged

Tortoise, try to read Anton Chekhov's books. It's Russian classic literature. Nabokov's books aren't suitable for learners.
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druckfehler
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Message 22 of 22

04 March 2012 at 4:48am | IP Logged

Tortoise wrote:

As I understand it, the first reading would yield little or quite a bit depending on how mutually intelligible one of the languages she already knows and the new language is. Kato Lomb probably had great reading skills, by which I mean that she could infer meaning from a word's position in a paragraph/sentence, from punctuation marks and maybe even from word frequency. But I'm actually skeptical that this method of reading without looking up anything helps a lot during the beginner stage... And it seems like Kato Lomb didn't use it at the beginner stage (if I remember right she started reading in Russian with a dictionary and in Chinese, which had zero mutual intelligibility with her other languages, she took classes).
What this type of reading probably does help with is to give you a feeling for which words are important once you've seen them again and again, but you'd need to either have some knowledge of the language to pick up word meaning from context or use a dictionary once you figure out the high frequency words.

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