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Native material reading techniques | ||
Tags: Native Materials | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4889 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 43 02 November 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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Hello!
I'm pleased, really really pleased, to say that i have finished my first novel in my primary target language: German. there was a great deal of so called 'style' and nuance i didn't catch, such as what exact type of grimace our antagonist had, but i understood the events of the plot, and caught enough cool subtleties of the atmosphere. Granted, this was a Krimi (a pulp crime novel), no so called 'true' piece of literature. I'm now beginning on Harry Potter and am loving that as well. My question is essentially, when one is at this level where we understand the grammar systems to a point where only vocabulary is missing, how exactly does one read? - do you shrug off unknowns? (context will learn me enough) - Do you look up unknowns as they come? - do you look up only important unknowns? - do you jot down undecipherable unknowns (ie words that cannot be determined by context) and wait til the end of the chapter to look them up? i'm leaning definitely towards the last method, as I can go with the flow of the story without constant dictionary checks, but then i can Anki save the unknowns after every natural stop (chapters) in the story. Is this effective? this is what i do for news as well; read the thing one time through, then go through and collect every word i couldn't 'get' through context and Anki them. also: what level is Harry Potter? B1 still?? :'( Edited by fomalhaut on 02 November 2011 at 4:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mauritz Octoglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5054 days ago 223 posts - 325 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Esperanto, French Studies: Old English, Yiddish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean, Portuguese, Welsh, Icelandic, Afrikaans | Message 2 of 43 02 November 2011 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
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I use a for most people probably very boring method. I simply read one page (or whatever I feel that I can keep in
my memory somewhat), looking every word or expression that I don't know. The content in the text I've read is not as important as being able to puzzle out the what I read, one unknown construction at a time. After looking up every word, I read the text again, and by this point there shouldn't be a problem in the text, except that there may be a construction that I misunderstood before but is completely clear now. Like I said, it's not fun, but the necessity of doing it decreases keep on reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| WentworthsGal Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4874 days ago 191 posts - 246 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Spanish | Message 3 of 43 02 November 2011 at 5:41pm | IP Logged |
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I have only read one book in Swedish so far and I started off using a dictionary for every word I didn't know, but this was taking too long and I wasn't getting any joy out of the story. I decided to switch to just reading the story instead. I only looked up words that either stuck in my head, when there was a huge chunk of text I didn't understand or if the words had been used several times.
I don't think I'm learning as much as I would do if I were to break it all down but I also want to "feel" the story of the book and the way it's written. I think you may have to try all the different methods you mentioned and just see which suits you best; or use different methods at different times or for different texts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5259 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 4 of 43 02 November 2011 at 8:40pm | IP Logged |
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I started off as a beginner in Spanish reading a couple of pages of a book in English
and then the same pages in the Spanish translation. Then I started reading book after book without worrying about looking anything up as long as I could follow the story, while I could work out from context what was going on (so maybe one word per chapter). If a word came up chapter after chapter, and I had no clue as to the meaning, I'd look it up. Now I underline and look up every unknown word, but that's because there are only five words (at most) per page that I don't recognize at all. If I had done this when I first began learning, it would have driven me up the wall. Edited by July on 02 November 2011 at 8:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6568 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 43 02 November 2011 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
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I'm in the "look up every word" camp. But this doesn't make reading boring at all for me. It makes it fun. I rarely
read books, anyway, for fun or pleasure, in any language. Reading books is boring; I'm from the MTV generation. However, learning languages is fun, so looking up every unknown word and piecing the sentences together makes boring reading fun. I still rarely finish an entire book, though. I'll read a couple of chapters and then something else will catch my attention and I won't do any language learning for a couple of months. When my interest returns to languages, I'll usually start a new book. Sometimes I'll continue reading where I left off, but I won't remember what has happened, anyway, so it's a lot like starting on a new book, anyway! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6689 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 43 03 November 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
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I normally decide whether I read extensively or intensively.
If I read extensively then I try to lok as little as possible up, but just keep reading like a bulldozer. However sometimes this isn't possible, and then I switch to intensive reading, where I try to understand as much as possible even though it slows down the process because I have to look up a lot of words - and maybe check my 'green sheets' for morphology or in some cases even real grammars on problematic points. When I have to look words up, I mostly skim the text first (one or two pragraphs at a time) to note down the crucial words and then I look them up before trying to grasp the whole meaning - there is no point in reading something that is totally incomprehensible. Stopping up in the middle of a sentence because you need a certain word is contraproductive. The words I jot down go into formal three-column wordlists - if I didn't try to remember them there wouldn't be any point in looking them up. By the way much of what I read intensively is in the form of bilingual printouts (often made using Google translate). Then I don't have to be as fussy about looking words up beforehand because it is easy to clear up moot points by glancing at the translation (which implies that it isn't necessary that the translation is perfect if it just supply me with the necessary hints). I can check the words more thoroughly later with a dictionary when I transfer them to wordlists. When I am close to understanding nothing then I even copy sections of the text by hand, reserving a column to the right for new words. This will of course only be possible with extremely short sections of texts per session. Texts which have been dealt with intensively - with or without copying - have the advantage that I can do extensive reading on them later, even though I can't yet read normal genuine texts fluently. My impression is that this process makes it possible fairly quickly to get to a point where I can read texts in new languages. But after that there is of course a big task in making such a language 1) oral/vocal 2) active. And at that stage a lot of extensive activities are necessary - which of course can be a problem to organize within the time I have at my disposal. I suppose that it for most people is easiest and most enjoyable to do extensive activities, but I have to tell myself to relax and just read or listen without caring about whether I understand everything and remember the whole thing afterwards. Edited by Iversen on 03 November 2011 at 1:31am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5997 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 43 03 November 2011 at 12:27pm | IP Logged |
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I normally start by looking up every unknown. And get reeeally bored.
So then I switch to looking up two types of unknowns: 1) Important ones 2) Ones I see repeated lots. Number 2 is easy. Words that come up lots start to eat at you. You keep seeing it, so you want to know what it means. There's no need to actively manage these, as your brain normally tracks these for you. Number 1 is fairly easy, although most people panic and think too much. Basically, important words normally only come in certain places in a sentence. If you've got a vague familiarity with the structure of sentences in your target language, you'll find you'll get a feel for it quickly if you start reading the sentences naturally, rather than looking closely at each word in turn. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5833 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 43 03 November 2011 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
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This is for me an interesting thread because at present I have regular practice in reading two native novels en Italian and Danish, my foreign languages.
It makes a difference on which level your foreign language is. For example my Italian is on the B1/B2 - level and I usually look up all the unknown words in the novel which are not so many per page. I might alternatively just extensively read through it without looking anything up. On such a language level I can do both: Extensive or intensive reading. On the A1/A2 - level of my Danish extensive reading would not be possible, because I would not understand the meaning of what I am reading. So my only possibility is intensive reading - but there are too many unknown words to look everything up! So my choice is to look up only the most relevant words per page. I copy each page and glue it on a A4 - page, so that the other side is empty which allows me to write the vocabulary on it. Therefore I can read the text on one side and the bilingual vocabulary on the other side. When I write the vocabulary with my right hand, it's better to glue the text on the left side of the A4 - paper and to write the vocabulary on the right side. When I in the past wrote the vocabulary with my left hand, I glued the text on the right side of the paper en wrote the vocabulary on the left side of the A4 - paper. So this is just a practical aspect of it. This is how one of my sheets looks like: 
"Right-handed" version In my Danish course we read our novel together, so I have to prepare native Danish text every week. On the average I prepare 4-5 pages a week by looking up the most relevant vocabulary. I should add that I also mark unknown words on the copies of the pages with a bright coloured textmarker. But I wouldn't recommend doing this when you directly work with the book without making copies of it. On copies it's fine, but in a book it would look ugly. One step further would be to choose the most important keywords with their translation and rewrite them in my bilingual vocabulary book. I do this when I have enough time. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 03 November 2011 at 5:01pm 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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