Effectiveness of readers (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Effectiveness of readers
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

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melonball6
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Message 17 of 25

26 September 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged

This information was interesting and helpful. I am anxious to add Readers to my language learning although I'm having some trouble finding materials for my chosen language - Romanian.
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Serpent
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Message 18 of 25

26 September 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged

pinutzz wrote:

If you directly go to 500 page novels the danger is that you get very used to the style of one author. You think you understand everything. You go to your next novel and suddenly you understand only half of whats going on. In order to get an evenly distributed vocabulary it is advisable to change your reading material every 100 pages or so - in my opinion readers have just the right length for that.

But that's a good thing! I seem to remember Barry Farber recommending long books too. Changing your (native) material every 100 pages is a way to make sure all your reading is fairly painful.

Peregrinus wrote:

And if they too had audio all the better and would lend themselves to the methods preferred by many here like shadowing and L-R.

That's not LR. For proper LR the book shouldn't be adapted and longer books are preferable.

Edited by Serpent on 26 September 2012 at 6:31pm
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pinutzz
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Message 19 of 25

26 September 2012 at 7:31pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

pinutzz wrote:

But that's a good thing! I seem to remember Brry Farber recommending long books too. Changing your (native) material every 100 pages is a way to make sure all your reading is fairly painful.

I don't seem to experience the pain you are talking about, maybe I just get bored too easily when I spend to much time with the same material...

Every book revolves around a certain topic. So for example the first 100-page story I read in Spanish was a fairy tale about a cat that teaches a sea gull how to fly. After reading this book I knew words like "rump of a bird" in Spanish (which is a word i neither know in English (does it exist?) nor in my mother tongue). My next 100-pager was a story about a hitman in his midlife crisis and after reading that I knew everything there is to know in Spanish about different types of guns and 3 different words for hooker, also something which for my needs (i'm female) is complete overkill.

I don't want to accumulate useless vocabulary but instead make sure it's evenly distributed. Reading (and listening to) a 500 page novel would currently take me about 2 months - I am a beginner that happens to have a life. No matter how interesting the story is - if it's too long I would eventually give up.

Once I am at C1/C2 I will be abled to devour a thick novel in one night and at that point I would of course choose longer texts. But for a beginner an 8 week project can be very daunting.

Maybe I should have chosen a different wording: "Change your reading material at least every second week (or when you feel like it)."
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Serpent
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Message 20 of 25

26 September 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged

The thing is that a 500 page book WILL NOT take as long as five 100-page books take. It'll be easier after 100 pages, so you're missing out on those moments where you can read with far less effort (even if you've not truly acquired the skill yet but just adapted to what you're reading). Try a 250-300 page detective story by Agatha Christie and you'll know what I mean :-)))

Whether to choose long or short books and which ones depends on your reading strategy, obviously. Also works the other way round: if you've already chosen a book, you may need to change your reading strategy.
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montmorency
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Message 21 of 25

27 September 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

I like using books adapted for Ilya Frank's method

@Serpent: I guess you have come across the "Franker" extension for Chrome and Safari? I've seen it mentioned on here in the past, perhaps in the parallel-text threads (maybe by you!), but I only just tried it today. It's quite good.

It was interesting to read about his method. Pity there aren't too many books translated to English using his method yet, but I guess the browser extension could fill the gap for any books you can read in the browser.
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Serpent
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Message 22 of 25

27 September 2012 at 4:29am | IP Logged

This wasn't me for sure, faithful Firefox user here :-)
IDK, what I love about the proper books is not so much the format (i would still use it in a parallel-text format) but all those notes. Like, you get both the literal meaning and what is actually meant. For me the best thing about the original format is when some things are left untranslated after they've occurred enough times in the text, like ... (...), he said. So proper Frank-method texts can't be generated automatically and imo the automatic ones have no advantages over regular parallel texts. (which are easier to find and which often ARE reviewed manually)

Edited by Serpent on 27 September 2012 at 4:36am
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Jeffers
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Message 23 of 25

18 November 2012 at 9:04pm | IP Logged

Since price is an issue with readers, Spanish beginners might find this a good set:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Extreme-Readers-English-Spanish-
Slipcases/dp/0769644791/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=13532 68764&sr=1-5

It is a slipcase of 4 dual language readers for just under £10. Since most dual language
children's books seem to be about £5-6, this looks like a good deal. If they had it in
French I would have it by now.

EDIT: edited the link. For some reason I can no longer post links on this website. >.<

Edited by Jeffers on 18 November 2012 at 9:06pm
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Majka
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Message 24 of 25

18 November 2012 at 10:10pm | IP Logged

montmorency wrote:

Serpent wrote:

I like using books adapted for Ilya Frank's method

Franker was one of two reasons why I installed chrome at all (the second one was bug in firefox when printing malformated pages).

And then I found out, that there is an extension in Firefox with the same function - Transmaker.

I am using it when reading news articles which would be above my level otherwise. The problems with these extensions is that they work only as far as machine translation works - for example French - English works very well, French - Czech is one big mess :)

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