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Learning words from books. | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Stachu Newbie Poland Joined 4821 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 21 19 August 2011 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi, I've just bought "The shadow of the wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon written in English. I just want to read it and by the way learn some new words. So, what is the best way to learn them? Writtin unknown words on a paper and learning them by heart or something else? What's your opinion?
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6374 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 21 19 August 2011 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
It may sound glib, but there is a large element of "the best method is the one you'll actually do". Another factor is what you want to learn the words for - are you interested in reading other books more comfortably, or with gaining active use of the words as quickly as possible? My preference is usually for learning words passively first; some spontaneously become active, and activating the others if needed is easier at that point. Reading a book first in a language I know well, and later in another one (with or without a parallel text) is the fastest way I know of to do this. Reading a text for the first time in a foreign language without having read it in another one first has its own pleasures, but it is definitely a slower way to gain vocabulary - you're left guessing, or spending tons of time with dictionaries, far too often. Context helps, but especially for things like specific plant and animal names, often not that much. If you want a more active approach, try to find out how Joseph Conrad did it, or read about Iversen's wordlist method or anki. Kudos on the choice of book; it's a good one. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| misslanguages Diglot Senior Member France fluent-language.blog Joined 4781 days ago 190 posts - 217 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 3 of 21 21 August 2011 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning words from books is pretty hard. You'll have to use the dictionary way too much. Instead, you should consider sentence-mining, or bilingual books.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 21 21 August 2011 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Over the first chapter, try to learn to identify important words, and ignore unimportant ones. There's lots of descriptive material in a story that isn't necessary to understand the plot. If you look up the dictionary for every wallpaper pattern or every single piece of food, you'll get bored.
Look up words that seem immediately important, and look up words that keep recurring. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4794 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 5 of 21 21 August 2011 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, you can also make some pencil marks and check the words later, when you feel like.
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| Stachu Newbie Poland Joined 4821 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 21 21 August 2011 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it's pretty good but I have no idea how to distinguish the important words. I don't know which is more important and which is less. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6374 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 21 22 August 2011 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||
It's a skill that comes with practice. There are a couple of guidelines. a) If you're seeing the word very frequently, it's probably important, at least in the book you're reading. If you've stumbled across it and don't know what it means, but recognize it, it may be worth looking up. b) Is that word the only thing keeping you from understanding a sentence that isn't clear when you read the paragraph around it? Consider looking it up. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5125 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 21 22 August 2011 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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1. Try and get an audio recording of the book and listen/read. Listening gives a lot more clues as to meaning (as well as giving pronunciation) than just reading alone.
2. Underline some or all new words and write the translation UNDER the word. In that way, you can read the book later, uncovering the text as you go down the page and recalling the word before you look to check it. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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