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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| pineappleboom Groupie United States languageloft-ashley. Joined 5188 days ago 66 posts - 76 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Russian | Message 9 of 14 29 July 2011 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Does anyone know the difference when it comes to reading in a language like Cantonese or Japanese in which Chinese Characters are used?
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| Niomi Diglot Newbie Japan ioet.com Joined 6977 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 14 01 August 2011 at 3:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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By checking my Librarything account
I can see that I've read 24 books in Japanese -- and I am now at the level where I can pretty much pick up any novel and understand what's going on. But I think it also depends on how much a person is comfortably willing to skim over when presented with unknown vocabulary. I get lazy and tend to only look up words in a dictionary if it's essential to the text... but it's amazing how much is not essential. I've gotten very good at only vaguely understanding the gist of certain passages, like descriptions of places or plans of action. If it's essential to the text these things usually become clear pages later. So even though I'm reading novels comfortably, I'm not necessarily understanding it sentence-by-sentence. Plus, literature can be so formulaic that I just guess what happened...... And for things I just don't get I usually have a clueless "WHAT happened?" moment where I have to go back. That's why I'm not sure if the amount of books you've read could correlate to your level in a language... But anyway it's more fun just to finish as many books as you can! It's a great feeling when I'm done. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4800 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 14 02 August 2011 at 4:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Reading is also my favorite way to learn. I'm a newbie here, although I've spent many, many hours reading older posts to bring myself up to date.
I'm working on Spanish, my first language if you don't count Latin and German in high school back in the early 60's. But I don't think reading is the best way for everyone. Here's my anecdotal evidence. I went to a local thrift store today to look for light novels in Spanish to read. They have to be pretty easy because I've only been at it for about 3 months. The first Harry Potter book seems to be about my level, as long as I keep a dictionary and the "501 Spanish Verbs" book handy. So I found 7 novels that looked like good ones for my reading level. Now there is no real Hispanic presence in my small Oregon town, but it is a University town, so it follows that books in Spanish at a used bookstore probably originally belonged to students. Here's what I observed. The novels all had underlining, marginal notes, and/or highlighting. But signs of use did not continue through the whole book. In fact, in every case but one any sign that the book had been read faded away before 20 pages had passed. One book was marked all the way to page 110 out of 158 pages (it was a cheesey romance novel), but that was a notable exception. The lowest score was 2 pages and the highest non-outlier was 17 pages (a spy novel). The average (again omitting the outlier) was between 9 and 10 pages in books that ranged from 150 to 250 pages. That tells me people who dive into reading a new language usually give up by the tenth page, on average. --gary 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5332 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 12 of 14 02 August 2011 at 5:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Without having read through the entire thread, I would say that the number would vary depending on a number of
different factors (i.e. familiarity with the language based on others known, breadth of vocabulary, etc.). Kato Lomb learned languages through reading and it is definitely a great way to go about learning, at least the written aspects of the language. I would venture that one would need some audio input/output though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6718 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 14 02 August 2011 at 11:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe they just stopped highlighting though? I started on a big French book a while back and I've read the first 15 or so pages very closely writing notes in the margin etc, but I don't have the stamina to keep this going. I'll still finish the book, but I'll read it less meticulously. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kazen Diglot Groupie Japan japanese-me.com Joined 5263 days ago 96 posts - 133 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 14 of 14 02 August 2011 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm with numerodix. I'll read the first 20-50 pages intensively to get a feel for the author and any pet vocabulary they may use. After that it's off to the races. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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