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An advantageous reading method

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
KCor
Groupie
United States
Joined 4943 days ago

50 posts - 72 votes 

 
 Message 1 of 9
02 August 2011 at 4:18pm | IP Logged 
I'm not aware of anyone having posted something similar to this, but I assume it might
still be useful to some other people.

I'm at a point where all I want to do is read in German now in order to expand
vocabulary and become more acquainted with the flow of speech.

However, when I read I have a tendency to get caught on words I don't recognize and
want to stop to look them up immediately before I proceed.

This surely is disruptive when it comes to my reading and I'd really like to improve
the flow.

This got me wondering about how I could do such a thing and I came up with an idea.

The majority of my reading is from .PDF eBooks downloaded from the internet, so I take
that .PDF file and use a word frequency counter
(http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/PDF-Word-Count-Freque ncy-Statistics-Software-
Download-69915.html <-- Shareware version, but there are plenty to be found with
Google) to establish the most reoccurring words in the text.

I then take those most frequently used words and memorize their meaning. After that I'm
ready to go.

----------

Maybe this is already a rather common method for some of you, but I just thought of it
and figured it may be useful for some other people out there.
6 persons have voted this message useful



Wompi
Triglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4891 days ago

56 posts - 64 votes 
Speaks: German*, Spanish, English
Studies: Czech

 
 Message 2 of 9
02 August 2011 at 4:52pm | IP Logged 
Nice trick :) thanks.

Haven´t thought about this yet.

I think this combines well with the word lists method from Iverson.
If you take the common words you still don´t know and memorize these, you can then also be asure that the words get frequently repeated during reading. :)
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 3 of 9
02 August 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged 
Have you tried using parallel texts and/or pop-up dictionaries? Both address the same problem, in a way I find much less painful.
1 person has voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4844 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 4 of 9
03 August 2011 at 10:10pm | IP Logged 
I think this is a great idea. You could do the same with news articles before reading them.

I wanted to do something like this a long time ago with Hindi, but at the time I couldn't find any free word counting software.
1 person has voted this message useful



jasoninchina
Senior Member
China
Joined 5166 days ago

221 posts - 306 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin, Italian

 
 Message 5 of 9
04 August 2011 at 7:06am | IP Logged 
Does anyone know of a program that can do this with Chinese characters?
1 person has voted this message useful



Wompi
Triglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4891 days ago

56 posts - 64 votes 
Speaks: German*, Spanish, English
Studies: Czech

 
 Message 6 of 9
04 August 2011 at 8:38am | IP Logged 
I´ve tried this also with Czech but it seems that the program has Problems if the chars are not ANSI. Like č, š etc.

Did I do anything wrong?

Edited by Wompi on 04 August 2011 at 8:38am

1 person has voted this message useful



KCor
Groupie
United States
Joined 4943 days ago

50 posts - 72 votes 

 
 Message 7 of 9
04 August 2011 at 4:14pm | IP Logged 
Wompi wrote:
I´ve tried this also with Czech but it seems that the program has Problems
if the chars are not ANSI. Like č, š etc.

Did I do anything wrong?


No, that particular program I linked won't recognize umlauts either.

A quick Google search will easily turn up some better programs.
1 person has voted this message useful



Luai_lashire
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
luai-lashire.deviant
Joined 5763 days ago

384 posts - 560 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto
Studies: Japanese, French

 
 Message 8 of 9
04 August 2011 at 11:21pm | IP Logged 
If anyone finds a good one for Mac, let me know, I did some searching and found an OK one but it also can't handle
special characters like the esperanto ĉ, ŝ, ŭ. :/ I didn't test it on Japanese but don't expect it could handle it.


1 person has voted this message useful



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