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Reading as a method | ||
Tags: Reading | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 9 of 68 13 February 2011 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
I think this is key. Having a base certainly makes reading much more productive (and enjoyable). With my romance languages, I effectively learned Catalan, Portuguese and Galician through reading, then listening, since I had already been speaking Spanish and Italian for years. With Polish and Turkish, I definitely needed a grounding in the basics before I could take on any reading, even simple text - they are that different to anything else I had spoken. There's absolutely no way I could have jumped right into reading Turkish without the basics. I'd say them same for Polish, but I'm far enough removed from learning the basics by now that I'm just not sure. My suspicion is that I couldn't have gone straight to reading simple text without the basics either. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 13 February 2011 at 3:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| arturs Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 5263 days ago 278 posts - 408 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English | Message 10 of 68 13 February 2011 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, reading is a good method, especially if you have the ability to read something like a book, not just some news articles and so on. If you want to read an article it should be quite long, for example some article from Wikipedia in Swedish about the Swedish royal family could be quite long.
Though I have a problem with reading with Arabic, since I don't have any books or article with vowels. The only solution is to read The Quran. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5182 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 68 13 February 2011 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although I think reading without a dictionary is a good way to consolidate what you know and a nice way to relax, I don't think it is a good method to learn new vocabulary. I think it is just too difficult to work out what words mean from context (unless they are similar to your L1), plus you won't be sure how to pronounce the words.
I much prefer listening (with or without a transcript), as this gives you consistent, accurate input as well as additional aural clues as to meaning, which are absent from a written text alone. And if you are trying to read in a language with a script very different from your own, I think you have the enormous task of learning how to read again, almost from scratch. I don't think it is just a case of learning the letters, you also need to recognise words at a glance before you can read at a good speed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 68 13 February 2011 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, we all have different ways of learning, but I discovered when reading the Goldoni plays in Venetian dialect that when you see the same word appear again and again you can usually quite easily figure out the meaning. As for the pronuncination, the method is best used when you are at a level where you can easily figure it out (unless you are dealing with a language like say English, where you can never quite figure it out :-). I totally agree with your point when it comes to languages with very different scripts. There is no way I could have done this with Russian, or Arabic or Hebrew. You must either have some background in the language or know similar languages to make it work. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5463 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 68 13 February 2011 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I may be the only one but I have not found reading useful and even find it can be detrimental. The more I learned,
the more differences I discovered between spoken language and literary writing. At the start I knew there was a literary verb tense that would not help me when speaking but I soon discovered words, phrases and grammatical forms that are rarely or never used in spoken language. I used a grammatical form like this just a couple days ago and was told by a language partner that yes it is correct, completely grammatical and understandable on both sides of the Atlantic but… few people speak that way in daily life. I refrain from siting an example because there is always someone who will insist that they talk like that all the time (and in fact my language partner said that her mother speaks like that). When speaking your native language you can get away with saying almost anything and at worst people will think you are a little eccentric but as a student of a language I feel it important to use language that is not just common in spoken form but also common in your target region (grammatical or not). If your pronunciation is just a bit off you can can be misunderstood but if on top of that you are using an unusual turn of phrase that few people would choose then the chances are much greater. I find that in a highly bilingual region you seldom get a second chance - you either make yourself understood the first time or people switch to English. An exception to this would be anything written in a conversational form like a play, interview transcript or bande dessinée. I figure if the average 6 year old can fluently speak with anyone in their country and has likely never read any literature then it can wait a bit. Having said all that, I started reading a French novel yesterday. Always exceptions to rules where languages are concerned I guess. Edited by microsnout on 13 February 2011 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5758 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 68 13 February 2011 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes I wonder if those epiphany moments aren't actually my brain tricking me and filling the gaps with things it imagines ...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5389 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 15 of 68 14 February 2011 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
Based on my own experiences, I think the way you get to the point where you can read words at a good speed is by practicing reading. I personally start out with children's books and move up from there. Also, combining reading with listening to an audiobook is an "easy" way to learn the pronunciation as well, speeding up the process considerably. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 16 of 68 14 February 2011 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
I think this point is well taken. Reading is undoubtedly an excellent source of comprehensible input. But for what purpose? If the spoken language is your primary focus, you would be well advised to use materials that present material that approximates the oral language. Comic books are probably the best material for this. Then movies, radio and television are also excellent sources of spoken forms. On the other hand, if the literary written language is of interest, then great literature is the way to go. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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