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What is Your Reading Process? | ||
Tags: Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Ruan Diglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6173 days ago 95 posts - 101 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 17 of 24 30 August 2009 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always read aloud, because that way I don't miss any word. When you're silent there's a
tendency to jump small words, so you end up learning a lot, getting a lot of vocabulary, and sucking at prepositions, articles and stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5566 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 24 31 August 2009 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Generally spend more time reading and less time looking stuff up/translating. Suggestion: read two full pages (left and right sides when the book is open) and circle, highlight, or mark with stickynotes the parts you don't understand as you encounter them, but keep going without looking it up just yet. When it's about time to turn the page, review the notes you made. Some of them will now be clear by context, and for the others you can choose whether it's worth it or not to look up (but don't look up everything--that's not worth the effort). As you get better (faster) at the language, you'll move from page-by-page to reviewing at the end of a chapter or section.
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| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 19 of 24 31 August 2009 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Exactly. Words differ in how important it is to learn them at any stage of your learning. It only takes a few seconds to look up a word. If the word only occurs once in the book, you will have only wasted a few seconds on it. If the word appears 5 times in the book and you look it up each time, you will have learned the word passively in a matter of a few minutes. As you continue to encounter the word in your reading you will deepen and consolidate your knowledge of the word. After enough encounters with the word, the word and its usage will become part of your active vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 20 of 24 24 January 2011 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||
That was a year and a half ago. I finally managed to get five more Hammond Innes Dutch books. And I have finished the first of those, 'Tussen Water en Vuur'. It was just as easy to read as 'De Man van Levkas'. Today I start 'Schipbreuk in de Poolzee'. The other three are 'Luchtbrug Berlijn', 'De Ondergang van de Mary Deare' and 'De Glans van Goud'. There are many more of his books translated into Dutch. Het Rijk in de Bergen Sterven in Napels Alarm: Luchtalarm De angst van het Verraad Nacht en Ontij De zwarte Vloek Fatale Lading Gezocht: Peter Strode Het Vreemde Land De Vlammende Berg Het Geheim van de Andros De Eenzame Skier De Gedoemde Oase Vulkaaneiland De Furie van de Oceaan Het Paard van Troje Het Solomons Mysterie Stille Getuigen Het Land dat God aan Kain Gaf Sporen in het Zand De Mijn des Doods Het Geheime Dagboek van Kapitein Cook De Delta Connectie 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| psr13 Newbie United States Joined 5187 days ago 8 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 21 of 24 24 January 2011 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I try to first read books that I'm very familiar with in English. This way, I know what's going on in parts I don't understand. That knowledge helps me to figure out the language I am reading. Currently, I have "The Outsiders" in Spanish. I know that book extremely well, so I can understand the Spanish more readily. Often, authors will repeat the same words in the book, so by the end of the book you will be much more familiar with the words you originally did not know.
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| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6116 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 22 of 24 24 January 2011 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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@ tommus
Thanks for reviving this post - there's some really useful information here. I've just started reading my first "grown-up" book in Italian (Il Barone Rampante by Italo Calvino) and I've really been struggling because I insisted to myself that I should be disciplined and look up every word I wasn't completely sure of, add it to Anki and drill myself rigorously on it. Result - I'm going nowhere fast with the book and starting to hate it, and starting to hate my Anki drills cos they have a heap of these "baroque" type words that have no place in everyday usage. I'm going to switch to cainntear's 3 wise guidelines and the other useful suggestions here, and make life simpler. A lot of the vocabulary in this book is fluff - adjectives and soliloquies on humdrum events, I can safely leave them to time and opportunity to acquire (does anyone else see a similarity between Calvino and the English novel Gormenghast?). Anyway, another epiphany I've had is to copy really useful and well-summarised posts like Cainntear's into a Word doc and save as a collection of language learning tips. I'm certain I read this post in 2009, but didn't remember the advice because it wasn't relevant to me (I wasn't even remotely contemplating reading novels back then). The point being, I have wasted six weeks with my own laborious and self-destructive method, when I'd already been given the guidance I needed, but had forgotten it. Who knows, maybe I'll be the author of a best-selling language guide one day - but how will I track you all down to distribute the royalties??? ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5344 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 23 of 24 26 January 2011 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Although this is an old post, since it has been revived, I will add my thoughts to the mix.
Like the original poster, when I first acquired a grasp of German, I immediately went out and purchased a few childrens books of varying levels. Quite frankly, these really didn't hold my interest terribly much either, despite the fact that I sometimes try to deny this, such as when I am getting rid of books. I've also been on the other end of the spectrum, where I have purchased and managed my way through some literary works in a L2, despite the fact that these works were way out of my league, in terms of vocabulary. As a few others have mentioned, there is a tendency to repeat words and phrases throughout in a literary work, but I find the initial trials and struggles to be very slow and painful...something which I do not like, as I try to read for pleasure. When one first wants to begin reading authentic texts in L2, I feel that a good place to start is with bilingual books. Although there is a smaller selection, I remember reading through many of these compilations containing German literature and I could compare the original text with the translation, if something became a bit too foggy for me to understand. After reading through a selection of these, I would then move onto a monolingual text, yet I would choose a topic such as an autobiography (Anne Frank comes to mind). I whipped through some L2 autobiographies over the summer and fall, and had little trouble with them, and some of these were written by adults. As with other written works, the idea of certain words and word-constructions being repeated held true for these as well. I would finally conclude with literary works or technical documents. I was an English university student, and quickly came to realize that reading literature in one's mothertongue can be a taxing task, so doing so in a foreign tongue will be heaps more difficult. Literary works are often overly poetic and wordy, and there is certainly a larger amount of vocabulary used than a non-literary work. Furthermore, these works are often filled with all kinds of double/hidden/deeper meanings that will be missed, if examined or read by someone whose head is in the fog. I believe that as one reads more in a L2, his or her skills will obviously improve, and literary works are best to be worked up to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kinan Diglot Senior Member Syrian Arab Republic Joined 5558 days ago 234 posts - 279 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, English Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 24 of 24 26 January 2011 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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First of all, get rid of the books, burn them like in middle ages, not literally though.
You should read books only when you speak the language, not learning it, it's a consequence of learning the language not a way of doing it. My way of reading in my target language is to read an online newspaper, I read only the headlines and the small summary of the news, I don't try to understand what the headlines says and I never translate it. Then, when some word keep showing up in the headlines it starts bugging me so only then I go and look it up and that way it sticks well in my mind, I add it to my Anki too. To sum it up, you have to do that till you understand what's written without trying to. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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