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Reading in the native language

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
NuclearX2
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5100 days ago

10 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: Italian, English*
Studies: German, Spanish

 
 Message 1 of 2
02 January 2011 at 5:29am | IP Logged 
I had an interesting thought about increasing one's spoken fluency. Typically you try
to read articles, books, news, etc. in your target language in an attempt to be able to
read more effectively, looking up new words in the process to increase your vocabulary.
However what I found, especially when reading in languages that are familiar to your
own is that you can understand most of what you read in that language, so you won't
look up the words that you can figure out or are similar. But if you were to speak in
the target language, you wouldn't know those words because you only glanced them over
and simply understood their meaning rather than recited it and drilled it into your
head like most vocabulary.

What I think might work better is instead reading text in your native language
and as you read try to translate into your target language (using correct grammar and
sentence structure of course). As you do this you could also write to improve your
writing and then see if it makes sense with the original meaning.

For example, when I started studying Spanish, I found that I understood most Wikipedia
articles, news articles, etc. because I already knew Italian but all this was doing was
increasing my ability to read. It wasn't really helping me learn new vocab. What do you
all think?
2 persons have voted this message useful



jdmoncada
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5026 days ago

470 posts - 741 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 2 of 2
15 February 2011 at 6:50am | IP Logged 
I think it's worth trying!

I think I will and then come back and share my results.
1 person has voted this message useful



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