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What about unknown words in a book ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bolkonsky Diglot Newbie France Joined 5196 days ago 25 posts - 27 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 1 of 38 27 October 2010 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have always wonder what is the best to do with the words you don't know when you read a book in your foreign language. I try to read as munch as possible and when I find out a new word I don't know if I have to keep reading without lingering on it (just trying to decipher the meaning) or if I have to look for what does it mean in a dictionary or if I have to look for what does it mean and to write it down on a flashcard.
Generally I use a dictionary for each word I don't know but sometimes I can read just 2 or 3 pages in 10min. To my mind it is better to use a dictionary when the word seems important and to write it down right away but sometimes a word can appear several times and can remain unknown though. So according to you which one of this method is the best to learn but also to enjoy the reading ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 38 27 October 2010 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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For reading books, I read and only write down words I see 2+ times. If I wrote down every single word, it would take hours to get through a chapter (and not to mention, having to type the words into a dictionary is also wasting time.) When I'm reading something on the computer that I can copy and paste, then I'll look up every unknown word since it's less of a hassle compared to using a printed book.
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| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5519 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 3 of 38 27 October 2010 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Before I start reading books in a foreign language, I make sure I know most of the basic vocabulary of a language (up to B2/C1-level) simply by using the standard vocab trainers available. Anki for instance provides quite a range of free decks, as well as some commercial vocab trainers out there. Until I reach a reasonable level I restrain myself to reading short stories, newspapers etc. (Hence sources for my Anki-Deck!...)
I also tried learner's editions (with annotations), but the reading 1. didn't exactly turn out to be fun and 2. I do not seem to retain a lot of the new words by just reading the annotations. Edited by B-Tina on 27 October 2010 at 10:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6574 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 38 28 October 2010 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I look up every word I don't know and add it to my SRS deck so I never forget it. Yes, this way it'll take a long time to get through a single page. But I've got time. And as my vocabulary improves I encounter fewer and fewer unknown words.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6264 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 38 28 October 2010 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's fairly exhausting looking all unknown words up. Looking them up only if they occur more than once is a good idea. Alternatively, you could just look up unknown verbs and nouns, the types of word most vital for meaning, if it is readily apparent that the unknown words are verbs and nouns.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 38 28 October 2010 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I divide my reading into intensive and extensive. Intensive means that I look most unknown words up. Extensive means that I look as little as possible up.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 38 28 October 2010 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I was about to start my first book in French, my teacher gave me the following advice.
Don't look up every word you don't know, or you'll not be able to follow the story. Look up words only if: 1) you need them to understand the story. If it says "outside, a gramwhumper sang sweetly in the trees", don't look up "gramwhumper". It must be a type of bird, and it's not important to the plot. If it sayd "she opened the box and gasped in horror. Inside, there was a whaddldidee." Obviously the contents of the box are important, so you need to look up "whaddldidee". or 2) You've seen them multiple times. If the word has been used 3 times, it will probably be used a fourth time, and a fifth time, and a sixth... so you may as well learn it. Obviously I ignored this advice and took ages to get through the first chapter, then gave it a try and discovered that it worked. As you get through the book, the number of new words decreases, and by the end of the book, you should only need to look at the dictionary once or twice for every few pages. 8 persons have 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 8 of 38 28 October 2010 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||
You could argue the exact opposite! If it's important to the story and mentioned enough times you'll probably be able to work out what it is. However, with the bird, there may be no chance to ever know what kind of bird it is unless you look it up. Personally I hate reading a text when I don't understand ALL the words. I would hope that all the words in a text are relevant to the story in some way. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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