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Reading TL May Delay Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 9 of 73 19 January 2012 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
You are addressing two different issues here: 1) written vs. spoken language 2) passive vs. active. Reading is both passive and written, and therefore it is not unexpected that reading gives little effect on active spoken fluency (= "fluent production of language"). So if your yardstick is active spoken fluency then you have to do some actual speaking, and this means that you can't spend all your time on reading (nor on vocabulary and grammar studies). On the other hand you can't learn read without spending time on that too, and if your primary interest in languages is reading and writing, then it makes sense not to spend all your time on speaking. Actually reading has several advantages to listening, namely that written texts rarely disappear while you read them, and printed texts are generally not affected by the problems of speech: slurred speech, half finished sentences and background noise. This doesn't mean that writing is 'as good' as speech - children learn to speak before they learn to write, and speech was probably invented at least one million years before writing. And it would be risky to try to learn to think or even read in a language without having a clue about its pronunciation. But depending on your ultimate goals the written variant of a language may still be more accessible and useful than the spoken version, and personally I have learned more grammar, vocabulary and expressions from written texts than I have from spoken sources. Edited by Iversen on 19 January 2012 at 4:14pm 22 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 10 of 73 19 January 2012 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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1: Please stop using the term "fluency". It never fails to confuse and muddle any debate on language learning.
2: I have experienced doing without reading when learning Cantonese. Written material in the language is extremely scarce, so I have done precious little reading practice. This has hampered me in learning advanced vocabulary. It seems clear to me that reading is a great way of expanding your vocabulary. Conversation is very unreliable and slow as a means to acquire vocab, and it also requires a conversation partner. Listening to radio, watching TV and similar listening activities make it hard to look up words as you go along, as you have to pause, and often the words rush by and are slurred so it's hard to even know what to look up. When reading, looking a word up is easy as pie. 17 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 73 19 January 2012 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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In principle you are right, in that if your focus is on speech, then speaking practise is the best way of practising. However, a lot of people need a lot of input, before they are able to go to the output.
I learned Spanish without reading any Spanish until I was fluent,(and no, I will absolutely not stop using that word) but I also know that the reason why I could start to speak a rudimentary Italian the same day I set foot in Italy, was that I had read 3000 pages of Italian before I got there. You must have an input from somewhere to give you an idea of what you can actually say in your TL. Reading or listening to tapes or films give you that. My general view is that language learning methods are like diets. It doesn't really matter which one you use, as long as you use one. And I do not think there is one method which fits all. The more I learn, the more I see is that I suck at learning languages from grammar books. I need to learn languages from people, or at lest normal reading material. My brain is wired in a way which makes me learn something after I have heard the sentence used 100 times, but I do not learn by hearing the grammar rule 100 times. That is, I learn the grammer rule, but I do not learn to actually apply the grammar rule. PS. Private message: L - I am trying to send you a new message, but your in box is full). Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 19 January 2012 at 2:00pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| birthdaysuit Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 48 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 12 of 73 19 January 2012 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm simply going to say that if you're someone who enjoys reading, like me, you'll get a
lot out of it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hendrek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4883 days ago 152 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Persian | Message 13 of 73 19 January 2012 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the concept of practicing each of the 4 main language skills separately to improve each is valid, so if you want to learn to speak, you need to speak... etc.
However, I do read extensively in Italian. I find that by increasing my passive vocabulary this way, I am well positioned when I then practice speaking and listening. Why? 1. Because I think it is far easier to pull a vocabulary word from the passive into the active phase than just from nothing into the active phase. If I've seen the word in context 20 times in books, when I hear it and repeat it a few times in a conversation, it is more likely to be readily available to me in the future. 2. For my learning style, seeing the word written really helps to cement it into my mind. Also, as I force myself to read through the difficult verb constructions using my internal monologue, my recognition of them becomes more automatic and less of a translation over time. I think it takes a certain number of times for this to happen for a given construction, and it's easier to encounter it repeatedly via text. 3. Plus reading is already one of my natural habits, so it makes sense to just keep the habit and switch the language... it feels almost effortless that way in terms of willpower to study. I think the key is to not assume that reading a lot *by itself* will get you speaking or understanding spoken language. You need to actually practice those separately (or at least I do). For instance, I do listening practice in the car when I obviously can't read. But I think reading generally helps when it's time to speak. 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 14 of 73 19 January 2012 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Maybe alphabets turn out to be more useful once one is beyond this very first stage of associating single letters with sounds ... So, having achieved your personal goal of fluency, can you read now? Or is it still not useful enough to give it a try? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 15 of 73 19 January 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well said @Hendrek! It's about synergy. Synergy results when distinct elements combine and work together to create more usefulness than they can separately. Reading influences writing, which influences formation of thoughts verbally and in writing. Expressing thoughts in writing helps with expressing thoughts verbally. Listening informs speaking and reading, etc.
Languages are means of communication. That communication happens both verbally and in writing. The more language learners take a holistic approach to language learning by taking advantage of the synergy between the various elements of language, the more proficient we can become in a target language- in my opinion. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4702 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 16 of 73 19 January 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
i do way, way more than this. i'm actually learning all day long. when i'm outside, i listen to podcasts or audio courses. i talk to myself in japanese whenever possible. not sure if that's when i actually think in the TL tho. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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