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Lack of interesting materials in language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6506 days ago 131 posts - 136 votes  Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 1 of 6 12 April 2009 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just a quick question. How do you guys deal with a lack of interesting materials in your target language? I am looking to start Arabic soon but all the materials I've found are either religious, incredibly boring ('The Economy of Lebanon in the 1900s'), or unavailable. Perhaps I'm spoiled because German had a lot of 'modern' stuff like novels, DVDs and such, so it was interesting to read and study. I am almost seriously considering tackling another language first. Even Mandarin has a TON of new printed materials, comics, and dramas on DVD that make learning it tempting (despite the crazy difficulty level).
I eventually want to learn Mandarin, so starting on that wouldn't be so bad but I wanted to try another language first before I took on something that incredibly hard. Any opinions guys? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5707 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 2 of 6 12 April 2009 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm having similar problems with Romanian- for which I'm sure there must be interesting materials available, they just don't seem to be available outside of Romania or online. As to how I plan to deal with it, well- I'm going to wade through the boring beginner level stuff I have and then I will have to either go to Romania to browse the bookshops, or make friends with a Romanian in the UK who can pick up some stuff on my behalf when they visit home. It's very frustrating after being so spoilt for choice with French materials.
Another problem is that it's difficult to hunt down interesting material in the language if you're a beginner- for example, if you find something on the internet, how can you tell if it's interesting/useful or not if you can't yet understand a word? I looked at the website of a Romanian book publishing company that apparently ship overseas but as I'm a beginner I didn't know enough to know what I was potentially buying or even to navigate the website (it must be even harder in arabic!) Are you able to enlist the help of a native speaker to find you something? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6506 days ago 131 posts - 136 votes Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 3 of 6 13 April 2009 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I wish. I don't know anyone who comes from the Middle East or anyone in it. I don't think the level of the material is incredibly relevant (you can still read a novel if you're a beginner as long as it's not overly-technical or super-advanced) but I hear you on the issue of not knowing what you're even buying! So frustrating :)
Maybe you could use picking up some materials as an excuse to stop by Romania? You can go for a week and bring back two suitcases of stuff. That's what I did when I was leaving Austria and it worked out pretty well! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5707 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 4 of 6 13 April 2009 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe there is an Arabic speaker on this forum who could recommend some sources...
Anyone out there?? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6381 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 6 13 April 2009 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||
Neither I nor Reineke are Arabic speakers, and I've never dealt with the company in question, but I'll pass on what he said in another thread on the 11th.
I hope that helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6140 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 6 of 6 14 April 2009 at 4:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Have you spent a lot of time online, googling? In about 5 minutes I found tons of stuff. Just google Arabic children's stories or Arab music. Tons of music sites, online games and reading practice and cartoons designed for Arabic-speaking kids. Here's an example:
http://www.yemenlinks.com/Arabic_Resources.htm You can use something like that to lead to dozens of sites online, not to study in any structured way, but just to use the language, look at it, sometimes even listen to it. You can probably find radio stations, etc. itoot.net is a clearinghouse for blogs about the Arab world, most in English but many in Arabic, about a variety of topics, cultural, personal, political, history, arts, etc. With the internet you'll never run out of resources. Also, there are so many online learning sites, classes, free and fee-based. My daughter is learning Arabic and there's just loads and loads of free content online. Even sites geared to kids can be fun, some of the games are fun practice; I use lots of silly kids' sites for exposure to Korean and the same type of thing is available in Arabic or any other language if you poke around and follow links. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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