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Just read and not understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5338 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 57 of 62 21 March 2011 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am one of those who swear by large amounts of reading without a dictionary as a method, in order to boost your familiarity with sentence structure and vocabulary, but there are a number of circumstances which must fit.
Just picking up a book in a random language you do not know, or even with a new alphabet is obviously not going to work.I would definitely not advise anyone to pick up a book in Russian or Mandarin if they had no knowledge in it and just start reading. I cannot imagine that you would learn anything from that. And even if I advocate the method, I would never advocate using that method alone. Someone mentioned "a balanced diet", and even if you give preference to one method, you should still include the others. Reading is great in a phase where you are just starting to get a feel for a language, but just as you will never become a cook from watching cooking classes on TV, you will never learn to speak a language by reading alone. You need audio, and you need to practise the language as much as possible. You must in any event have a certain level, (B1) for instance, if the language is very far from your own. I have however experienced that if you are dealing with a language which is either close to your own language or close to another language you know well, then you can learn a lot from just reading, even if you do not understand all that much to begin with. What I however is realizing do not work, at least for me, is to learn lots of grammar. It is getting me absolutely nowhere. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6679 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 58 of 62 21 March 2011 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Sometimes I think this is root of many problems. Average people need a lot of time and effort to learn a language to a fluent level. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 59 of 62 21 March 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lots of good advice from the experts here at HTLAL. I don't have much to add except to say that the OP is maybe underestimating his good fortune and his progress. To live in the country and to be married to a native speaker, how much better can it get for a language learner? Most of us here would love to be in that situation. The point here is that you (OP) have to take advantage of it.
A big problem that many people face in this sort of situation (and elsewhere) is that friends and relatives are so used to talking to us in our native tongue--to be helpful of course--that it becomes difficult to change these habits later. The only advice, based on my experience, I can give is that a) you have to become proficient in the language (even just with short phrases) b) be persistent, that is keeping speaking in the target language even when people are speaking in your language and c) seek out opportunities to use the language with natives other than your relatives and friends. 6-7 months is not a long time for learning a language even in an immersion setting. Of course, there are some Internet hotshots who can learn a language in three months, but that's not the case of most of us. Edited by s_allard on 22 March 2011 at 3:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6376 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 60 of 62 30 March 2011 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is why I think doing the opposite of traditional L-R by listening to L1 and
reading L2 is effective. You can build vocabulary quickly. If just reading and trying to figure out context works, then hearing the meaning and reading the sentence enables you a short cut to the guessing the meaning of words. Of course, the opposite way is important too so that you get exposure to the sounds of language and learn to understand rapid speech and how to pronounce the language properly. So don't get me wrong, lots of aural exposure is an important part of my studies. I leave L1-L2 listening and reading until an intermediate stage where all I want now is to learn new vocabulary en masse. That's about where I am with my German and honestly this type of LR is quite pleasant. It's definitely more helpful than just reading without understanding and guessing at the context. Edited by zerothinking on 30 March 2011 at 2:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cpnlsn Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6177 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, French, German | Message 61 of 62 30 March 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am definitely against just reading and not understanding.
This will simply not work. There has to be some grammar and vocab to start off with. If you're not understanding anything then there are some approaches that might help. Reading at a lower level, shorter texts, texts you already know, bilingual short stories and news reports where your knowledge of events supply some of the meaning. My own view us that grammar is best sandwiched between exposure both reading and listening. A slightly different thing is reading and not understanding everything. I think there are times to read without understanding everything but if it is excessive then input at a lower level is needed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leftcoaster Diglot Newbie China Joined 5035 days ago 22 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Russian | Message 62 of 62 01 April 2011 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm certainly no expert but I often use "reading without understanding" to help with my comfort level. I definitely try to spend as much of my time as possible actively learning, that by is looking up words when I'm reading or consciously trying to figure out what people are saying on the street.
However, if I spent all my time on the active part of language acquisition, I would quickly run out of energy and exhaust my mental fortitude. I use the passive "let it flow around you" part of language learning to familiarize myself with Chinese without letting it overwhelm me. To explain, as a foreigner in Beijing it's easy to become intimidated by Mandarin - it's everywhere around me already and I understand so little of it! It's easy to become paralyzed with fear when you live in an almost totally incomprehensible environment and real progress comes so slowly. Therefore, I spend a lot of time passively absorbing Mandarin not to necessarily learn it better, but rather to become more used to it. I don't need to understand everything I read/hear, I do need to not let it intimidate me and gradually acclimatize to it. For me, that's the really important part of passive learning, anything else I get out of it is just gravy. Edited by Leftcoaster on 01 April 2011 at 12:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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