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Reading w/o many unknown words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| crazyleseratte Pentaglot Newbie Germany crazyleseratte.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3965 days ago 26 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English, German*, Spanish, French, Italian Studies: Dutch, Danish, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian | Message 1 of 11 12 November 2014 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been reviewing some learning and reading methods lately, as I had a long break
from learning. Normally I am a fast and vast reader. I read everything and rush through the pages. Now I also tried to read some article, for my French mostly, very thoroughly and with looking every word up. Problem is: I have hundreds of flash cards, and I don't know the words, and probably never will. Also: different learners do have different opinions on this. Steve Kaufmann for example does read texts with many unknown words, and does not look up. Now, I haven't finished the video of the professor yet, but am I wrong when I assume, that in his method he only uses texts with little unknown elements? What do you think about the methods, and what do you do for your learning? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 11 12 November 2014 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think Kaufmann and others who argue for extensive reading, think that you need to know about 98% of the words on a page, simply because it is hard to guess the meaning of words from context when your comprehension is lower. There is no absolute cut-off, but (apparently) 98% is seen as somewhat optimal.
Now intensively reading (say with an ebook and pop-dictionary) there is not need to worry about this issue - as you will always "guess" the word correctly with the help of your dictionary. I find I can read texts comfortably on an ebook when I am at about 90% or higher -- 95% is better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 3 of 11 12 November 2014 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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The argument professor Arguelles gave for the 98% limit in Novi Sad was not that it was impossible to follow the plot in a book with lower coverage (though it becomes more and more difficult the lower it is) - the argument was that reading a book where you constantly are annoyed by unknown words is an unpleasant experience, and you would soon find an excuse to stop reading.
My own modest contribution to this discussion is the following advice: look the most conspicuous unknown words up in your dictionary before you start reading a paragraph or page. Having to stop reading to check a word in the middle of a sentence breaks the rhythm in your reading, and then you will probably loose the red thread in the tale. However if you already know the meaning of all the most important words you will have a much more easy going, and you will even get a repetition for free. Edited by Iversen on 13 November 2014 at 9:40am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 11 12 November 2014 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is an important distinction to be made here. Word coverage, i.e. percentage of know words, is not
always equal to comprehension, if that can be measured, and/or enjoyment. It all depends on the genre of text. It most vocabulary studies, distinctions are made between fiction, academic, newspaper writing and conversation. More distinctions can be made of course within these genres. What is important here is that the importance of word coverage can vary between genres. In academic documents, a very high coverage is absolutely necessary. On the other hand, it's probably lower in fiction and even lower in conversations where context and pronunciation can make up for vagaries of word usage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 5 of 11 13 November 2014 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||
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There is also another thing to consider: the importance of each unknown word. If you read an article about some specific thing - like I did a few days ago with the Majorana-particle - you'll definitely learn the word for it. But there may be a whole host of unknown words in such an article which you decide you don't need to know. Maybe you can roughly guess what a given word means, like when the article I read contains a reference to some obscure mathematical notion. OK, I just skip such a word and file it under "unknown mathematical term". And you can skip a word thirty times without remembering it. But if you decide that 'nuff is 'nuff and decide to find out what it means, then you'll learn it.
If you take all the words I didn't know in the Italian article about the Majorana particle (and the other articles in Italian and English which I read afterwards) then I may have been well below 98% - but I know more about that particle know than I did before I read the article. And now I know the terms "particella di Majorana", "Majorana particle" and the Italian neologism 'majorana' which I invented for my log thread, and as an extra bonus got my notions about fermions cleaned up. I even learnt some biographical facts about poor Mr. Majorana who published a masterstroke of an article in 1937 and disappeared without a trace from a steamer less than one year later. So what is that 98% limit good for? Well, it is relevant for something quite different from the general message and informational value of the articles I mentioned, namely for the acribic, precise and - as far as possible - complete comprehension of the texts. The kind of comprehension you would need to translate them into some other language.. And there every hole in your vocabulary or grammatical savvy is relevant. PS: I assume you also have noticed the name "majorana" by now. With some suitable repetition you might even remember it tomorrow. That's how language learning from texts work. Edited by Iversen on 13 November 2014 at 10:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 11 13 November 2014 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Unless, like me, you "smeared" over the word every time you read it. Until I read your last paragraph, I read the word as "m******na". I think that's why it's often said that in order to improve vocabulary while reading, you have to intend to improve your vocabulary while reading. In other words, pay attention to the unknown words. Edited by Jeffers on 13 November 2014 at 2:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3710 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 13 November 2014 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the key is to do whatever you enjoy more and is most practical for you.
Personally, I almost never look up words even when reading, and in some cases my comprehension is well below 98% of the words. I just don't want to interrupt the flow of the narrative, and I learn and reinforce a great deal of vocabulary nonetheless. In college, I took the advanced level literature classes in French and Spanish. The quantity of reading in my college classes in general was far too large to allow for careful, meticulous reading. I often had hundreds of pages to read per night and I had to skim or skip certain sections. Needless to say, I was not looking anything up in the dictionary. Nonetheless, my improvement in these languages was notable and I enjoyed the classes a great deal. I should note that the classes themselves were pretty much exclusively discussion in L2, and we had to write several papers per semester. I definitely did look words up (a lot) when writing. It’s interesting to note that by simply doing a lot of varied reading and listening, without looking up words, not only do you naturally and often imperceptibly improve your vocabulary, you also tend to learn the highest frequency words that are most level appropriate for you. Why is this? If you look up a lot of words, many of them may be very specific terms that you are unlikely to come across again anytime soon. They may be extremely low frequency words and far more advanced than your current level. By contrast, when you learn by context and repeated and varied contact, you are naturally going to pick up those words that (1) repeat a lot over a wide variety of texts and (2) are decipherable by context at your level. That said, and my personal preference notwithstanding, you should do what you makes your reading more enjoyable. If you get a kick out of reading definitions in a dictionary, or if a word is really bugging you, by all means look it up! Edited by victorhart on 13 November 2014 at 2:38pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 11 13 November 2014 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I can't let this opportunity go by to make a point. We might all remember the word "majorana" tomorrow but we still don't know what it means. That's the difference between recognizing and understanding a word. As Iversen rightly points out earlier in his post, certain words are more important than others and we can safely gloss over them and concentrate on the really central ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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