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Reading w/o many unknown words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4450 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 9 of 11 13 November 2014 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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Reading with many unknown words tends to slow you down. I tend to read books that are written at a level I'm
comfortable with so I don't have to look up too many words & phrases. I used to read English newspapers regularly and still do but mostly for the editorials than the news that I can get out of a news network which is more up to date. I also read Chinese news regularly but usually online rather than printed editions. What I find in a news articles is that the editors do sometimes use more obscure words & phrases (less common characters) than a more common term with simpler characters. On a printed edition, I can look up words & phrases on an iPad by scribbling the characters with 1 finger into an online dictionary. When reading an online edition I simply Cut & Paste characters into a computer dictionary for a quick lookup. I can click on the audio button to hear what the characters sound like. On a page I can usually get between 90-95% of the characters. There are certain ones I don't know I can guess based on the shape which may be similar to another character. A news article is usually no more than 2 pages long so if you stumble on a few word whether you look them up right away or wait until the end of the article then go back to them isn't a big deal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kees Nonaglot Newbie Canada learn-to-read-foreig Joined 5190 days ago 37 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Swedish, French, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian | Message 10 of 11 15 November 2014 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
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Extensive reading with pop-up dictionary can be disruptive if it takes too long to look up words and/or they are incorrect, or wrong conjugation. I experienced this with Gutenberg books or BBC articles in foreign languages and Google or Bing translation. I love the extensive reading method however as I'm mainly interested in just learning to read a language fluently (I love reading books in their original language). In the end I prepared texts for myself with faster and correct translation in context (instead of a whole batch of possible meanings or an incorrect conjugation).
I'm setting up these free texts with immediate pop-up translation on www.bermudaword.com currently in Dutch, German, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Currently going to about 20.000 words in text on average and planning to add beginners texts and articles as well, but in a full time job plus got kids so progress isn't very fast. Because this pop-up translation is in context and with the correct conjugation it doesn't disrupt that much and you can read with a higher level of unknown words. I'm doing the Hungarian now (of course after having followed a course which gave me about 200 to 500 word vocabulary, and understanding most of the grammar) and after I read a story a few times I get all the words and that helps me on the next story, etc. It helps that you learn in context of a story (for me at least). I learned (reading) some languages through these texts and continued with reading books in the target language and native language at the same time (I read the first half of the first book of Millennium of Stieg Larsson with the Dutch version next to it). Once you're reading regular books at 95% to 98% word recognition you've broken free, so to speak :-) Btw I think dual language books are only for a stage when you have learned a big enough vocabulary that the translated sentence helps you understand the original word, as using dual language texts too early doesn't teach you the meaning of individual words you don't understand, just sentence meanings. Btw if y'all wonder about the video ad on www.bermudaword.com, I set up (paid) e-reader software as well for those texts that I offer free, which adds the possibility of turning on a Teacher-mode that makes the program remember which words you look up, and which calculates how many times you will meet the word again during the 10.000 word text, and how many times you should still practice it (so it forces you to practice only words that are semi-unique). Sort of e-reading combined with (spaced) repetition. Still working on it, and trying to sell it, to be able to work myself free of my current job, to devote my time to setting up free texts in many more languages. But that's probably a while off. I should also introduce an option for people to correct certain meanings, I guess, as people can be quite picky on the correct one ;-) But its always better than google translation, in my opinion. I see lots of sites where lots of texts are offered, but always with incorrect or incomplete (google) translation, I guess nobody wants to waste their time going through a dictionary for every single word or waste their money on a translator. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| owverysweet Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 3668 days ago 18 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 11 of 11 17 November 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
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Dude, here's answer :))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDfUzIAyzRw what I do for my all languages. NO FLASHCARDS, NO REMEMBERING WORDS :)))) . I only read my lovely books few times and I just remember automatic because of passion :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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