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Reading techniques in a foreign language | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5295 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 1 of 11 22 June 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am looking for the best way to make use of reading techniques in a foreign language. I
have many books in other languages but I often get unmotivated while reading the books and stop about 20 pages in. I am wondering what the best way to go about reading a book in another lagnuage is. Like when you come across a word or phrase you don't know, is it better to look it up then? Should I go back and look it up later? Like what's the best technique that you guys use because my current ones don't seem to be working 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6285 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 11 22 June 2010 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Putting the book down means loss of interest. Interest in books can be approximated to
interesting things happening (or interesting things learned, for nonfiction) per 10 minutes of reading. If you read very quickly, that also means that a lot more books will be interesting to you, while they'd be too slow in coming for others. If you read very slowly, your selection of interesting books is much more limited. Since most of us read a lot more slowly when reading a foreign language, that means foreign language books don't hold as much appeal as those in your native language, or even if you were to read the same book in your native language. If this holds true in your case, you have three solutions: 1) Increase your reading speed in the foreign language - there are many online sites dedicated to teaching you to "speed read", and most of the techniques can be applied to simply training yourself to reach an okay reading speed in a foreign language. 2) Find a really thrilling book, the kind that you couldn't possibly put down if it was in English. In a foreign language, you may be putting it down, but not before you've read a lot. For me, "Angels and Demons" comes to mind. 3) Develop more interest in the book that you have. For example, you could choose to focus on the author's word usage, look at all expressions to see if you might want to memorize them, or mentally highlight all adjectives to see how the author is using them to set the mood. This will give your brain more things to remark on. If lack of vocabulary is your reason for reading slowly, you might want to note down all unknown words from one of the chapters, study at least 90% of those (going by appearance of usefulness), and that should give you a head start on all following chapters because the author will keep re-using them. Edited by Sprachprofi on 22 June 2010 at 6:21pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5620 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 11 22 June 2010 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have several Japanese martial arts books that have bi-lingual sections. I also have one
French martial art book that is bi-lingual. So, I have a strong desire to be able to read these in the original language. Even if they are sometimes rare vocabulary that some of my native friends do not know. I also have a goal of getting enough French proficiency to read Harry Potter in French. They have a children's version will be a good target for the fall. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6518 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 4 of 11 22 June 2010 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I deliberately decide whether I'm going to read intensively or extensively.
If I read intensively then I typically look up all unknown words and check endings etc. one sentence at a time (I may even copy the text by hand in order to slow down the process). I have a model format with a folded sheet of paper, where I reserve a margin of 3-4 cm to new words. But after each paragraph I reread the passage extensively to get the feeling of success. When I read extensively the text has to be comprehensible, which means that I don't have to look more than a few words up per page to understand the passage. If I have been blocked by more than that I often choose to reread the page, or I postpone the reading to a time where I can be more concentrated. It is important to get the feeling of momentum, even if that means that you have to read a certain page twice. And I wouldn't dream of reading anything if it didn't interest me. Which normally means that it has to be non fiction. Edited by Iversen on 22 June 2010 at 7:33pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5142 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 5 of 11 22 June 2010 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't started reading books yet, but whenever I read articles and whatnot online I normally just skim them, because I'm trying to see how much better my passive understanding is.
If I come across a word that looks real important and I can't figure it out with cognates, I'll look it up and add it to Anki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6087 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 6 of 11 23 June 2010 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | ||
If you type "marginal gloss" into Google Images, the first two pictures that come up are photos of a similar technique, not with vocabulary but with making marginal notes on book pages. However, it could be used for new vocabulary on book pages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6254 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 7 of 11 23 June 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm similiar to Iversen. I either read for enjoyment or for learning. If the former, I rarely if ever look up a word while reading, but I take down the occasional nice phrase or word if it's important to the sense and look them up later (for example, a long time ago I remember noting "was mich betrifft" in German). If didn't understand the paragraph the first time, I read it again, and again if necessary, and if I still don't know, I look up a key word or two. I've only ever read pretty obvious books in German (for example, Sherlock Holmes translations), so that has worked.
If I'm reading to learn, I look up every single word I don't know for a few pages, and take them down in a copy. I then reread the pages a few times, and make a conscious effort to use the words (when I learned, to lie back, I'd say to myself Ich raekele mich). I don't try to consciously learn the words from the list, but from the context, and I reread the passage in intervals afterwards to cement the words. Sprachprofi's advice seems good too, I think I might adopt it and read a few thrillers! Edited by Declan1991 on 23 June 2010 at 1:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6518 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 8 of 11 24 June 2010 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||
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There is not much you can say about the extensive kind of reading, - except that you should spend as little time as possible looking words up in the dictionary. I prefer having a sheet of paper ready, and I noticed in one of Splog's post that he prefers marking the offending words for later study. But if you can't understand the text minus a few words here and there then it is too difficult. Save it for later use.
In my opinion the purpose of extensive reading is not to learn new words. Its most important role is to learn you to cope with a text that just continues and continues and continues ... much the same way as you listen to spoken words. Besides it has the important function of letting new uses of known words seep into your mind, i.e. your notions about the idiomatic side of language can be tested and extended by extensive reading and listening. Intensive reading is the opposite situation: you basically want to understand everything (though there can be obscure passages in a text that aren't worth spending your valuable time on - then just skip them). And of course this takes time. Right now I'm spending time on learning Irish, which is surprisingly different from any other language I already know. And a couple of days ago I wrote a whole screenful of explanations in my log about my attempts to understand just one single twopart sentence, even though I actually had a Google translation to guide me. I used the format with a column to the right to new words, and in the main part of the page I first wrote short sections of the sentence and below a hyperliteral translation, using my own homemade 'tricks' to mark the structure of this translation. And finally I wrote the whole sentence once again below. This is an extreme example of the idea behind intensive reading - even though intensive scrutinizing might be a better term. With a language like Greek I have moved from the same technique as with the Irish sentence over copying the Greek text without any translation to just reading and noting down unknown words and puzzling passages on a piece of paper. Basically I have learned to read Greek by working my way through one single guidebook to Rhodes, - which in fact reminds me of the method ascribed to the Victorian explorer Richard Burton: learn everything in just one book, and you have learnt the backbones of a whole language. With time you will do more and more extensive and less and less intensive reading (totally excluding any manual copying). I can't say that I ever do intensive reading in my best languages any more. Of course it can be necessary to reread a text about a difficult subject ... however if I can't understand something I read in English or German then I normally assume the author is a fool, not me. Finally one warning: the use of texts that clearly are above your level (as any text in Irish in my present situation) is warranted when you read intensively. But the inverse is true for speaking and writing: here your best bet is to think, speak and write as much as possible in very simple phrases and sentences and let them get more complicated when you feel comfortable to let it happen. Anything that feels like solving a puzzle is harmful because it slows you down. There isn't something called 'intensive speaking' - its name is 'wrong tactic'. Edited by Iversen on 24 June 2010 at 1:00am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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