|
 |
Reading techniques in a foreign language | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | Reading | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5395 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes  Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 9 of 11 24 June 2010 at 1:07am | IP Logged |
|
Look up ALL the words in chapter 1, write them down, study them.
Look up ALL the words in chapter 2, write them down. Look up ALL the words in chapter 3. Many authors have favorite words which they love to use all of the time. You will now have many words that are bound to be repeated throughout the book. This means you will spend a lot of time at the beginning of the book, but gradually develop a vocabulary pertaining to this specific author/book. But seeing as you are studying languages with scripts that's different? Anyway it works for English and Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5120 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 10 of 11 24 June 2010 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
|
I don't usually look up unknown words or phrases or anything. I just keep on reading. If there is a longer passage
that I'm unable to understand, I read it again and again and again until it starts making sense. If a word keeps coming up and I still can't figure it out from the context I will look it up, but that happens very rarely. I can actually remember doing this about three times in my life. I have three tricks when it comes to reading in a foreign language. First trick is to read very short books, but not abridged ones. This way I will be able to finish them (even if it takes me three weeks to do so) and if necessary I can read the book again. Second is to use comic books where I have the context to support me. I re-read a comicbook after some months or a year to see how much more I understand (there's always some special surprises). Third trick is to read books I'm very familiar with. (I have The Little Prince in several languages and I've used it as a first book to read in any foreign language, I've read it in Finnish for about ten times.) I'm not too worried about not understanding a few words or sentences here and there. I figure I'll understand them later, one day. I'm happy if I can figure out who is the main character and some of the major turns in the plot. (If it's a crime novel then who, what and why are questions I would like to be able to answer afterwards.) And I've read books that have been way over my ability to understand and haven't felt that it was a problem. I just consentrated on spotting the verbs or recognizing personal pronouns or adjectives or anything. Now with Swesish I've also tried some intensive reading. I'm writing the texts from my textbook by hand and going through new words and structures, translating the text back and forth and seeing if my translation matches the original. However, I couldn't do this to a longer text. It would be too boring for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5600 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 11 of 11 24 June 2010 at 8:19am | IP Logged |
|
I just take my time. I look up every word I don't know because I'm still learning idioms. In the past two days I've looked up:
la bonne chère - good food se faire un tour de rein - back strain faire un bœuf - jam session I've got to learn them sometime and I'd like to know now. <<Faire un bœuf>> supposedly comes from a restaurant in Paris called Le Bœuf sur le toit, where musicians gathered after hours to practice. I can read for pleasure without knowing every word, but there's more pleasure in knowing. I've never regretted the extra time spent in the dictionary, because internet dictionaries are so convenient. I have two French dictionaries on my iGoogle home page and two others on my Kindle, but I don't own any paper ones. I am currently reading every chapter of Les Misérables three times, and listening to an unabridged recording, because this book is worth the attention. Some things I just glide through, like news articles, but not Hugo. The discovery of Hugo's poetry was an enormous pleasure when I was a beginner, but only because I had a dual-language book, otherwise it would have been too tedious to look up so many words, and you can't look up grammar. Edited by dolly on 24 June 2010 at 8:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
