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Reading as a method | ||
Tags: Reading | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 68 13 February 2011 at 8:58am | IP Logged |
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When I first wanted to learn Italian, I read 3000 pages of Italian (which I was able to do because it is so similar to Spanish and French) and then I went to Italy. Within three weeks I was speaking Italian.
When I had been in France for about a month, and was just starting to learn French, I started reading some lesser known Alexandre Dumas thing, which I understood very little of in the beginning, but I saw that at the end of the book I understood a lot. When I wrote my thesis in English, I had to read wast amounts of 18th and 19th century Italian literature, a lot of it in Venetian dialect, and again I made the experience, that if you read a lot of literature you learn a lot of new words, even if you do not look up any words in the dictionary. (In this particular case it wouldn't have done me much good to try anyway,because all I had was a pocket dictionary, and it definitely did not cover Venetian dialect from the 19th century.) At the age of 10 my mother imposed a ban on Nordic literature, to force me into reading English, and I saw that reading made me learn really fast. In this case I actually started looking up the words in a dictionary, but I did not havce the patience to continue, so I soon dropped the dictionary. Do any of you have similar experiences? 12 persons have voted this message useful | |
| danieldesu Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5470 days ago 15 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 68 13 February 2011 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
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As an American, I struggled with many different ways to learn a language. What I later realized was that I never
really had confidence that I would one day be able to use the language for real (in my case, we are talking about Japanese). Finally, I came across someone who had learned by just jumping right into native material and digesting it, so being super motivated, I read through about 100 pages of Japanese in about a week. Granted, this was a graded reader, but still, it was a set of decently long and complex passages, unlike anything I had tried to tackle before. The first time through, I understood between 60-70%, and a lot of the grammar just didn't quite make sense. Then I read through those 100 pages again and something amazing happened: I understood about 95% of what I was reading. I felt as though my Japanese had doubled or tripled in ability from where I was the week before (and I had already been studying over a year). The grammar that I never really understood before had become cemented in my brain and I learned 100s of new words, just from reading! From that point, I made reading a LARGE part of studies, and always recommend it to avid language learners. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6577 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 68 13 February 2011 at 12:05pm | IP Logged |
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Reading is my main method. I think it's just about the most powerful way of learning
once you reach the point where you can read books. I suspect a big reason for this is that books command your attention more than other media. Tv is too easy to ignore, it keeps going by itself. Similarly, radio is only audible and it's too easy to get distracted by something in your field of vision. With a book you engage your vision and the book doesn't make progress without your attention, so it's the most "quality time" that I generally get out of learning. Then there is the aspect of both seeing the language on paper and hearing it in your head as you read to yourself, which teaches me more than hearing it alone. I'm on 8000 pages of Italian and 1600 pages of Dutch, and I plan to keep it up for a while. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6703 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 68 13 February 2011 at 1:06pm | IP Logged |
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You could end up having to look up a lot of words if the languages aren't similar enough and/or you don't have some knowledge of the target language, but I think reading (or listening for that matter) still is a good exercise.
I know I can read some Portuguese thanks to my Spanish, some Dutch thanks to my German and so on. If I only immersed myself in this (Wanderlust, anyone?), my passive skills could be active. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 4875 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 5 of 68 13 February 2011 at 1:26pm | IP Logged |
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Reading is my main method to study English. I think it's one of the best ways to learn. When I start a new language, I try really hard to read it, as I did for German. I've searched on a website the most common words (they were 100). So when I mastered these words, I started to read German texts and understood a little, sometimes I got the meaning of some sentence. In my opinion it's a great progress in only three weeks. I would like to do the same to Japanese, but I would not be able to read until I had learned all the kanji (with different readings) and kanas.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5191 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 6 of 68 13 February 2011 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
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Kato Lomb learned all of her languages by reading. I have not yet started reading in Arabic, I just don't have enough
of a base yet. However, with all of my other languages this time around my cycle the main structure of my learning is going to be through reading. I think you have to "bootstrap" (to steal someone else's word) a little before you jump right into reading. Just so you have some basic knowledge and words to start from. After that though, I believe that you can grow exponentially by reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4860 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 7 of 68 13 February 2011 at 1:58pm | IP Logged |
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I'm currently trying to use this method to build my abilities in Spanish. Yesterday I bought Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone in Spanish and, although I understand maybe 50% of it, with the use of the English version of the book, I can understand the meaning of the text without the use of a dictionary. I hope that I can keep this up but it sounds like from your experiences that it can actually help me learn Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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