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Just read and not understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Rennon Newbie Finland Joined 4801 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 1 of 62 17 March 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Over and over again, I've heard people say just to read things and even if you don't understand, "let the words just wash over you", my wife does this, many people I talk to online do this, and I just don't understand it at all because when I try to do this with Finnish, I don't understand anything, and it just doesn't make any sense to me that I'll learn by not understanding. I have a very basic understanding of the Finnish language so is there some point I need to get to to be able to use this method?
I've been watching "lingosteve" on YouTube quite a bit lately and he seems to be able to read Japanese novels and converse quite confidently, yet he claims he doesn't know what a participle is. This is just bizarre to think someone can speak a competent level of Japanese, a language with radically different grammar to English, without having understanding of such constructions of the language. The idea that an adult can just listen to a language (especially one that is so radically different) and just "absorb it" is quite strange. However, from my viewings, it seems he reads things like Teach Yourself and Colloquial series books, but even they would explain such things as participles. Nevertheless, I suppose it just frustrates me so much when I try to read and I'm constantly trying to understand not only words but structures (Finnish being as different to English as it is). I can't "just read" something if I can't even get the basic gist of it (I've been studying Finnish for about 6-7 months now (more often than not, 6 hours a day) and still can't get the basic gist of even most children's books, so perhaps it's just me.) But what do you think of this? Is there something I'm missing here? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5321 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 2 of 62 17 March 2011 at 2:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I used Colloquial Finnish & the old Teach Yourself Finnish book and made 2000-ish flashcards before I was able to begin understanding real speech and texts. Also, I did about 60 hours of listening-reading, listening to Finnish audio while reading English texts. Just plain immersion didn't really get me anywhere, though it might for a language with a closer vocabulary to English, such as French or Dutch. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 17 March 2011 at 2:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5365 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 3 of 62 17 March 2011 at 2:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think a lot of the value in "reading without understanding" is just getting used to the general sentence structures and frequently used words. In my opinion, it's probably best to read things where you have some level of comprehension but you don't understand everything. With Finnish, it's inevitably going to be a harder task than, say, with German or Spanish, since most of the vocabulary is completely unrelated to English, so you need to take that into account. The language itself has a lot to do with how successful this task is going to be: Finnish to me looks like a bunch of indecipherable gibberish, while Italian is fairly transparent and easily understandable, though I've never studied either language.
Perhaps you just need to get a better grasp on the basic grammar and vocabulary before you dive head-first into extensive reading. If you can't get the basic gist of even children's books, you might consider starting by reading easy material and looking up the words you don't know, until you get a firmer grounding in the language and can move onto more advanced material. As you get better, you'll find yourself looking things up less and less, though keep in mind that context won't always make it clear what a word or expression means, even at an advanced level. Some people prefer to read without looking anything up, but I like to keep a dictionary handy because I always find words I don't understand and am curious about, and because I don't always trust my ability to deduce the precise correct meaning from context. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5923 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 4 of 62 17 March 2011 at 7:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, I know the feeling of "I'm not learning anything," and I guess the issue is, if I feel like I'm not learning anything, am I really not learning anything? Or should I soldier on anyway, because maybe my brain is learning stuff that I'm just not consciously aware of?
To me this is the essence of the question here -- should we trust our mind's own perception of whether it's actually learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mayfair Diglot Senior Member Australia theasiaanalyst.wordp Joined 5217 days ago 48 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Mandarin | Message 5 of 62 17 March 2011 at 8:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think this kind of extensive reading only becomes useful when you can figure out words from context. If you're not at the level where you can do that, then I believe that, compared to other activities, it's a waste of time. Some people have learnt languages by diving straight into novels - the Hungarian polyglot Kato Lomb springs to mind - and enriching their vocabulary by figuring out unknown words from context. I can only imagine that this would take immense amounts of patience. I might one day try it as an experiment, perhaps with Spanish, since there are cognates with both English and French. Even then, I can't imagine myself sticking with it too long.
A better option, I think, would be to read a bilingual text and to look at the translation into your native tongue only when absolutely necessary. This will help you learn to deduce the meanings of new words, but also provides you with an easy way to check it by looking at the translation into your native language (to avoid ingraining meanings that you have deduced wrongly). I've been doing this with Korean and I've found it both rewarding and interesting, in that it allows me to access more difficult and stimulating texts that would be beyond my level otherwise. (By the way, I can read novels in Japanese and express almost anything I want to, but I don't know what Japanese participles are either.) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 4988 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 62 17 March 2011 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think people are kidding themselves if they think they are learning just from reading. Probably what they are doing is reinforcing what they already know (which in itself is a very useful exercise, however).
How is context going to help you learn colours, numbers, days of the week? And if it can't help with such basic things, why should it help with more advanced vocabulary? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mayfair Diglot Senior Member Australia theasiaanalyst.wordp Joined 5217 days ago 48 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Mandarin | Message 7 of 62 17 March 2011 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you were an English learner and you knew all the words in that sentence except "advanced", do you think you could work out the meaning of that word by context? I would certainly think so. You can't expect to learn all words like this, and I agree that it's next to impossible to learn the concepts you mention solely through context. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect to learn every new word by looking it up in a dictionary. After having built up a solid vocabulary base, it becomes much easier and more enjoyable to learn words through context. I don't feel that this kind of reading should be introduced too early, nor relied on as a sole method of learning, but after having reached a certain point in one's studies I think it's invaluable. Edited by mayfair on 17 March 2011 at 2:20pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 4988 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 62 17 March 2011 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure you could - it might mean "complex", "difficult", "uncommon"... And it's rare that you will know all the words in a sentence except one easily deducible one. If you can do it, great. But I think it's an inefficient way to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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