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Order of difficulty of reading materials | ||
Tags: Reading | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4546 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 12 18 October 2012 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looking at the Spanish section of our local bookstore, trying to plot how to spend some money on payday, it occurred to me that I need a rough way choose reading material in order of difficulty.
What general rules of thumb do you use for predicting difficulty levels when reading in a foreign language? Here are some I've heard suggested: 0) Graded readers can be at any level, including very, very easy. 1) Newspapers are easier than books. 2) nonfiction is easier than fiction. 3) plays are easier than novels. 4) material translated from L1 to L2 is easier than material originally written in the L2. 5) material for children is easier than material for young adults. 6) material for young adults is easier than material for adults. 7) first person narrative is easier than third person narrative (paraphrasing something Serpent said). 8) thrillers/romance/popular fiction are easier than high powered literary stuff. Anything else? Any disagreement? I know many of these are generalizations, but are they good generalizations? steve corrected subject verb agreement :) Edited by sfuqua on 18 October 2012 at 8:45pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5043 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 12 18 October 2012 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Plays aren't necessarily easier than novels- it depends on how literary the play is. Newspapers aren't necessarily easier than books. It depends on the subject matter. I regularly read El País from Spain and I find some of the vocabulary quite complex, at times, depending on the subject matter.
My best advice is to preview the books you are interested in first by skimming a few pages before you buy. If you find you are having little difficulty reading and understanding- move on to something that's a little more difficult. Ideally, you don't want to read anything that is so difficult you have to consult the dictionary in every sentence- although that's a good way for me to learn it probably isn't for you. I'm of the school of thought that you should challenge yourself with material that is slightly above your current level in order to improve. I really believe Veinte Mundos would help you a lot and it wouldn't cost you a dime, but, it seems that you aren't interested in internet resources. That being said, I will give you a resource that could be helpful to you in choosing books- a guide to reading in Spanish America Reads Spanish. Here you can download pdf reviews and descriptions of books for children, young adults and adults developed by librarians. Original thread HTLAL Thread: America Reads Spanish Edited by iguanamon on 18 October 2012 at 9:38pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4438 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 12 18 October 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, the rule of thumb for fairly easy reading is, starting with the simplest:
- bilingual books with parallel text / graded readers (choose appropriate level) - books for toddlers if you can stomach it (not fairy tales but picture books with very simple stories) - books for preschoolers - children picture encyclopedias - very useful because they explain things in very simple words and expect almost no previous knowledge - classic children stories - books for preteens - simple stories, simple language - comics - books for young adults can be tricky, because you can find teen slang there. This can be advantage or disadvantage - you decide. - "classic" detective and adventure stories, pulp fiction, chick lit - non fiction: DIY-books, Idiot's guides, guide books, ... for Dummies books - popular magazines, tabloids (again, yellow press can be sometimes tricky) - "big" newspapers, popular modern fiction You can expect that everything which caters to masses will be generally written in simpler language than books / newspapers / magazines targeted at smaller (selected) audience. First person narrative isn't necessarily easier to read - but the big advantage of good first person narrative is that you can steal complete sentences, learn to think in the language (talking about yourself). You have to be fairly advanced in the target language to make the transformation from third person to first one without thinking. For this reason, if the difficulty level of a book is the same, first person narrative is better for language learning. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4649 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 4 of 12 20 October 2012 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think such a broad scale of difficulty can only be a rough guide. If I'm deciding which book to buy I'll look into them and see whether I can roughly understand the plot and whether it feels motivating. If both are the case, I know I'll be able to read the book.
I would add "longer texts are easier than shorter texts" because you have more time to figure out what words mean or consolidate your knowledge once you know what they mean. Also: "reading texts/books with the same subject/of the same genre is easier than tackling a new subject/genre". With Korean I've come to realise that there isn't one universal reading skill, but there are many different ones. Newspaper reading skills, Children's Book reading skills, etc. Edited by druckfehler on 20 October 2012 at 1:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6690 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 12 20 October 2012 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Regardless of my level in a language, I think it's important (and possible) to know what I can "ignore" and what I "have to" look up.
Examples: 1. The car is red. Any word is necessary, and I'm pretty sure that I'd remember a word of the same "importance" the first time I look it up. 2. Introduced with little ceremony, and advancing with fear and hesitation, and many a bow of deep humility, a tall thin old man, who, however, had lost by the habit of stooping much of his actual height, approached the lower end of the board. His features, keen and regular, with an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes; his high and wrinkled forehead, and long grey hair and beard, would have been considered as handsome, had they not been the marks of a physiognomy peculiar to a race, which, during those dark ages, was alike detested by the credulous and prejudiced vulgar, and persecuted by the greedy and rapacious nobility, and who, perhaps, owing to that very hatred and persecution, had adopted a national character, in which there was much, to say the least, mean and unamiable. (Chapter 5, "Ivanhoe", Sir Walter Scott) Quite a few words to describe Isaac of York... If I'm at a level where I can follow this kind of text (in another language), hopefully I recognize what is important and not, and conclude that I don't have to know each word - and if I'd still look up all of the unknowns, I'd probably forget a lot of them due to their "lack of importance". 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tamise Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom jllrr.wordpress.com/ Joined 5024 days ago 115 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English*, German, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese, Spanish | Message 6 of 12 21 October 2012 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Books for young children are often not as easy as one might expect as they often contain words that are only used around young children. They also tend to be less interesting to an adult and so there's no real incentive to continue reading them. Of course, they're often so short that that doesn't really matter.
Nonfiction/fiction - well, it depends on the subject matter, but I personally find nonfiction more difficult, especially as a beginner, as it doesn't often contain "everyday" language that can be a good point to start from. The main thing though, is that if you find something that holds your interest then it's better to go for that as you'll want to keep reading. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 12 21 October 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 12 22 October 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||
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With newspapers and non-fiction, this depends a lot on the language. These sorts of texts contain a lot of international words (examples: economics, phoneme, pharynx) but while in European languages these words are recognizable, in Japanese or Korean (among others) they are not.
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