|
 |
How do you read foreign books? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5147 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 1 of 13 26 August 2014 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Which way do you think is the best to read a book in a target language? Do you stop to
look up all the words you don't know before you continue? Do you write them down to look them up later? Or do you simply keep reading and ignoring the words you don't know to keep the flow? Maybe you have an entirely different technique? I'm sure we all have our own method we use when reading in our target language ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5032 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 13 26 August 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
|
There are normally two methods.
Intensive, this is where you look up every word. Extensive, this is were underline unknown words and then look them up later. You can also just ignore the unknown words and lookup the ones which occur frequently. There isn't any wrong way to do it, but it might be best to do both. Intensive reading for short texts like newspaper articles, and extensive for novels. I do both. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4962 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 3 of 13 28 August 2014 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
|
"Intensive" and "extensive" are broad names but there's a lot in between.
I read according to my level. When I'm at an early intermediate level, I read with the help of a translation in a language I know. For example, I got one of Paulo Coelho's books in Georgian. I'd read it in Georgian while comparing it to the original in Portuguese. But even with the translation, sometimes doing this sentence by sentence can be overwhelming. So, I read one page or a paragraph in one, then in another. It is probably more effective to read the translation first, so that when you get down to the one you are learning you already know what is going on. But since I hate 'spoilers', I prefer to read as much as I can in the target language and then read the translation just to follow up the story, at least when my knowledge of the target language is still too limited. When things improve, I'm comfortable with actually using the two versions "mirrored", that is, if I have two pdf's, I open one next to the other and read more-or-less line-by-line. That's what I'm doing with German, and currently I resort to the translation less and less, until it is only necessary for some main words. At this stage, I may start reading a novel I have no translations for. I am doing this in Norwegian. It works better for me when I read intensively now, that is, to look up words, at least the most important ones that will hinder comprehension. Then I may read extensively only, or alternate both - or even reach a stage at which I only look up 1 or 2 words per page, and that won't slow down the reading. I may do it with French. In practice, I read French and Norwegian mostly extensively, especially when the text isn't much appealing. Technology helps. There are sites and software that do line-by-line translation one after the other - the so-called linear translation. You may also pick your OCR-ed pdf or Epub and throw it at an online translator to help spped up reading - I do this when I'm almost comfortable with reading on my own (did this in Norwegian "two novels ago"). And there are also the built-in, "pop-up" dictionaries for mobile device or for the computer. I use them both at iOS and at FF/Chrome, for example Pera-pera for Chinese. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3541 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 13 31 August 2014 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I usually read books in Kindle app on my tablet or smartphone so some words I look up in the Kindle built-in dictionary by tapping on them some words I ignore. I do not write them down and do not to anything of memorize them. Edited by Enrico on 01 September 2014 at 6:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 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 5 of 13 31 August 2014 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
|
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Strategies_for Reading_Books Edited by Serpent on 31 August 2014 at 11:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5147 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 6 of 13 01 September 2014 at 9:34am | IP Logged | ||
|
I checked out the link that Serpent shared and I think my method is somewhere in between
extensive and intensive reading. I'm probably at a high enough level in German to be able to do extensive reading and still understand everything that's going on in the book, but I like learning some new words from books. So I write down or mark the words that I don't know and add them to my flashcard deck later, but I don't reread the pages I have just read, that would take way too long! So I'm able to read in a higher pace than I would if I had been reading really intensively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3652 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 7 of 13 01 September 2014 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
|
For languages I have low comprehension in, I like studying a few paragraphs of a novel
intensively every now and again, but the majority of my reading is extensive. This way, I can get to grips with the language used in that book specifically, and understand more of the novel during my extensive reading. I also prefer reading with hard copies, as I find annotating the text helps me remember more, and it's also good for rereading. Sometimes, I just look up the most interesting words, which for me tend to be words I recognise but do not know the meaning of. When reading articles and short texts, I read intensively. When reading in French, I mostly read extensively. I like reading on my phone, as I can use the pop-up dictionary on very interesting words without having to disturb the flow of my reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tea oolong Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4212 days ago 28 posts - 33 votes Studies: Korean* | Message 8 of 13 16 September 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I have covered several books in Korean but my grammar is quiet low. I usually read intensively but I'm working on extracting the unknown words and studying them for later. One thing, I realized that it's absolutely necessary to sort out where your reading level is. For instance, I could barely make out what a newspaper, or a non translated novel because of the vocabulary, grammar and idioms. I assume if you're consistent, it may take a month to two months depending on how unrelated the language is to your native or fluent languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
