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Wild guessing for extensive reading | ||
Tags: Comprehension/understanding | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4560 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 9 16 January 2015 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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My anki 10000 sentences experiment has worked and I can now read well enough to do a bunch of extensive reading. I have probably been too slow to get into reading this way. I remembered a technique that I learned from an old Morman missionary 35 years ago in Samoa(I was a Peace Coprs volunteer). He had some material for Samoan language learning that I didn't have. One of these was a paper about how to read extensively from day one.
The instructions were very simple, never use a dictionary and keep moving. If you absolutely need a word to understand a passage, just make something up. You may get it wrong, but you might get it right. Just keep moving, who cares if at the end of a story, you've made up something different than the original story, who cares? You probably learned a word or two. Then read something else. With a second exposure many word meanings will hop into focus. Just keep moving. While this would not really work at the complete beginner level, he was talking about what you should do when you get finished with courses. Has anybody ever tried this, or is this how everybody get started with extensive reading? :) If not this way, how did you do it? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4854 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 9 16 January 2015 at 6:47am | IP Logged | ||
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That sounds like a fine way to go about it when you're limited by resources.
When you have more resources available, an alternative (better?) way that I've done is to start with a book that's easy and that I've already read several times (for me, Harry Potter 1 works). That way I can follow the thread of the story even if a lot of the sentences are full of unknown words. Then I move on to reading books that are either really easy or already known to me, but don't have to be both. After a few of these I can mostly just read extensively and understand what I'm reading within reason. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ElComadreja Senior Member Philippines bibletranslatio Joined 7033 days ago 683 posts - 757 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog | Message 3 of 9 16 January 2015 at 7:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Yup, I made allot of headway in Spanish reading that way. After reading a book like that
though, I would do some "mopping up", and skim through it a second time and underline words I really didn't know, look them up but not really do any flashcards or anything. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4328 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 4 of 9 16 January 2015 at 10:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I guess it comes down to efficiency. I read with a pop-up dictionary as I am sure that the dictionary gives on average a better approximation of the word I don't know than a wild guess. So I learn more quickly this way. But if I was to only to guess I am sure I would learn also, it would just be slower. The only situation I can imagine extensive reading not working is when you know so little of the text that your guesses are essentially random.
I think logically guesses have to be more often correct than not for extensive reading/listening to work. And the more correct they are the quicker you'll learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6704 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 9 16 January 2015 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Guesswork is fine and I usually add that it's just as important to know what you don't have to know. Sure, you could underline each single word you don't understand, but how long would it take to get through the book? At the same time, I don't really see the point of reading extensively when your vocabulary is simply too low. (Say, a complete beginner)
Personal story: I've read "Angels and demons" and "Da Vinci code" by Dan Brown, in Swedish (while listening to the Spanish audiobooks simultaneously). Next round was reading in Spanish and listening to Spanish. It worked pretty OK, the story was now familiar and I could easily follow what was going on. Recent attempt: reading Russian extensively. Background - two semesters (part-time) of beginner Russian at the university, further studies on my own, easy readers, LingQ, podcasts and much more. My chosen book - "Angels and demons". Did that work? Not at all. Names, places, and the core vocabulary, sure, but other than that, no. For long stretches I had no idea what was going on, or even where I was in the story. Occasionally I understood a complete sentence. OK, I honestly didn't think I had enough Russian, but still thought it could be a nice experiment. If it had worked, the books at the library would keep me busy for years. My conclusion: if I want extensive reading to work, my language must be strong enough so I can guess the meaning, know where it's OK to skim a paragraph, or even ignore it. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 17 January 2015 at 12:13am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3502 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 9 16 January 2015 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Extensive reading and "just keep moving without looking anything up even when you
understand almost nothing" worked really well for me in college, whether it was French, Spanish, Middle English, political philosophy, or biology. It's a good skill to have and it's impressive how much you actually can learn that way. The only trouble is that it does not feel very satisfying and it's not much fun. It's very hard to do without pressure. I'm all for reading literature that is a bit hard and rarely looking words up. For me, it's more enjoyable to flow with the narrative than constantly stop to check a definition or translation. However, I would agree with Ari in that if something is far beyond your level, it's generally no fun at all and therefore not a very good strategy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 4984 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 7 of 9 16 January 2015 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's what I'm doing now with a Spanish book. There are perhaps 2-3 words per page I don't recognise, so 600-900 in the whole book. I'm too lazy to look up that many words. The majority of them are roughly guessable anyway. If, by the end of the book, I missed the chance to learn 600 new words, I still will have reinforced 5-10,000. And saved myself 6 hours or more.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5031 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 9 17 January 2015 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
You've just described my last 8 months of the Super Challenge in French & Italian. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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