|
 |
Extensive vs intensive reading | ||
Tags: Reading | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6383 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 9 of 13 05 June 2015 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
As for SRS'ing sentences, I generally do meaningful ones only. Like this level of meaningful. I also tend to make several cards from the same sentence, and I aim for quality of cards over quantity.
About reading, there are various strategies. I generally don't look up just for the sake of language learning, apart from when I'm reading in a very advanced language (Finnish, English, Portuguese) and there's very little to look up. Otherwise I look up as little or much as the story requires. If I understand too little I may use a parallel text or even take a break from the book. Sometimes I may be so interested in understanding every detail that I don't mind looking up a lot. I've also noticed that after I stumble for the first time and decide something is worth looking up, I tend to look up much more for the rest of my reading session. I start doubting the words that are clear enough from the context and generally double-checking. It might not be a bad thing but I think it's important to be aware of this. It might be beneficial to go back to the beginning of the paragraph or page to get back into the flow. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4230 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 10 of 13 06 June 2015 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
|
If a word / phrase only appeared once or twice, you may skip it for the time being. Going further into the
content, there may be other references that would help you fill-in the unknown word / phrase. A while ago I was watching a documentary on Chinese navigation history. The word 罗盘 (luópán) came up for a compass instead of the more common term 指南针 (zhǐnánzhēn). You may have guessed the word is referring to a circular object but you are not sure what that object is. It came up several times so you'd look it up. To make learning easier, the first time you run through some materials in another language, you'd pick up unknown words / phrases that came up frequently. A few days later if you decided to run through the same material again you'd pick up words / phrases that appeared less frequently. Edited by shk00design on 06 June 2015 at 12:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cod2 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4340 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes | Message 11 of 13 29 June 2015 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I read only intensively. I look everything up and mine sentences for all interesting
words. I am at a fairly high level in German. I consider it an affront when I encounter an unknown word and as a result I cannot move on until I know exactly what it means. I also like the feeling that I get stuck less and less on unknown words as my vocabulary expands. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5318 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 13 29 June 2015 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that advanced learners can get away with looking everything up, but that most intermediate learners will get themselves in trouble if they look up every unknown word in native materials. Sure, I can read a book like Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï and look up every single unknown word. But that's because there are maybe 100 "opaque" words in 218 pages, and I have an ebook reader with a popup dictionary, so it adds maybe 10 minutes to my reading time. I can even pick the most interesting words and make Anki cards. At my level, there's really no downside to looking up every unknown word if I feel so inclined. But at the intermediate level, this is a lot more problematic, thanks to the long tail of vocabulary. What's the "long tail"? Essentially, it's a probability distribution where any individual rare item is very rare, but where all the rare items collectively make up a huge fraction of the total population. Or as one Amazon employee put, talking about the long tale of books: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday." In other words, over half of Amazon's sales come from items that generally sell less than one copy per day. What happens if a B1 student looks up every word in Le Petit Prince? So let's imagine that you're a B1 student, with a vocabulary of around 2,000 words. You look at page in a book, and you can more-or-less understand it. But there are, say, 15 unknown words. Out of these 15, many of them are pretty useful. But several of them are rare, and maybe one of them won't show up again in 10,000 pages of reading. Let's take a look at the Le Petit Prince, and see how far we have to go before we run into a rare word: 
Here, fauve means "wild animal." It's a moderately rare word: It doesn't appear again in Le Petit Prince, and it isn't included in my French frequency dictionary. I read a fair bit of fantasy and SF, and fauve appears approximately 23 times in 18 novels that I have in ebook format, with 4 of those books accounting for 19 uses. Furthermore, you can skip this word in Le Petit Prince without any major problem, and just keep reading the story. Now, to be fair, fauve is great word for somebody with a 7,500 word vocabulary who's working on the Super Challenge. But if we keep reading, we'll run into even more obscure words on a regular basis. My argument is that: 1. Most B1 students would benefit hugely from reading 500 to 2,500 pages of interesting text. 2. Few B1 students actually need to know words like fauve yet, and their time would be much better spent reading more, and consolidating their grasp of core vocabulary and grammar. So if looking up every word works for you, go for it. But I've seen dozens of people who give up on reading because they get exhausted looking up obscure words. Edited by emk on 29 June 2015 at 10:29pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6383 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 13 of 13 29 June 2015 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
|
At a high level, intensive reading implies constantly analyzing the grammar/idiomatics etc. At least for me it's not really intensive reading if you look up just one word per page or so.
1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
