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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Skims Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5100 days ago 18 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 1 of 12 02 July 2010 at 1:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Is it possible to learn effectively and efficiently using only novels written in the target language (and using a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words) if you already have a good grouding in the grammar and vocabulary of a language?
Any tips on how best to use the dictionary in this case? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 2 of 12 02 July 2010 at 2:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Kato Lomb used this method, largely. A pdf book where she describes it in brief can be found here: http://tesl- ej.org/ej45/fr1abs.html It seems that she claimed to use the dictionary only when a word appeared multiple times and she could not understand it from context. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6737 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 3 of 12 02 July 2010 at 2:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
There are four language skills. They overlap and mutually reinforce each other, but remain distinct nevertheless. On the other hand, no one says you have to pursue them all at the same time, so from that standpoint, if you want to focus on just reading for a while, it can be very beneficial. One potential problem with just reading is the possibility of fossilizing bad pronunciation in your mind. When we read, we subvocalize. This must be speculative, but quite a few people seem to believe that as a result, if you read a lot before acquiring decent pronunciation, you will spend many hours subvocalizing with incorrect pronunciation, fixing it in your mind to such an extent that you will find it quite a task to undo the wrong pronunciation when you turn to speaking. A few people even believe that some of the damage will be permanent at that point. If this prospect worries you, focus on listening before embarking on the reading binge, or at least try to get audiobook versions as well for some of the novels you read (the following resource may be useful: http://www.bilingual-texts.com/). Perhaps listening to the radio for 10-15 minutes every day in additon to reading a lot can also alleviate the problem. When reading a novel, there is no best way to use a dictionary, you have to experiment and see what seems to work. Some of the possibilities are: (1) Read while looking up every new word. Don't record the translation; if you see the word again and it turns out you have forgotten it, just look it up again. (2) Same as (1), but recording each new word for subsequent memorization. (3) Look up only some of the new words you encounter, as many or as few as feels right. Look them up with or without recording. (4) Look up every word in the first chapter of the novel, or in the first 50 pages, or the like. Record them if you wish. Read the rest of the book without using the dictionary or using it sparingly. (5) As you read, jot down the new words on a sheet of paper and look them all up later. (6) Read without ever looking up any words. Finally, there are techniques for vocabulary acquisition that use a translation of the novel you are reading, but no dictionary. Among them, advocated by A. Arguelles, is: (7) Read a chapter in your native language, then read it in the target language. Then on to the next chapter, and the next. As you become more advanced, do this several chapters at a time, eventually a whole novel at a time. ADDED: (8) Use a parallel text, with the translation facing the original text. (9) Find a novel in an edition with a glossary at the end, with or without annotations on each page. The glossary will be tailored to the text, so it may be more pleasant and faster to use than a separate dictionary. Such editions were popular in the past, and one can find some nice ones in used bookstores. ADDED: Here is the link to A.Arguelle's post that discusses methods 7-9. Edited by frenkeld on 29 July 2010 at 10:23pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6233 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 12 02 July 2010 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
To Skims: are you familiar with L-R?
It doesn't seem to be permanent, but it's definitely painful. I'm still sorting out a huge number of errors in my German pronunciation, from years of reading prior to much audio input. I often get the (de)voicing of initial and final consonants wrong (pronouncing initial s as /s/ rather than /z/, pronouncing initial z as /z/ rather than /ts/, etc), and am still working on un-merging the 6 major sounds written 'u' or 'ü', the 4 written as 'o' or 'ö', and vowel length in general is a significant problem. It's difficult to get new words right, but even when I do, old incorrect forms for common words come out when I'm actually speaking spontaneously. I strongly recommend getting a grounding in the phonology of your target language before reading much.
It's much more effective to use a parallel text than a dictionary. If you do use a dictionary, it's more effective to use a pop-up dictionary on a text on your computer, instead of looking up words by hand.
Between using a dictionary and a novel, and using Professor Argüelles' method, I hugely prefer using Professor Argüelles' method. It's much faster, more effective, and drastically more pleasant. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6737 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 5 of 12 02 July 2010 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Volte, there are few absolutes in language learning business. To use myself as an example, every time I diligently tried to read a parallel text, I gave it up after a couple of pages. I find the constant switching between two languages very distracting, and matching non-literal translations can be quite distracting too. Pop-up dictionaries are great for those who can read a whole novel on a computer screen and live to tell about it. I personally can't - a newspaper article is OK, but not a whole novel. However, electronic dictionaries are indeed faster, and I found that reading a novel in paper format while sitting at the computer desk and looking up the words by typing them into an electronic dictionary works pretty well for me.
Maybe, except that it steals the pleasure of discovering the plot in the target language, since you have to read the translation first. One can choose a familiar novel, so there is "nothing to lose", but reading a novel you've read before is also not to everyone's taste. Still, for me personally this technique would be a big improvement over reading a parallel text. (One can, I suppose, also read in the target language, then in the base language, then in the target again. This way the first exposure is in the target language.) Using a parallel text, as well as another worthwhile technique, should be added to the list of possible approaches to reading: (8) Use a parallel text, with the translation facing the original text. (9) Find a novel in an edition with a glossary at the end, with or without annotations on each page. The glossary will be tailored to the text, so it may be more pleasant and faster to use than a separate dictionary. Such editions were popular in the past, and one can find some nice ones in used bookstores. Edited by frenkeld on 02 July 2010 at 9:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6233 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 12 02 July 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Good points; our tastes clearly differ sharply. There are a lot of books still published in this format. The Dunwoody readers come to mind; they have the target language with large amounts of vocabulary underneat. Garamond publishes short stories in parallel text with significant footnotes; they seem tocall them "Text Bilingüe con comentarios." I've also seen some quite nice ones monolingual ones for Italian, full of pictures in the margins and footnotes, but the name escapes me. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag publishes some parallel texts too, though without footnotes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6737 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 7 of 12 02 July 2010 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
They seem to, I don't consider using a dictionary to be terribly inefficient. I should clarify that methods 7,8, and 9 were all mentioned in an old post by A.Arguelles as part of a single program. My recollection is that his recommended sequence for building up vocabulary was using bilingual texts first, followed by annotated/glossaried readers, culminating in the technique of reading a chapter (or more) at a time in the base language and then in the target language, i.e. (8)-->(9)-->(7). Edited by frenkeld on 02 July 2010 at 9:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5075 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 8 of 12 02 July 2010 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I would be interested to try out technique number 7. I don't have too many resources as of yet, but I should be able to get good copies of some popular novels. I might combine this with one of the other techniques. Maybe reading while looking up every word for the first portion of the novel just to get the main vocabulary until I can read it extensively with the one chapter on one chapter off method.
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