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How should I systematically dismember a text ? | ||
Tags: Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Remster Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4617 days ago 120 posts - 134 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 11 10 January 2012 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
I haven't been here in a while, due to personal reasons. I also had a minor but painful accident, therefore I took a break. Over time, I'll try to be a little more active again, but for now, I'll need more time to get stable again. In order not to turn this into just a ''re-introduction'' thread, I'll ask a question I've been thinking about for a while now. I have an assignment for both my German and French courses. I have to read two (huge (in my opinion)) books. But my skills are not that great yet. How should I systematically dismember the text in order to both learn and understand the most of its contents? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5823 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 11 10 January 2012 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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The trick is to learn to identify what's important and what isn't -- what's story and what's just prose for it's own sake.
For example. He ran his elfin hand down the alabaster satin of her cheek. The story is "he stroked her cheek." The fact that his hand is compared to an elf's is irrelevant (and actually meaningless given how many different things we call "elf" in myth and literature) and "alabaster satin" just tells us she is pale and soft, implying she's attractive, which isn't necessary, as if she wasn't attractive, would he be stroking her cheek? Notice that "elfin" is a attributive adjective, ie an adjective that sits next to the noun (as opposed to a predicative adjective -- one that comes after "is", or other copular verb) -- attributive adjectives are rarely important to the story. "Alabaster" in this context may be considered an adjective, or may be a noun, but it's still unnecessary description. Adverbs are also rarely important to your understanding of the plot -- they're just there to add colour, so there's no need to look them up. Also, don't be discouraged by the first few chapters: books reuse language, so with every chapter, it'll get easier (because there'll be less new language to deal with). I heard it said that as a rough guide, 75-90% of the words and phrases in a novel will be encountered in the first 100-150 pages. Actually, this means that it's good that the books are quite long -- if they were short, you wouldn't enjoy it because you'd always have your head in a dictionary; with a long book, you get to read the last few chapters without having to stop and start, making it much more natural and fun. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 11 10 January 2012 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome back. However your thread is not about you, but about dismembering texts so I have changed the title.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6191 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 11 10 January 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dismember doesn't strike me as the right word here. It's usually used for chopping up bodies into little pieces like in Goodfellas or the Sopranos.
I think the word you want to use here is deconstruct. Edited by newyorkeric on 10 January 2012 at 3:27pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6761 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 5 of 11 10 January 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes before I read a book or watch a movie in a foreign language, I look it up on
Wikipedia and read up to half of the plot summary (in the target language or in my native language). This way, I'm guided through the first part of the book or movie by a rough understanding of what's going on, and repetition (see Cainntear's post) along with pure interest/curiosity/momentum will take care of things from there. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6251 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 11 10 January 2012 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Deconstructing a text is another art altogether. Perhaps "approach"? "Dissect" or "analyze" also aren't quite right. I fully agree that "dismember" isn't the right word, though! As for the original question: how big and difficult are the books, and how much time do you have available? There are a couple of approaches you could take: a) Read a few easy readers, as quickly as you can (possibly bilingual ones or ones with glosses in a language you understand well), before you read the books. If you're comfortable with easy readers, read a few books that are between them and your assigned books in difficulty. b) Read the first few pages 'intensively' (look up every unknown word and form you find). The rest of the book will be somewhat easier after that. Another option is to read the books first in translation, and only then in the target language. If it weren't for a class, I'd recommend this - it's incredibly useful, as long as you actually do read in the target language afterwards. Edited by Volte on 10 January 2012 at 7:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5779 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 11 11 January 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
Yes that is true; the term "deconstruction" has a more complicated meaning and originated in philosophy as a postmodern theory of literary/aesthetic critisicm. Take this approach too seriously and it removes all enjoyment of art, life, and human creativity (or so says this disgruntled former student of literature!) Deconstruction The word seems to be in common use now as a synonym for taking something apart, though. "Dismember" implies violence, and when I read the thread title I thought the question was how to rip apart your book! When I had extremely long literary works to deal with in a class that lasted only a few weeks/months, it was useful to find a summary such as a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book, learn which parts we were expected to study most, and concentrate on those. I always tried to read as much as I could, but time is limited, and you can always study the books in more detail later if you want to. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faranight Newbie United States Joined 4558 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 11 11 January 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
As others have said, I don't think you know what deconstruction means. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but a great pet peeve of mine is a person who presumes to correct another person, only to blunder again with a catachresis himself. Edited by Faranight on 11 January 2012 at 6:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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