Graded Readers and Vocabulary

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german2k01
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Graded Readers and Vocabulary

Postby german2k01 » Sat Nov 19, 2022 10:31 am

Hello Guys,

I am currently reading a graded reader that contains 25 crime stories. Every page contains some bolded vocabulary with their corresponding meanings in English. Roughly it contains 1200 bolded words. For me, it is not possible to add them in Anki from a physical book. It will be time-consuming.

My primary goal is to cement them in my memory. I have an idea but I do not know if it makes sense. I am thinking about writing out sentences that contain these words on a piece of paper and memorizing them randomly on different days. Do you agree with it?

An add-on question, would you guys prefer reading these graded readers a second or third time with a short interval break of 2-3 weeks?

All in all, if you can share your inputs when it comes to driving real value from reading them, I will appreciate it.

Here is a sample page:
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MaggieMae
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Re: Graded Readers and Vocabulary

Postby MaggieMae » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:27 am

I've never been one that found vocab cards particularly useful. I'm bad at them, I hate how time consuming they are, and how quickly the information is forgotten afterwards.

Keep in mind that all of this is just my own personal experiences which may or may not work for you.

I've found that going out of my way to use the words cements them in my head better. When we go over vocab, expressions, or idioms in my German class, and run into a tricky one, I'll try to find a way to use it in a sentence during that lesson and the next (minimum). I'll also keep an eye out for it when I'm out and about. (I do have the advantage of being immersed in German, and that absolutely helps.)

Since you're reading multiple crime novels, a lot of the new words will keep popping up in there next ones, so that will help in and of itself.

Repetition here is key. Noticing it in texts, writing it, saying it, hearing it.

If at all possible, you could pair reading Krimis with watching them. ARD Mediathek is online, free, and has the show "Rentnercops". It's mostly a comedy, so it's not bombarding you with technical jargon, has subtitles most of the time, and it's hilarious. Then you'll come across similar words and phrases multiple times.

That's how I've learned vocab, at least. I don't know how you learn best, but this helped me.
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german2k01
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Re: Graded Readers and Vocabulary

Postby german2k01 » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:45 am

Agreed with the suggestion of using them in a conversation. My mind was confused between two german words which sound the same Gewalt(violence) and Gehalt(salary). The word I wanted to use in a conversation was Gehalt and my mind was coming up with the word Gewalt. However, I have used the word Gehalt in a real conversation a couple of times purposefully, and that confusion is gone forever. I never forget the right word once I use it in a real conversation. I will try as many as I can. It is like a natural SRS on steroids.

I watch Tatort a crime series on the ARD channel. I will watch "Rentnercops" I can import subtitles from ARD on LingQ for reading, so I will also try reading subtitles as a lesson to cement the vocabulary. Thanks for your suggestion.
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malach
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Re: Graded Readers and Vocabulary

Postby malach » Sat Nov 19, 2022 12:05 pm

Could I ask, which book is that? It looks at a level I could read and benefit from.

Apart from rereading everything at intervals, I also like writing out a summary or my own version of something I've read, to try to make (some of) the vocabulary 'active'.
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german2k01
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Re: Graded Readers and Vocabulary

Postby german2k01 » Sat Nov 19, 2022 1:03 pm

malach wrote:Could I ask, which book is that? It looks at a level I could read and benefit from.

Apart from rereading everything at intervals, I also like writing out a summary or my own version of something I've read, to try to make (some of) the vocabulary 'active'.


It is categorized at the A2 level. There are further 7 stories aimed at A2, followed by 13 stories at B1 and finally 5 stories aimed at B2.

Here is the link.

https://de.pons.com/shop/deutsch/lesen-und-lernen/pons-der-grosse-krimi-sammelband-deutsch-als-fremdsprache-978-3-12-562463-4?number=978-3-12-562463-4
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Re: Graded Readers and Vocabulary

Postby Le Baron » Sat Nov 19, 2022 3:19 pm

MaggieMae wrote:I've never been one that found vocab cards particularly useful. I'm bad at them, I hate how time consuming they are, and how quickly the information is forgotten afterwards.

I thought this initially with Anki (which I hadn't used previously for any language learning). I was about to jettison it at one point, but then months on down the road many words I'd been running through popped up in my mind intact when I encountered them and I recalled their meanings/translations without difficulty. I think this is the very point with Anki, at the moment of doing the cards it feels like you're just pointlessly running through them, but the benefit is much further down the line. Which indicates that the theory behind Anki and SRS is largely correct: many of them do end up in your longer-term memory, even when you think you've simply forgotten them.

With the selection of words for cards not being an exact science some of them will turn out to be less useful than imagined. Down the road it seems that the retained words are those which turn out to be those you needed and which appear in materials a particular individual reads and listens to.

Still, I agree with the bit below and also do it myself. I would separate out the card learning of SRS and the active employment of what is being input as two useful elements of the same learning trajectory. Both have a function.
MaggieMae wrote:I've found that going out of my way to use the words cements them in my head better. When we go over vocab, expressions, or idioms in my German class, and run into a tricky one, I'll try to find a way to use it in a sentence during that lesson and the next (minimum). I'll also keep an eye out for it when I'm out and about. (I do have the advantage of being immersed in German, and that absolutely helps.)

The very point of annotated easy readers are that they highlight words which are actively used in context within the text. So one is meant to read and re-read them . To look at the words and then see how they are employed. Of course their choices don't always match the reader's situation. Often I've looked at the highlighted words and considered them trivial, whereas they are completely silent regarding other words and grammatical structures which have tripped me up.
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