Is consuming material that's beyond your "comprehensible input" level ever BETTER than understanding what you consume?

[Khayyam]

I almost never read whole books multiple times; I just repeat each chapter until I've got it. A strategy that I used with German, and that I'll likely repeat with Persian, was to put each chapter of a novel through my meat grinder one at a time right up to the climax, and then go back and listen to the whole book from beginning to end uninterrupted and finally find out how it ends. Tormenting myself with curiosity like that was an effective way to sustain my interest.

I did something similar with a Spanish TV series. I think I watched it about a third of the way through, then rewatched from the start when I was about a third of the way in, then again approximately two-thirds of the way through as things were ramping up. I was pleasantly surprised that I was picking out more of the language.

But also, there were things that were a bit subtle and passed me by on first viewing because of a lack of immediate relevance... but that just meant they were hints towards the series climax, and I caught most of them on second viewing, and the second viewing was right before the big series ending that the hints were pointing to, so it worked great.

Awesome. I tend to think that being hardcore into languages always boils down to curiosity, one way or another, so anything you can do to intensify it is all to the good.

[zac299]

I can contribute a tiny bit of relevant data to your question.
Early on in trying to improve my comprehension of spoken French, I hit upon a volume of short stories by Anna Gavalda. I listened and read along to the stories. One of them--I don't remember now which one--I read and listened to at least 20 times. For me, when I try something like this, listening and reading over and over, it is an absolute MUST that I really, really enjoy the material.
Maybe not useful a prompt for you, but long forms don't work for me. Short stories, poems and songs (which are of course poems in and of themselves*) suit me far better.

On the contrary, very much useful and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and relevant data MorkTheFiddle.

I think with what you've suggested, plus what Khayyam has also written, it's given me some good next-steps.

Mainly, focusing on shorter and more intense sections of writing/audio to really focus on.

Personally, I don't think I'd ever make a new vocab list for an entire book at once--not even a book that was only 100 pages. (Unless it was very easy reading and there were only a few new words per page--that'd likely be manageable.) I'd still take it a chapter at a time--or if there were no chapters, I'd divide the book into logical sections myself and treat those as chapters.

Yes, what you say about breaking it down into small and manageable sections seems like a better way to attack it all

I would never alphabetize my lists because 1) my vocab lists only include the translations, not the original words, and 2) I like the translations to appear in my lists in the same order in which the original words appear in the chapter I'm working on. This gives me the ability to scan ahead down the list so I can anticipate the stumbling-block words that are about to appear. This is especially useful if there are a bunch of stumbling-block words that come at me in quick succession. Before I reach them, I can scan ahead in my list of translations and read something like assembly-council, prohibition-interdict-forbiddance, eloquent-strenuous-studious (actual example from my Persian study today) and keep those concepts in my head as I brace myself for the cluster. It can also be useful to scan the entire list before I start reading. Just having a good idea of which words are in it, and in which order, is often enough to spare me having to look at the list while I'm reading. If a word comes up that obviously refers to some kind of guard or jailkeeper, and if I remember having seen the word constable in the list, then I likely don't need to look at it.

Thank you once again for your insight into how the process looks while you're doing it. Not alphabetising everything, so they're roughly coming at you in the same order during your subsequent reads... Plus studying them a few times over so you hopefully know/understand what's going on to a larger degree during your subsequent read (And also aiding your reading-flow) seems like the best steps forward.

Cheers

Re: diminishing returns: if I can effortlessly understand most everything in the audio recording while I'm walking around, doing chores, etc., then I consider it time to move on. I often go back and check sections that give me trouble, but I'm not aiming for absolute perfection.
I almost never read whole books multiple times; I just repeat each chapter until I've got it. A strategy that I used with German, and that I'll likely repeat with Persian, was to put each chapter of a novel through my meat grinder one at a time right up to the climax, and then go back and listen to the whole book from beginning to end uninterrupted and finally find out how it ends. Tormenting myself with curiosity like that was an effective way to sustain my interest.

I think my question is a bit too premature, since I"m only reading an A-2 graded book. There's only minimal words I'll struggle with at a time and it rarely completely stumps my comprehension of the paragraph.

I think I"m going to focus especially on your advice when I move up a reading level or two and shorter, more comprehensive paragraphs will have a larger payoff to do it 3, 4... 12 times etc until comprehension comes.

Thanks again for expanding on your thoughts and process, I appreciate it.