paz wrote:...How do you select extensive reading materials? I would like to build up my vocabulary in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese and I was wondering how to choose the next books.
Do you follow the 98% rule? How do you determine the vocabulary size? And how do you determine the vocabulary size of a book?...
...I've already watched the videos by Prof. Arguelles, and I would like to know your strategies, especially with languages other than English
There's a Buddhist
koan I like that informs my language-learning process:
When you meet the Buddha on the road, you must kill him. To me, this means that you must not place your faith so much in any particular someone or something that you lose yourself in the process. You must find your own way. Others can guide you, but self language-learning is highly individual by definition.
Many people come here having gone through the youtube polyglot videos of people like Professor Arguelles, Luca, etc. There's nothing wrong with this but when one places too much faith in any one of their specific dogma- like Professor A's "98% rule" then that's where they may run into problems.
Cavesa wrote:...The 98% theory doesn't take into account the differences between various target languages. I could start reading a normal book in Italian after two months of learning with not that high comprehension during the first page or two. But I improved extremely fast due to knowing related languages. Had it been a very different language, I would have stayed at the initial level for much longer. ...
This is so true, I find with my knowledge of five related languages, I can understand and read a lot of French and Italian already. If I decided to learn these two languages, I would definitely start with reading native materials and early listening to native audio... along with a good basic course.
Cavesa wrote:....If you already understand 98%, it's great, you are having as much fun as in your native language. But where is the challenge? Where is the important moment of leaving the comfort zone? What are you actually learning? ...
Yes! That's why I never bought into Professor A's 98% rule. If you have a strong foundation in basic vocabulary and grammar (easier for a closely related language) a lot of vocabulary can be deduced through context and confirmed via dictionary look-ups- significantly easier to do with an e-reader's pop-up dictionary.
Using
simple parallel texts for short articles or readings is a great way to get into reading early and challenging yourself to make your own connections.
For selecting extensive reading in the beginning to low intermediate levels, I like to read short news items, magazine articles or blogs. In this case, it doesn't really matter if the topics aren't of great interest to me. What matters is that I get exposed to a wide range of vocabulary about different subjects. Because the material is short, two to twenty pages maximum, it's not going to "kill my soul" if the topics are "boring" to read them. I don't obsess over any given text- squeezing the last drop out of it. I move on to the next one. I read a seventeen page pamphlet on a fictional raindrop's voyage through the Everglades National Park in Haitian Creole. It wasn't a riveting read but it helped me to learn the language. When I was actively studying Haitian Creole, I had read short news items in Haitian Creole, tweets, the first five books of the Old Testament (recent translation) and parallel texts of interviews with Voodoo priests. For books, I like Cavesa's approach of trying it first. If it is too hard, I'll read it later.