New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Apr 16, 2022 6:09 pm

It's nice to see he tries to address the concerns of a "western corpus" in his video and expresses an attitude towards a more global focus.

However, in execution his site is still clearly "dead white men that spoke English" focused. It's amazing that in his list of 20th century additions there are exactly zero books when searching 'Spanish' (but one with 'Castilian' - this from the guy who ranted he disliked the word Farsi to describe Persian). We see the Popul Vuh shoved over to the "other" list as a Mayan [sic] text (it was recorded in Kʼicheʼ and Spanish...)

Let's see if that gets better.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby Vordhosbn » Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:22 am

zenmonkey wrote:It's nice to see he tries to address the concerns of a "western corpus" in his video and expresses an attitude towards a more global focus.

However, in execution his site is still clearly "dead white men that spoke English" focused. It's amazing that in his list of 20th century additions there are exactly zero books when searching 'Spanish' (but one with 'Castilian' - this from the guy who ranted he disliked the word Farsi to describe Persian). We see the Popul Vuh shoved over to the "other" list as a Mayan [sic] text (it was recorded in Kʼicheʼ and Spanish...)

Let's see if that gets better.


All good points, Zen, but please do communicate these directly to the professor himself; he is especially welcoming of any omissions or errors (as he indicates on the page). The list won't get any better without some collaboration from those able to spot such errors.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:32 am

Vordhosbn wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:It's nice to see he tries to address the concerns of a "western corpus" in his video and expresses an attitude towards a more global focus.

However, in execution his site is still clearly "dead white men that spoke English" focused. It's amazing that in his list of 20th century additions there are exactly zero books when searching 'Spanish' (but one with 'Castilian' - this from the guy who ranted he disliked the word Farsi to describe Persian). We see the Popul Vuh shoved over to the "other" list as a Mayan [sic] text (it was recorded in Kʼicheʼ and Spanish...)

Let's see if that gets better.


All good points, Zen, but please do communicate these directly to the professor himself; he is especially welcoming of any omissions or errors (as he indicates on the page). The list won't get any better without some collaboration from those able to spot such errors.


Fair point.

I’m not interested in working on a corpus when I think the principle is fundamentally flawed but I’ll share my comments directly.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sat Apr 23, 2022 4:30 pm

The billion dollar question...

Should You Learn 2+ Languages at the Same Time? Pros and Cons Considered:
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun May 01, 2022 1:20 pm

Advice for Reading Literature in Foreign Languages
Duration: 37:14
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 01, 2022 2:29 pm

Great. This is pretty much how I read (and mixing it up between extensive/intensive). His closing thoughts about how long this actually takes makes me feel exonerated.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby BeaP » Sun May 01, 2022 3:25 pm

Thank for the video, it was well-structured and to the point. Some remarks I've made:

Understanding literature doesn't mean understanding words. Reading comprehension is much more complex than that. It's true for any type of text, but it's of primary importance in the case of literature that uses allusions and metaphors, plays with the sound of words, the length of sentences. If your goal is understanding literature, vocabulary is not enough. An example from our everyday life: Sometimes in my native language I use a word in a slightly wrong collocation (paired up with another word that is usually not paired up with it) that makes my sentence funny or ironic. These nuances can only be learned from a dictionary if you spend a lot of time on analysis. (It might be a good idea to read analysis.)

I didn't really agree with the word choices of the partially blurred texts. Also, things are never this mechanical, and it might be misleading to skip mentioning this. The character of the unknown words depends on the text type, and is not the same during the whole text. Historical novels for example will probably have new nouns (weapons, tools), while lyrical novels will present all kinds of new words: mostly verbs, nouns and adjectives. And philosophical novels are the best: sometimes you'll be familiar with every word and in spite of this you won't understand anything from the text. In any novel you'll read through pages without new words, and then you'll meet a paragraph that has seven. Canonized literature contains relatively easy and extremely difficult texts as well. I don't really like this simplified thinking, especially when it's paired up with numbers and percentages.

If you look at a difficult text in your native language, you'll see that it also contains new vocabulary, the difference is only that you're confident and you think it's normal that you don't know these words. You know they're rare, and you're not 'supposed to' know them. That's why I don't really like intensive work with novels. How do you know what to look up? How do you know what to learn? I think the only path worth taking is working your way up from easy bestsellers to literature. (Children's books often contain a lot of rare vocabulary and even made-up words for educational purposes. They show children the morphological system of the language and how to create new words while obeying the rules.)

If you want to improve your reading comprehension, there are great textbooks for that, with questions and sample answers. I can recommend one in Spanish for those who are interested: https://edelsa.com/Unidades_Muestra/DominioCNuevaEdicion/mobile/index.html#p=6
It works with extracts from novels and short stories. It also includes listening and writing tasks and topics for debate. The answers are sold in a separate booklet.
Also, some of the exercises of this grammar are based on extracts from novels.
https://issuu.com/grupoanayasa/docs/en_20gramatica_20c1-c2
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby luke » Sun May 01, 2022 7:02 pm

RealisticReadingSteps.png

My observations, which maybe belong in my log, but here goes.
Professor Arguelles wrote:"Realistic" Reading Steps
1. Read through, ideally aloud, without dictionary but marking unknown words, to get gist
2. Look up a few key words blocking comprehension
3. Read aloud with feeling
4. Summarize aloud

I like that he's addressing reading that is challenging and that you nonetheless want to do.

In one of his examples, there is 95% vocabulary coverage - less than Paul Nation's Extensive Reading threshold (98%). He mentions 98% is 1 unknown word in 50, whereas 95% coverage is 1 unknown word in 20, which highlights that although 95% and 98% seem like they're similar, they're very different.

He's not using an e-book, and although it's probably silly, I prefer paper books as well. For learning though, e-books are super handy.

He mentioned reading the selection 3 times in the video. I believe step 2 is also in the context of reading, but stopping to use the dictionary when so moved.

He doesn't specify it, but these "steps" might could be split in multiple sessions, depending on various factors like how much time you have, sensible breaking points, etc. I wonder if the Professor has a preference. I.E., even if you only have 10 minutes, do all 4 steps on a paragraph or whatever. Maybe he'll address that in a future video or one of our fine members here will engage the Professor in the YouTube comment section and get an honorific response.

He didn't spill beans as to whether he defaces his books with notes or what he does with "looked up words". He does let the reader decide which few they will look up in order to ascertain enough meaning for the moment. I'm thinking he's just engaging more intimately with the textual reading once again. He doesn't seem like a book defacer, or if he does, it's lightly in pencil.

Read aloud with feeling. In the book again, not (necessarily) using audio.

Summarize aloud. I will have to add this to my routine at some point. His example uses English, but I think he would prefer summaries to be in the target language.

He's very old school. Although he sometimes mentions Listen-Reading, and he does so briefly in this video, it's not his go-to technique.

He didn't carve this in stone tables. I imagine he's flexible with how he reads a challenging book, but this may be his normal or suggested approach.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 01, 2022 7:48 pm

luke wrote:Read aloud with feeling

I watched the whole video, but I can't recall if he said why this was to be done. As I see it - and have seen it expressed elsewhere for many years - the act of doing this impresses it as an image upon the mind. In the way that a well-acted phrase from a film is instantly repeatable. (Waddya mean I'm funny? Funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you?) I suppose one might have to be a reasonable actor to get best results. :lol:

When I read plays (and about a third of the input books I read are plays) this is much easier to achieve since it's all dialogue and meant to be read with such a delivery. I find this lends itself ideally to repetition and reading aloud and also to go back and 'improve the performance' as it were.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby luke » Sun May 01, 2022 11:11 pm

Le Baron wrote:
luke wrote:Read aloud with feeling

I watched the whole video, but I can't recall if he said why this was to be done.

You are a Master of setting up the segue. At 27:32 into Alexander Arguelles - Reading Literature in Foreign Languages: Tool, Techniques, Target he goes into the "why" of reading aloud.

Segueing to an earlier part of that video, I have a question:

At 16:40 into Alexander Arguelles - Reading Literature in Foreign Languages: Tool, Techniques, Target, he says: "If you engage in 3 hours of extensive reading per week, you will make in 9 months time 12 months of progress across the board in all of your language learning skills and all of your language development".

What study does this statistic come from? There are no details. Was it comparing, say 30 minutes of daily study to 30 minutes of study + 30 minutes of extensive reading, or 60 minutes of study compared to 30 minutes of study + 30 minutes of extensive reading, or what? Surely someone here knows what study he's referring to and will clue us in.


On the math question he poses immediately after the quote above, I offer this answer: 33%.
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