Coldrainwater's Log

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coldrainwater
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Sep 18, 2021 11:04 pm

german2k01 wrote:Thanks. That's one analytical post. Helps me to understand how to approach the rest of the journey in German. I just read 2.4 million words which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. My next goal is to reach the 6 million mark and hopefully reach the C1 level.

Just an aside question - do you have any rough idea how long would it take you to reach the C2 level in reading, 8-10 million mark?

Excluding audiobooks, I am at 5.5 million words read now. From a pure reading standpoint, I have good data showing that I can reliably read 1000 book pages per month (300k words by my reckoning). In practical terms, to hit 10 million words read, I will need to dedicate roughly 15 months. Out of convenience, I do tend to choose my focal points month over month, so speaking in those terms makes sense to me. I don't think I will be at C2 then, but there should be a very notable improvement. It is also an investment I am willing to make since I would choose to read quite a bit in a language-agnostic capacity even if I were not studying German. German is so strong from an academic and learning standpoint (resource-wise), that I don't feel at a major disadvantage choosing it for really hard book material (other than the obvious extra time required).

My tendency is often to choose harder books as I go along and make that a barometer, which is why I would not bank on reading more than 1000 pages per month, even if I achieve greater fluency by indirect methods (listening, more vocab, etc). Likewise, since my aim really is to reach a C2 level in reading, I think making those harder book choices and generally closing gaps is more of an absolute requirement than it is merely optional. That 15-month clock would not start ticking for me until I shift focus back to pure reading, so I am at least two years out I would think. If something happens and I don't make the progress I want with pure reading, I will have plenty of opportunities to adjust my methods (15 months is a good stretch).
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Sun Sep 19, 2021 10:22 am

You do not consider L-R as pure reading? I think you did a lot of L-R recently. Otherwise, your current statistics stand at more than 5.5 million words read?
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Sep 19, 2021 11:56 pm

german2k01 wrote:You do not consider L-R as pure reading? I think you did a lot of L-R recently. Otherwise, your current statistics stand at more than 5.5 million words read?


Yes, if you count L2->L2 LR in reading the totals, I am already at 7.3 million words read out of 45 different books. I maintain my German reading list in a simple flat-file format in google sheets and have a column that designates whether the text was consumed using LR or not. I view the two forms of reading as analytically distinct, enough to warrant separate identification. I also convert each work to text using Calibre and obtain a relatively exact word count using Notepad++ to avoid inaccurate data presentation. I have a separate column that I am tracking for hours listened for Hörbücher, which gives me accurate listening hour totals as well since I happen to have that precise data so readily available (Audible). Those data points cost me next to nothing to capture and are worth quite a bit by my estimation.

One reason for separating reading techniques into those two buckets has to do with the massively compressed timeframe with which I consume the books in LR format (influences long-term retention among other things). In one sense, LR, if lumped with normal reading, artificially inflates my reading totals with books that are read below level and at what amounts to blitz speed in comparison to my natural reading pace. That is more likely to shore up my existing lower-advanced reading level than it is to drive it beyond. Nearly all of my other reading material was consumed above-level (at the time of reading) and with the aid of parallel text to boost comprehension.

Another reason for the separation relates to intent. I am not using LR in the hopes of reaching a C2 reading level and would not want the data to be misconstrued in that capacity. The LR as I implement it will improve reading endurance and fluidity and can shore up gaps in my intermediate reading abilities. The gaps I have at this stage are quite abundant. Yet that benefit fades as the difficulty and specificity of the texts chosen invariably increase to super-hard levels. Fluidity alone would run into a brick wall of incomprehension. The texts that I eventually read will require monolingual footnotes or at least a version available in another language for careful side-by-side comparison (essentially graduate-level work in the limiting case). They should rightly be considered hard if read in my native English or in German.

Starting from C1, to drive a C2 reading level, I will be choosing much harder material and it is very likely that audiobooks for that material may not even be available. For that push, rather than solely quantifying by a number of words read, I intend to be able to point to the exact works of literature/study that I consumed and hold those works up as an example of the material I am capable of reading in a monolingual capacity and as an example of exactly how advanced my reading level is. I will be able to express by direct list how broadly I can read in that capacity and also can express the depth to which I can process the material without needing a bilingual crutch or translation to assist. It is a combination of pages read at those greater, more advanced levels of difficultly as well as an honest assessment making sure I am capturing sufficient nuance and detail to claim Fähigkeit.

A final drift back to the listening aspect of LR: If memory serves, I listened to around 100 ''pure'' audiobooks when learning Spanish after doing L2->L2 LR and could enjoy an average moderate-length audiobook in a few days tops. My listening level improved over the course of several consecutive months doing just that with Spanish. It is perhaps opening that unassisted audiobook door for German that can drive the listening side of things to a full-blown intermediate level for me. That would be massive input in the form of audiobook listening in every sense of the word. Needless to say, that proportions an indirect benefit to reading, but one that is not so easily matched to exact incremental language level improvement. Powerful but indirect.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:53 pm

A final drift back to the listening aspect of LR: If memory serves, I listened to around 100 ''pure'' audiobooks when learning Spanish after doing L2->L2 LR and could enjoy an average moderate-length audiobook in a few days tops.


Thanks for your detailed analysis. Really enjoyed reading it.
Is it possible for you to dig up stats for pure reading you had done in Spanish? Same for doing L2->L2 LR books in Spanish. How many books? In simple words, what groundwork should one do in terms of pure reading and doing L2->L2 LR books before they are ready to do an unassisted listening to a completely new audiobook? I would love to know about your transition in relation to this, especially in Spanish.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:07 pm

german2k01 wrote:Thanks for your detailed analysis. Really enjoyed reading it.
Is it possible for you to dig up stats for pure reading you had done in Spanish? Same for doing L2->L2 LR books in Spanish. How many books? In simple words, what groundwork should one do in terms of pure reading and doing L2->L2 LR books before they are ready to do an unassisted listening to a completely new audiobook? I would love to know about your transition in relation to this, especially in Spanish.

Sure. Here equal measures of data and memory are needed and summarizing the Spanish journey may be a bit lengthy. Initially, I read roughly 9-10k pages in Spanish, mostly in 2017, before transitioning to a combination of audiobooks and much harder reading selections. I mention the preliminary listening I did in 2017 to make it clear how much of each input activity occurred simultaneously prior to laying ears on an audiobook. I also spoke from the beginning and started writing fairly early on, so there was an immersion impact to consider.

Part 1 of 2: First 10k pages Spanish reading and first 500+ hours general listening
For an initial 10k pages of pure reading in 2017, I picked challenging texts that were a mix of translated and native works. Examples include Blood Meridian by McCarthy, The Name of the Rose by Eco, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Márquez. For my entire Spanish learning journey, I recorded about 14,500 pages of pure reading spanning 2017 and 2018. In 2017, I had put in quite a bit of beginner-level listening including an initial foray into intermediate Spanish podcasts, perhaps about 400-500 hours total listening in 2017. After this, my listening level was reasonably poor but slowly improving. My reading level was good but untested.

Edit: Now that I think on it, I read and listened to articles from the now-defunct Veintemundos magazine in 2017. Technically, I consider it my first LR experience, at least in spirit. Though applied to magazine articles and encompassing very few hours, the concept had experientially wedged itself in my brain and the professional voice from Veintemundos was at least as good as a professional audiobook narrator.

Part 2 of 2 - around 5k pages reading + audiobooks

Reading
In 2018, I intentionally devoted most of my time to listening and had to slow the pure reading experience somewhat to accommodate for that listening effort. In early 2018, I spent over a month reading Don Quijote de la Mancha and progressed from there with monolingual reading. I took advantage of reading native works across several centuries and moved away from using translations. In total, I stopped tracking pure reading after that period since I could read almost anything I attempted.

Listening - first LR text
Listening was the most difficult hurdle in Spanish and it is where I spent most of my time in 2018. I used L2->L2 LR very differently studying Spanish. The first book that I remember using it with is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and it was my transition novel to go between reading and audiobooks. Toward the end of the book, I noticed that I was close to being able to listen to it without technically requiring the text, but I intuitively sensed a drop in comprehension when I tried to do so and therefore stayed the course with both text and audio. My understanding of the work wasn't quite as good as it would have been via a slow and careful reading, but the nature of the work and Patrick's engaging writing style made ultra-high levels of understanding less necessary.

First unassisted audiobook
Next, I jumped right in the deep end and went for a native audiobook of the same ilk. I switched genres from fantasy to historical fiction and chose La catedral del mar by Falcones. I remember this as a very hard but rewarding and enjoyable first audiobook. It took me a month to get through that one audiobook unassisted and I remember needing to use full concentration and listen with eyes closed to be able to follow the story. Encouraged by that initial success and attracted to the same genre, I then read Pillars of the Earth. I recall that translated work being much easier to understand and after completing it, I pretty much knew that my path to mass audiobook listening was wide open.

Additional use of LR in Spanish
I used L2->L2 LR later on as well. At more advanced stages (perhaps between my second and third year of study), I read well in Spanish but subvocalized slower than an audiobook narrator. For a change of pace and perhaps sometimes out of impatience, I turned to LR for some of the readings where I also had corresponding audio available from Librivox. I did this with portions of The Iliad and Odyssey and with other texts as well. While I don't think that greatly influenced my Spanish progress at that later stage, it is likely where I developed a better understanding of how I like to use LR, which ended up paying big dividends now as I tackle German.

Challenge between Spanish and German
To put the above in context, I should briefly compare tracks in German and Spanish. German reading is much harder than Spanish reading based on personal experience and the many log reports I have read. You can see the increased level of challenge in nearly every German metric that I provide. The result is a more balanced analytical distribution of study hours for German and much higher total hours forecasted. Study weights are much more evenly distributed between vocabulary, grammar acquisition, reading and listening in German than they were in Spanish for me. I literally can't speak for speaking, not yet anyhow. That more equal weighting, bringing challenges in every area, gives me more time with each language component as well as more reasons to track progress.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby Le Baron » Sun Sep 26, 2021 12:56 am

Interesting detail and an absolute mountain of work you've traversed!
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Oct 02, 2021 4:43 am

I am just now getting around to reviewing books I read last month. Rather than lumping several together, I would prefer to weave a tighter thread this time by giving each text separate treatment. The first is 635 Tage im Eis, a text written by Alfred Lansing and published in 1959 detailing Imperial Trans-Antarctic-Expedition and last voyage of The Endurance. It is a work of fact that reads as well as many works of fiction and it is an excellent story. The German audiobook was well done and the tale plenty accessible.

I liked that one of Shackleton's motivations for this journey was a disdain for ordinary day-to-day, run-of-the-mill life. He got everything he bargained for and more. Imagine being ready to embark just as the first World War breaks out and having to send a telegram asking permission for which of several perilous destinies to follow. In often dramatic fashion, Shackleton seemed to have an uncanny ability when it came to acquiring multi-ton expedition-worthy ships, even when they know the ships may not survive the voyage. Very solid survival tale. Part remarkable, part unbelievable.

You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of the Endurance, stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps."

There is another book as well that you may be interested in. I haven't read the second yet since I am on an audiobook kick and found a copy of 635 Tage im Eis on audible to LR. It is called Endurance - Frank Worlsey
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby Le Baron » Sat Oct 02, 2021 5:50 pm

I have an English copy of this book (mid 1980s republication). As you say it reads more like a novel than straight history, much more in keeping with how modern popular historical books are written. I should probably re-read it.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Sun Oct 03, 2021 4:06 pm

What is your ratio between fiction and nonfiction books in German? Let's assume, over the course of three months which ratio turns out usually in your case when it comes to reading fiction and nonfiction books? I am told that reading nonfiction books are slightly easier thus I am thinking about reading them in the beginning stage of the learning?
I read the autobiography of Steve Jobs in English therefore I am thinking about reading it in German.
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Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Oct 03, 2021 8:10 pm

Le Baron wrote:I have an English copy of this book (mid 1980s republication). As you say it reads more like a novel than straight history, much more in keeping with how modern popular historical books are written. I should probably re-read it.

I found a paperback copy of Der Untergang der Endurance that I bought as incentive material in the early days of my German studies. From its cover, I noticed that there is a forward written by Patrick O'Brian, author of Master and Commander, the start of a long naval history series that I have had my eye on (Kurs auf Spaniens Küste auf Deutsch). All are on my reading list but each will have to endure some fierce competition to get to the forefront. They are not the only seafaring novels clamouring for attention and as I go through each novel, I can sense the silent war going on in the background to see which book will be read next.
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