philomath wrote:One of my biggest fears in learning French is that if I start to read too early, I'll accidentally reinforce incorrect pronunciation. The internal reading voice in my head definitely does not sound like a native speaker. What if, by continuing to read with bad pronunciation, I end up with too many fossilized pronunciation errors? I still read in Spanish with a bit of an American accent and have had to put in a lot of work to improve my pronunciation. However, with Spanish I did very little listening practice and paid very little attention to accent during my first five years of learning it in school, whereas with French I'm doing listening practice and working on my pronunciation from the beginning. This fear still lingers in my mind though, and it's probably the main reason why I haven't done more reading in French. I need to get over it and start reading more!
My solution to this was to start with loads of books with audio, first listening to the audio 3-4 times before even looking at the book. The idea was to build listening comprehension, but it also planted the voice of the narrator in my mind as the voice when I finally read the books for myself. I then alternated between reading the book, listening to the book and doing both together. While doing this I made little underlines below final "s" and "t" when they were pronounced, and liaison marks like they use in Assimil when words were pronounced together.
Here are a few of the better books from what I used:
A1/A2/B1 readers with CD. Most of these are rubbish, but I found I liked
Rémi et le mystère de Saint-Péray and
Enquête capitale, and I have reread and re-listened to these two books periodically. I also found a few Maigret books in easy reader + CD form, and enjoyed these a lot.
Mondes ev VF http://www.mondesenvf.fr/la-collection/ is a book series for learners with a difference: they are intended to be quality literature and for adults. They are certainly longer and seem more interesting than your average easy reader, although I've only read two of them.
Pas d'Oscar pour l'assassin and
Jus de chausettes by Vincent Remède. All Mondes en VF books are available as paperback or on kindle, and the audio is downloadable from their website if you have the book (it asks a question like, "What is the fourth word in chapter 4?"). Great literature? Not at all, but enjoyable enough that I was able to listen and read many times.
I cannot sing the praises of
Le Petit Nicolas enough. I started with it after perhaps 18 months of French learning, and I bought the English translation as well but found that it was rubbish so I never read more than the first story in English. I began as usual by listening to the audiobook, brilliantly read by Brigitte Lecordier, listening 4 or 5 times before even cracking the text open. On the first listen, even when I had little more than a vague idea of what was happening, I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions. I then slowly began to work through the stories, meanwhile still listening through the audiobook a few more times on my walks.
Since then, Nicolas has been a constant companion on my French journey, and I've read all but two of the 14 books as well as listening to the 5 audiobooks. The first is always the best, and Brigitte Lecordier was the voice of Nicolas in my head for the longest time. Benoît Poelvoorde may have become my favourite voice of Nicolas, since his narration of
Les récrés du petit Nicolas is just so wonderful! [Edit, it turns out that Audible have 8 Petit Nicolas audiobooks. Also, you can hear a sample of some of the audio on this site:
http://www.laplumedepaon.com/les-r%C3%A9cr%C3%A9s-du-petit-nicolas]
Now that I read "grown up" books, when choosing what to read I still prefer to read a book that has an audiobook. Two examples I've enjoyed a lot in the past year were
Le chapeau de Mitterand by Antoine Lauraine and
Un aller simple by Didier Van Cauwelaert. Both are available on Kindle and on Audible, and I alternated listening with reading (but in these cases not both at the same time).
Or, to make a long story short: the solution to your concern is to find a lot of audio + text that you enjoy.
Today I watched the second episode of The Circle: France. I should watch reality TV in my target languages more often! I'm watching with French subtitles and I'm learning a lot of new words.
But I'm excited to keep reading this way!