Learning by reading

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Apr 04, 2022 12:20 pm

Nogon wrote:Read Nils-Olof Franzén - Agaton Sax och Byköpings gästabud (Agaton Sax and the Criminal Doubles). Hilarious! :mrgreen:


I'm pretty sure I got this at the bokrea some 40 years ago. I still haven't read it. (Nor any other Agaton Sax.) Thanks for the reminder.
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Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:15 pm

I found it (and another 5 Agaton Sax books) at a bookish flea market 15 years ago. Only then I realised that Agaton Sax actually was a Swedish book series; I had read one of the books in German translation in my childhood during a time when all books were just "books" and not books from one country or another. (If you understand what I'm trying to say.)
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Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Apr 11, 2022 9:23 am

Week 14:
Spring took a break; there was some snow almost every day. Hope for better weather this week.

French:
Read Jean-Claude Mourlevat - L'homme à l'oreille coupée. 4 short stories of mixed quality which were easy to read. I should stop borrowing Mourlevat's books from the library as I'm a bit tiread of his works.
Reading a book fron Mali: Massa Makan Diabaté - Le lieutenant de Kouta, the first part of the Kouta trilogy. I don't think that there is an English translation. At least there wasn't one in 1999, when a Swedish translation was issued. According to that book's preface up to then there was only a Dutch translation of one of the books, the Swedish being the first translation of the entire trilogy. I found that book at a sale in 2007 and read the first part about 12 years ago. (Don't remember much of it.) Now I'm reading it chapterwise first in French and then checking the translation.

Dutch:
Read Jannie Regnerus - Het wolkenpaviljoen (no translation, I think). There were some beautiful sentences and paragraphs, but all in all I didn't like that book much.

Afrikaans:
Borrowed the Colloquial Afrikaans from the library to learn a bit about the pronunciation. Unfortunately the CD didn't work properly, especially the first tracks about just pronunciation. As the book looks quite boring, I think I'll return it to the library.

English:
Read Ali Smith - Spring. Wonderful! Now reading the tetralogy's last part, Summer.

Swedish:
Read Gunnel Carlson/Elisabeth Svalin Gunnarsson - Snödroppar. En galantofil kärlekshistoria. A lovely book about snowdrops. Didn't know that there were so many different species (about 22 or 23; new ones still being found) and varieties (hundreds; new ones being bred all the time).
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:23 am

Week 15:
Spring's here for sure! Spent most of the week in a park or in the Botanic garden, reading. Which implies reading books in my better languages, which I can read without a dictionary. When at home, I studied some French Assimil.

French:
Read a few pages of Massa Makan Diabaté - Le lieutenant de Kouta and Terry Pratchett - Timbre (Going Postal).
Re-started Assimil's Französisch ohne Mühe :D .

A few words about my French learning history:
9 or 10 years ago I took several (I think 5) one week intensive classes which were just great. Fantastic teacher, who really wanted us to learn as much as possible and students who were eager to do so. Unfortunately then there were problems with the school and the classes didn't continue. No French happened for the next few years until I somewhere heard about Duolingo (that was in 2016, I believe). Started the French tree, switched over to Esperanto (and some other languages) and got fed up with Duolingo quite soon. Found this (or was it the old?) forum and learned about Assimil (in 2017). Ordered the French one, studied eagerly one lesson per day on to lesson 31, when there came one of those dreaded telephone calls from my brother: "Mom is in intensive care; not sure whether she'll make it." I of course travelled to Germany immediately, without the Assimil book and CD's. Returning, I unfortunately didn't resume my studies. (My mom, by the way, being a tough old lady made it even that time. She died at home two years later when I was visiting her, luckily before Covid.)
I read a few childrens' books though, and then paused French for a few years. Came back to reading in French about two years ago, starting with very easy childrens' books. (I recommend the LasseMaja books for all people starting to read a in foreign language. They are translated to many languages and belong to the best books in their area - which is books for children who just have learned to read.)
So except the classes and some Assimil I've never studied French properly, so my knowledge of its grammar is quite hazy. I'll try to change that now.
I also borrowed the first of the "Grammaire Progressive" books but haven't started it yet.

English:
Finished Ali Smith - Summer. I absolutely love her "Seasonal quartet"! As I had read the first part, Autumn, several years ago, and didn't remember it well, I re-read it too.
Further readings: Robert Macfarlane - Ness, Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English and Diana Wynne Jones - Earwig and the Witch.
Now reading Rachel Carson - Silent Spring.

Swedish:
Read Hiromi Kawakami - Senseis portfölj (Strange Weather in Tokyo) and Niki Sjölund - Vildplockat (about wild edible plants).

German:
Helen Humphreys - Der vergessene Garten (The Lost Garden). By far the worst book I hitherto read this year!
Now reading Herta Müller - Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel), which is breath-taking!
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

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kanewai
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby kanewai » Thu Apr 21, 2022 2:21 am

Nogon wrote: So except the classes and some Assimil I've never studied French properly, so my knowledge of its grammar is quite hazy. I'll try to change that now.
I also borrowed the first of the "Grammaire Progressive" books but haven't started it yet.
After a couple years of mainly reading I'm finding the Grammaire Progressive series insanely useful. Hope you enjoy it!
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språker
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby språker » Thu Apr 21, 2022 8:48 am

kanewai wrote:
Nogon wrote: So except the classes and some Assimil I've never studied French properly, so my knowledge of its grammar is quite hazy. I'll try to change that now.
I also borrowed the first of the "Grammaire Progressive" books but haven't started it yet.
After a couple years of mainly reading I'm finding the Grammaire Progressive series insanely useful. Hope you enjoy it!

I like "Grammaire BLEUE" https://livre.fnac.com/a1928742/Pascale-MARSON-ZYTO-Grammaire-bleue by Pascale Marson-Zyto and Paul Desalmand. It is not written for L2 learners, but rather for native parents teaching their children grammar in a fun way. It is a much less dry than traditional grammar books, but teaches grammar in depth, and I enjoy reading explanations of what a verb and adjective is, in my target language. Children/young adults already have an implicit feeling for the language, and only have to discover the patterns they already "know" - so it fits well with an input-heavy learning approach, I think.
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Apr 25, 2022 8:06 am

Week 16:
Yeah!

French:
Continued with Assimil's Französisch ohne Mühe at a pace of 3 lessons per 2 days. I think I'll have to slow down soon, as I've now reached lessons I hadn't gone through earlier. There's still no unknown grammar, but a lot of things which, while I understand them perfectly (thanks to all my reading), I can't use actively.
Reading Alphonse Daudet - Tartarin de Tarascon. I'm surprised by the ease with which I can read it. Of course there are unknown words but fewer than I thought there would be.

Afrikaans:
Read a few pages of Ingrid Winterbach - De aanspraak van lewende wesens (It Might Get Loud).

English:
Finished Rachel Carson - Silent Spring. I'd known about this book ever since my teens. At long last I've read it, and now I understand why it had such an impact. Looking forward to read her other books.
Now reading Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass.

Swedish:
Read Stig Claesson - Att resa sig upp och gå and Mårten Westö - En sorts värme.

German:
Finished Herta Müller - Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel). Great literature!
Read Marc-Uwe Kling - Der Tag, an dem die Oma das Internet kaputt machte. An absolutely funny children's book.
Read Wladimir Kaminer - Militärmusik. About Kaminer's childhood and youth in Soviet Moscow. Kaminer emigrated to Germany in 1988 and writes in German.
Read Monika Maron - Stille Zeile Sechs (Silent Close No. 6).
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Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon May 02, 2022 8:50 am

Week 17:
Spring at its most beautiful stage - although still quite cold. A bit too cold to be sitting in a park to read for a longer period.

French:
Progressing well with Assimil. Finished lesson 40 yesterday so I'm more than a third through the book. The lessons are more difficult now though, so I'm doing "only" one lesson per day now.
Finished Alphonse Daudet - Tartarin de Tarascon. Liked it quite a lot in the beginning, less later on.
Read another few pages of Massa Makan Diabaté - Le lieutenant de Kouta and Terry Pratchett - Timbre (Going Postal).
Reading Georges Simenon - Pietr-le-Letton (The Strange Case of Peter the Lett). I started reading the book in the subway, when I didn't have a dictionary at hand. Realised that I understood it quite well, getting much more than just the gist, so I continued reading it without any vocabulary checks. So this is the first French book I read entirely without "crutches", that is, with neither previous knowledge of the text, parallel reading, nor dictionary. Hooray! I'm very proud of this accomplishment. (Although I of course realize that there is much harder literature in which I'd be lost without any help.) Nevertheless - 8-)

English:
Still reading Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass. Love the book so far!

German:
Read Michael Ohl - Stachel und Staat. A book about aculeates (wasps, bees and ants) with gorgeous close-up photographies.
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon May 09, 2022 8:30 am

Week 18:
Not much done in my less good languages except Assimil :( .

French:
Still going strong with Assimil, one lesson per day, now at lesson 47. Will start the active wave this week :shock: . I wonder how many of you who have learned a laguage through Assimil, actually have done the active wave. I think that I have read in many threads that people didn't do it.
Read a few pages of Terry Pratchett - Timbre (Going Postal).

English:
Read David Almond - The Colour of the Sun. Georgeous children's book! Almond is one of the very best writers for children, I think.
Still reading Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass.

Swedish:
Read Per Anders Fogelström - Vita bergens barn. A historic novel about life in Stockholm 1820-1860. Reading about the cholera epidemic in 1834 was gruesom. Out of a population of 81000 people 3655 died; that is 4,5%! (Släng dig i väggen, Covid!) The epidemic in 1853 was less bad - "only" 3% died that year.
Read Olséni & Hansen - Livräddaren. A cosy mystery novel. I usually don't read that genre, as I didn't much like the few such books I've read. This one surprised me. Still no high literature of course, but a quite amusing read, stylistically okay. Might very well read another book from that series.
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

jeffers
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby jeffers » Mon May 09, 2022 10:07 am

Nogon wrote:I wonder how many of you who have learned a laguage through Assimil, actually have done the active wave. I think that I have read in many threads that people didn't do it.


I have to admit that I never did more than a few lessons of an active wave. The only Assimil coursebook that I have "finished" is Assimil French, and I was never very consistent with it. I would work on it daily for a few weeks, and then ignore it for a few weeks. So at the time I felt like it was better to press on with new lessons than to stop because I was being put off by the active wave. I do regret not having done the active wave, but on the other hand, the only bad resource/method is the one that makes you stop using it. Still, reviewing Assimil French while doing an active wave is on my "to do" list.
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