Ben tries to read German books

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BenTriesToRead
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Ben tries to read German books

Postby BenTriesToRead » Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:24 pm

Hello everyone,

I've decided to share my reading log here in the hopes that someone else will find it interesting or useful. I was inspired to do this after coming across one or two posts of people sharing that their comprehension greatly improved after reading 20+ novels as well as a blog post correlating the number of novels read to the number of known word families based on a Paul Nation paper. Outside of these handful of posts there don't seem to be many people sharing their reading progress or documenting how effective it is and I figured if I was going to keep a log for myself I might as well do it publicly.

I'll provide a brief background of my journey to this point just so you know where I'm starting from. After deciding that I wanted to learn German one day(who knows why, I certainly don't) I downloaded Duolingo and started chipping away at it. After making it about half way through the tree I discovered graded readers, ditched duolingo, and made my way through 2-3 targeted at A1 learners. I also discovered Anki around this time and began building my own deck which I still use to this day albeit with a nearly 2 year long break in the middle. After making it through the graded readers I decided I wanted to try and engage with material that was targeted at native speakers and picked up a couple of books that sounded interesting and quickly discovered that I didn't know every other word. From here I decided I'd give Harry Potter a try since I'd read it before and it was made for children. I ended up making it through roughly the first third of the book before giving up on it and taking a different approach(although I still occasionally listen to the audiobooks). At this point I had decided that Harry Potter was probably a bit too difficult and that I wanted to read a story that I wasn't familiar with in the hope that it'd be a bit more engaging if there were a few surprises. I stumbled across the concept of lexile level for determining what books are appropriate for which reading level and saw that the Percy Jackson series was roughly two grade levels lower than the Harry Potter books. I picked the first book up and began to slowly make progress and finally after what must have been nearly a year I finished it. There were almost entire chapters where I'd have only a vague idea of what was happening but I got the point of the story and I was inspired enough to immediately start the next one. The second book went much better and I managed to finish it in roughly a month and while I was still looking up many words on each page I had a much better grasp on the story and there were times where I could read a page or two without looking anything up and I'd have only a few odds and ends that were missing comprehension wise. After finishing this book I decided I'd switch up what I was reading and started on the Agatha Cristie book "Das Geheimnis der Goldmine" which I'm currently about half way through. There was noticeable jump in grade level moving to this book but after learning some of the more common vocabulary about being people being surprised and assuming and presuming things it's has been manageable and it's certainly exciting enough to keep me reading.

So that gets you to where I'm at now. Reading isn't my only language learning activity. I still use Anki daily and I listen to podcasts regularly but reading makes up the majority of my input. Anyways with all of that out of the way I'll try and keep this updated whenever I finish a book and if I feel up to it I may try and find some ways to measure my vocab size or comprehension via language tests.

Book Log:
Title | Estimated Vocabulary Coverage
1. Percy Jackson - Diebe im Olymp |
2. Percy Jackson - Im Bann des Zyklopen |
3. Das Geheimnis der Goldmine | 91.9%
4. Percy Jackson - Der Fluch des Titanen | 92.39%
5. Die Tote in Der Bibliothek | 92.1%
6. Mord im Orientexpress | 92.00%
7. Warhammer Adventures: Angriff Der Necrons | 91.74%
8. Percy Jackson - Die Schlact um das Labryrinth | 93.23%
9. Warhammer Adventures: In den Klauen des Genräubers | 91.82%
10. Sub Terra | 92.75%
11. Spy: Highspeed London | 93.3%
12. Das Schiff | 93.21%
13. Percy Jackson: Die letzte Göttin | 94.47%
14. Warhammer Adventures: Die Geheimnisse der Tau | 92.83%
15. Sandsturm | 92.58%
16. Mord auf dem Golfplatz | 93.99%
17. Tintenherz | 93.7%
18. Walpar Tonraffir und der Zeigefinger Gottes | 90.47%
19. Warhammer Adventures: Der Planet der Orks | 92.6%
20. Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark | 93.52%
21. Das Jesus Video | 91.69%
22. Die Tochter des Henkers | 92.87%
23. Tintenblut | 96.04%
24. Warhammer Adventures: Die Seuche der Nurglinge | 94.1%
25. Dschiheads | 91.24%
26. Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof | 95.26%
27. Die Zwerge | 91.48%
28. Die rote Pyramide / Kane-Chroniken Bd.1 | 95.15%
29. Warhammer Adventures: Die Gruft der Necrons | 95.31%
30. Die Unendliche Geshichte | 92.27%
31. Winterkartoffelknödel: Der erste Fall für den Eberhofer | 94.13%
32. Herr aller Dinge | 94.51%
Last edited by BenTriesToRead on Thu Jun 15, 2023 4:03 pm, edited 13 times in total.
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby philomath » Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:51 pm

Hi Ben, welcome to the forum and I look forward to reading your log! I’ve recently started learning German and also enjoy reading in my target languages. One of my goals with German is to read the book Tintenherz by Cornelia Funke. The English translation was one of my favorite books when I was younger.
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BenTriesToRead
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby BenTriesToRead » Wed Aug 25, 2021 5:50 pm

I've seen Tintenherz recommended and I'll probably get to it soon since I want to try out content that wasn't translated.
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby jeffers » Wed Aug 25, 2021 8:16 pm

You are probably past this stage, but German has a couple of excellent series of readers for beginner to advanced beginner level. First of all there is a series of books by Brian Smith, starting with three "German Easy Reader" books, then a "Pre-intermediate Reader" and finally three "German Intermediate Reader" volumes. Each of these has free audio read by the author. Another author of beginner readers is André Klein, who has 10 books in the "Dino lernt Deutsch" series, and another series of beginner mysteries called "Baumgartner & Momsen" mysteries. Klein's books are probably "advanced beginner" and are a bit more interesting than Smith's beginning books, however while the audio is more professional, you have to buy the audiobooks separately. Overall, I like both series, but Klein's stories are actually surprisingly interesting considering they're for beginners.

I just thought I'd drop that in in case you wanted to try something a little easier from time to time. It is good to read things that challenge you, but it's also good to read things at or even below your level sometimes as well.
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby gsbod » Wed Aug 25, 2021 8:53 pm

I'll also be following your log with interest, especially as I'm always open to recommendations for books to read in German!

The first proper German book I read (as opposed to translations from other languages) was Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink. I think I picked it as it shows up on a lot of school reading lists for German and the like. Some of the vocabulary around the legal system was a bit challenging back then but otherwise it was a fairly straightforward read.

Also early on I found Wladimir Kaminer quite accessible - his books are basically lots of short vignettes about his experiences as a Russian who has emigrated to Berlin.

If crime and thrillers are your thing then there are loads of German books in this genre. Many are pretty accessible in terms of language difficulty, although the quality of the stories themselves varies!
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby Lisa » Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:16 am

Welcome! I'm also learning German (and previously Spanish) by mostly reading and anki, and I have been reading a lot of agatha christies in German. I'm impressed! It took me quite a while before I could manage it, at least the ones I've been working on have quite challenging vocabulary. I bet you could do Harry Potter now without trouble.

You can count the number of anki words for progress... that's what I do, anyway. I've ran into a number of vocab tests on the internet, but they weren't very satisfying... just nice to give oneself a pat on the back. The tests on dialang were better (too challenging, in fact) - perhaps you already know about them.

This may not matter depending on what your goals are, but I learned the hard way that reading (plus listening and grammar study) does not actually prepare you very well for speaking. I could read very well in Spanish (it was much easier for me than German is), but then when I finally tried to speak, well, I could barely stammer out words.
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BenTriesToRead
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby BenTriesToRead » Sun Aug 29, 2021 5:45 pm

And I'm back with my first update. I finished off "Das Geheimnis der Goldmine" a little sooner than I expect in part because I wanted to get through it so I could update my progress and partially because the story was pretty gripping towards the end and I didn't really put it down once I reached the last quarter. I made sure to gather some fun stats about my progress along the way and without further ado here they are.

I ended up sampling my number of unknown words on several pages to get an idea my vocabulary coverage and maybe I can use it as a way to gauge progress when reading other books by the same author.

Sample Number, Unknown Words, Total Words
1, 13, 206
2, 11, 211
3, 9, 187
4, 29, 165

Totals:
62 Unknown / 769 Total or 91.9% vocabulary coverage for this book.

I think that the last sample was a bit of an outlier and it skews the final coverage number down from something closer to 94.5%, it happened to be a page that had a lengthy string of insults including lists of adjectives I'd never encountered but data is data so I'll keep it.

If I compare my vocabulary coverage to table 2 of https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1098660.pdf and I assume that the number of word families is similar between German and English for the same book and that all of an authors books are similar that puts me at < 3k known word families. This feels correct given that I'm still very much a beginner and this also correlates to Table 1 of https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1044345.pdf which if we assume that I'd have to acquire the first thousand word families before I acquired the second thousand and so on would put me between two and three thousand known word families. If I compare these metrics to estimates of vocabulary level per CEFR level this puts me somewhere in the A2 range which also seems correct. I'd be curious if Dialang rates me there and perhaps I'll try that soon.

In addition to the above here are some anki stats just because I may want to look back on them one day.

Learning: 17
Young: 437
Mature: 716
Total: 1167

I have to wonder if there's an upper limit for the amount of benefit you receive from reading more each day. I have to assume that at some point it tapers off and that 8 hours of reading per day vs 7 would provide a much smaller benefit than going from 1 hour to 2. I'd be curious if anyone has tried to measure that maximum speed of acquisition. I tend to think that the papers I've read are a bit conservative in their estimate of 1000 words per year but I believe that is based on the average rate of acquisition for a native speaker. If we assume that someone can reach a B2 level in two years that would be an average acquisition rate of 3000 words per year which feels like it may be a better estimate of the maximum acquisition rate. In my case I'm not really going to worry about it since my goal is consistency and to have some fun along the way. I'm shooting to read roughly 10 pages a day at my current level. At this rate I can make it through 1 - 1.5 books a month which should be more than enough and if I happen to read more then that's great.

I'll probably go back to Percy Jackson for the next book but I also picked up another Agatha Cristie novel. Maybe I'll start on each and see which I enjoy more.
Last edited by BenTriesToRead on Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Aug 30, 2021 7:53 am

BenTriesToRead wrote:I have to wonder if there's an upper limit for the amount of benefit you receive from reading more each day. I have to assume that at some point it tapers off and that 8 hours of reading per day vs 7 would provide a much smaller benefit than going from 1 hour to 2. I'd be curious if anyone has tried to measure that maximum speed of acquisition. I tend to think that the papers I've read are a bit conservative in their estimate of 1000 words per year but I believe that is based on the average rate of acquisition for a native speaker. If we assume that someone can reach a B2 level in two years that would be an average acquisition rate of 3000 words per year which feels like it may be a better estimate of the maximum acquisition rate. In my case I'm not really going to worry about it since my goal is consistency and to have some fun along the way. I'm shooting to read roughly 10 pages a day at my current level. At this rate I can make it through 1 - 1.5 books a month which should be more than enough and if I happen to read more then that's great.
Conveniently Iverson linked to the TestYourVocab website in his recent post, and that has some information that fills out the "average rate of aquisition for a native speaker" phrase.
1,000 words a year is 2.7 words a day.
The most common vocabulary size for foreign test-takers is 4,500 words
Foreign test-takers tend to reach over 10,000 words by living abroad
Foreign test-takers learn 2.5 new words a day while living in an English-speaking country

Native adult vocabulary size appears to be principally determined by
reading habits between ages 4 and 15
For native vocabulary growth, reading fiction specifically is just as important as reading in general
Native test-taker children who read "lots" learn 4 new words a day
Native test-taker children who read "somewhat" learn 2.5 new words a day
Native test-taker children who read "not much" learn 1.5 new words a day

https://web.archive.org/web/20190309122 ... .com/blog/
Last edited by DaveAgain on Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby Iversen » Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:18 am

As you can see from the quotes above, the TestYourVocab-site tells you that people who read a lot - and in particular a lot of literature - score higher on the vocabulary tests than those that don't. So gnashing your way through a lot of German novels isn't the worst thing you could do.

The big question is how much attention you should pay to unknown words. Counting unknown words on some sample pages is an excellent way to keep track of your passive vocabulary, but at least in the beginning it would take to much time to look them all up, and it would divert your attention from the simple task of just reading. Personally I would supplement the reading with some separate looking-things-up sessions.

As for the question of a limit for word acquisition: it is probably more a question of time and 'Aufmerksamkeit' than anything else.
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BenTriesToRead
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Re: Ben tries to read German books

Postby BenTriesToRead » Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:33 pm

I finished reading Percy Jackson - Der Fluch des Titanen. Overall I enjoyed this one. The plot felt like a continuous story instead of a bunch of weakly connected vignettes and the characters had more developed character arcs. On the other hand I felt like my comprehension of this book was maybe a touch worse than the last book in the series. In any case I did sample a couple of pages to measure my overall comprehension and to try and measure if it's improving over time.

I ended up sampling 5 pages at various points in the book and got a total of 71 unknown words out of 933 total words for vocabulary coverage of 92.39%

Updated Anki stats:
Young: 370
Mature: 906
Total: 1276

In addition to the above I took the Dialang reading test which placed me at an A2.
Last edited by BenTriesToRead on Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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