Ketutar and languages
Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2016 6:33 pm
So... I just joined the Super Challenge. I know I won't be able to keep this up for 6 months. Probably three weeks. But right now I'm really into languages - again - and blogging my fingers off. Trying to do too much too quickly is not a good idea for anything.
I am challenge mad. Just say "challenge" and I will sit prettily by your feet and begging like a dog, drooling all over the place. Can't resist a challenge.
And I love books and movies!
So, what I am going to need help with is the "keeping the motivation, inspiration, spirit up" part. I know what to do with languages, I just need to keep doing it for 20 months. Or 18.
I'm thinking about the reading part of the Super Challenge. Sure, it's "books", but shouldn't any reading count?
I have just been spending some time studying about reading as a way of learning languages, and people are speaking about how "expensive" reading can be.
There is a study (hearsay - can't give you any information about that) that states that
"If students read approximately a million words of running text a year, and if they know 96-98 per cent of the words, they will be exposed to 20,000 to 40,000 new words… If students learn one word in ten through context, they will learn somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 new words through extensive reading in a year."
[Million words a year is about 4000 fully written pages a year, is about 80 pages a week, and a million words is about 40 relatively short books (like your average children's chapter book) (or 10 mastodon novels)]
They were talking about how reading only newspapers doesn't give you the same results, and came to the conclusion that newspapers are in the end too easy reading and the development will stagnate at some point. There just isn't enough new words and repetition for a person to effectively learn the words.
And the thing is that one should read ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. To get most benefit from reading, one should read fiction and non-fiction. Novels, short stories, fairy tales and legends, poems and drama, song lyrics and graphic novels, travel books, manuals, newspapers, textbooks, self-help and how-to books, documents, essays, reports, criticism, philosophy and gossip magazines, speeches, letters and diaries, biographies and advertisement...
So how does this apply to the Super Challenge?
One could count every word and approximate that 250 words is 1 page and during the challenge one is supposed to read 5000 pages (100 books à 50 pages), but the pages of a book do not have consistently 250 word pages, do they? So one could take one page, one piece of paper with text, as one page. Of course, reading 10 toddler picture books with 5 pages each is not the same as reading a "book", is it? So one shouldn't count a piece of junk-mail with 20 words on it as one page either.
But... it's kind of books and movies, not just any text and not just any... filmed piece of media, like funny cat videos on YouTube, is it?
And I love books, fiction, novels, so I don't need to worry about what to read I wanted to learn French because of Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne... now, I can find both on-line, some with audiobook to listen as I read, but the problem is that it's a bit old language But, I'm counting on that the archaic and old-fashioned ways of using the language will be cleaned out when I start using the language like a language. The core of the language in those novels is sound. I think.
I'm planning on getting all René Goscinny's comic books; Lucky Luke, Oumpah-pah, Astérix and Iznogoud - I grew up reading these.
I also love Gaston by André Franquin and Tintin, but I have been collecting Tintin in Swedish, so I don't think I will be getting it in French any time soon.
As tv/movies I have on my list Joséphine, ange gardien. I really like that series, even though I understand practically nothing It is going to keep me busy for a quite a long time.
I have on my list Éternelle, which is a French miniseries, which I have on DVD - no subtitles. On any language So really a challenge, which I don't know much about, but really want to see.
I have on my list The Brotherhood of Wolves; Arsène Lupin and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. To begin with.
I also like Amélie and Belphégor and Un amour de sorcière. I have seen all of these movies, with English subtitles, so I know what happens, so I can watch them without subtitles, if I can't find them on DVD.
adding my book and movie list link here: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3147&p=44530#p44530
I am challenge mad. Just say "challenge" and I will sit prettily by your feet and begging like a dog, drooling all over the place. Can't resist a challenge.
And I love books and movies!
So, what I am going to need help with is the "keeping the motivation, inspiration, spirit up" part. I know what to do with languages, I just need to keep doing it for 20 months. Or 18.
I'm thinking about the reading part of the Super Challenge. Sure, it's "books", but shouldn't any reading count?
I have just been spending some time studying about reading as a way of learning languages, and people are speaking about how "expensive" reading can be.
There is a study (hearsay - can't give you any information about that) that states that
"If students read approximately a million words of running text a year, and if they know 96-98 per cent of the words, they will be exposed to 20,000 to 40,000 new words… If students learn one word in ten through context, they will learn somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 new words through extensive reading in a year."
[Million words a year is about 4000 fully written pages a year, is about 80 pages a week, and a million words is about 40 relatively short books (like your average children's chapter book) (or 10 mastodon novels)]
They were talking about how reading only newspapers doesn't give you the same results, and came to the conclusion that newspapers are in the end too easy reading and the development will stagnate at some point. There just isn't enough new words and repetition for a person to effectively learn the words.
And the thing is that one should read ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. To get most benefit from reading, one should read fiction and non-fiction. Novels, short stories, fairy tales and legends, poems and drama, song lyrics and graphic novels, travel books, manuals, newspapers, textbooks, self-help and how-to books, documents, essays, reports, criticism, philosophy and gossip magazines, speeches, letters and diaries, biographies and advertisement...
So how does this apply to the Super Challenge?
One could count every word and approximate that 250 words is 1 page and during the challenge one is supposed to read 5000 pages (100 books à 50 pages), but the pages of a book do not have consistently 250 word pages, do they? So one could take one page, one piece of paper with text, as one page. Of course, reading 10 toddler picture books with 5 pages each is not the same as reading a "book", is it? So one shouldn't count a piece of junk-mail with 20 words on it as one page either.
But... it's kind of books and movies, not just any text and not just any... filmed piece of media, like funny cat videos on YouTube, is it?
And I love books, fiction, novels, so I don't need to worry about what to read I wanted to learn French because of Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne... now, I can find both on-line, some with audiobook to listen as I read, but the problem is that it's a bit old language But, I'm counting on that the archaic and old-fashioned ways of using the language will be cleaned out when I start using the language like a language. The core of the language in those novels is sound. I think.
I'm planning on getting all René Goscinny's comic books; Lucky Luke, Oumpah-pah, Astérix and Iznogoud - I grew up reading these.
I also love Gaston by André Franquin and Tintin, but I have been collecting Tintin in Swedish, so I don't think I will be getting it in French any time soon.
As tv/movies I have on my list Joséphine, ange gardien. I really like that series, even though I understand practically nothing It is going to keep me busy for a quite a long time.
I have on my list Éternelle, which is a French miniseries, which I have on DVD - no subtitles. On any language So really a challenge, which I don't know much about, but really want to see.
I have on my list The Brotherhood of Wolves; Arsène Lupin and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. To begin with.
I also like Amélie and Belphégor and Un amour de sorcière. I have seen all of these movies, with English subtitles, so I know what happens, so I can watch them without subtitles, if I can't find them on DVD.
adding my book and movie list link here: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3147&p=44530#p44530