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I started reading back in March and I finally finished reading Harry Potter 4 today....all 640 pages!!

Bex wrote:I started reading back in March and I finally finished reading Harry Potter 4 today....all 640 pages!!

Congratulations!!!

Not a bad week..

168 pages read
2 hours 20 mins listening

Seems my summer dip may have resolved itself, maybe it was just too hot

Hoping to finish this Harry Potter book before Xmas and then spend some setting a new plan in place for the new year...gives me plenty of time to decide what I'd like to work on next.

I'd really like to try and push to do something I am finding really difficult again (like reading in this SC) because I know now that the only way to get better at something is to just do it a lot!

I'd like to second Iguanamon's comment on getting used to new authors, series, new books within one series, new genres, etc. Yes, we feel a bit as we lost our abilities, when we start something new. But the process of getting used to new and more different stuff gets faster and faster every time, it is very encouraging to observe this. In case of serious need of an ego boost, I recommend picking a new but easier book/author/genre.

About the turning points:
I usually encounter the first one after a few dozen pages. It looks like it's early, doesn't it? Well, it is just the border between "it is so uncomfortable" and "yes, I can somehow get through this".
Then there are a few variable ones.
And the most important one, the "hey, I didn't even realise this was another language" point comes somewhere between 10000 and 12000 pages to me.

I think 10000 pages are an amount of reading that is bound to move any learner a lot forward, even though I don't dare to generalise that everybody will be a C2 reader by then. It is a beautiful number and a very useful goal

Thanks Cavesa those numbers are really useful. Unfortunately my turning point of 'I can get through this' wasn't after 12 pages...it was more like 4000

Cavesa wrote:I think 10000 pages are an amount of reading that is bound to move any learner a lot forward, even though I don't dare to generalise that everybody will be a C2 reader by then. It is a beautiful number and a very useful goal

I'll be at 5000 by the end of this Super Challenge, so I'm nearly half way and if I complete the next SC then I will reach that beautiful number

I often wonder what level I would be after 10,000 pages of reading and 1,000 hours of listening?

Edited: tinkering

Bex wrote:Thanks Cavesa those numbers are really useful. Unfortunately my turning point of 'I can get through this' wasn't after 12 pages...it was more like 4000

Cavesa wrote:I think 10000 pages are an amount of reading that is bound to move any learner a lot forward, even though I don't dare to generalise that everybody will be a C2 reader by then. It is a beautiful number and a very useful goal

I'll be at 5000 by the end of this Super Challenge, so I'm nearly half way and if I complete the next SC then I will reach that beautiful number

I often wonder what level I would be after 10,000 pages of reading and 1,000 hours of listening?

Edited: tinkering

You're welcome.
Yes, you will get to that beautiful number! And 1000 hours of listening, that is very ambitious! I listened to just 250-300 hours between my B2 and C2 French, much more since. But apart from being awesome for your language skills, it will be a wonderful excuse to binge watch fun series

Bex,

I see you're reading the Harry Potter series. Has it gotten any easier from the first book to book 4 or 5 that you're on? Also, where do you get the audio?? Maybe I've overlooked it somewhere. I'm on book 1 right now. Best of luck in Spain. I'm envious.

ShawnP wrote:Bex,

I see you're reading the Harry Potter series. Has it gotten any easier from the first book to book 4 or 5 that you're on? Also, where do you get the audio?? Maybe I've overlooked it somewhere. I'm on book 1 right now. Best of luck in Spain. I'm envious.

There exists European Spanish audio for the first book out there on the internet, and all the books are or will be on Audible read by a narrator from Puerto Rico

Yeah Audible seem to be in the process of re-recording the whole series at the moment, think the first 5 are released with the other available for preorder with 2020 releases. I listened to the first 2 recently and they were good quality.

ShawnP wrote:Bex,

I see you're reading the Harry Potter series. Has it gotten any easier from the first book to book 4 or 5 that you're on? Also, where do you get the audio?? Maybe I've overlooked it somewhere. I'm on book 1 right now. Best of luck in Spain. I'm envious.

Yes it's much easier now, when I started I would guess I was a high beginner with reading (A2) and it was REALLY, REALLY difficult.

The first book and second, I was looking up words, grammar, sentences structures...pretty much everything and it stayed pretty much the same until the third book, so it was very, very slow going.

By the third book sentence structures were mostly clear to me and I had a much better idea of who was doing what and to whom. But still lots of unknown grammar and vocabulary issues.

Something clicked during the forth book, I had gained some reading flow and starting being able to ignore or guess the odd unknown bit of vocabulary and so it became much more interesting and I could actually follow the plot. The forth book was the only one I enjoyed reading.

Now I'm a third of the way through the fifth book and I am finding it much easier and therefore much more enjoyable. There's odd bits of grammar I pretty much ignore, like I still skim over tenses and moods a lot, I am hoping this will improve as I expose myself to more reading but I will also get back to reviewing some grammar after I've finished this book, which should also help.

I suspect I could have made the while process easier in three ways 1) Using Anki 2) not stopping and starting all the time 3) being a higher level when I started.

Because I did none of these things and I had months of breaks it was very difficult and slow going. I would recommend you at least make sure you keep some sort of rhythm going, such as a set number of pages of day or 1 hour of reading. Anki I think would be helpful but not essential. Your pain threshold will be a good indication of what level you need to be before you start.

As for the audio I haven't really used it much, I find my reading is faster than my listening so I just find it irritates me but I know it's useful for others and I did use it in the beginning. I think Audible has it.

I think really you just need to find your own method of making reading as easy and enjoyable as possible, in order for you to read as much as possible and regularly. It doesn't really matter how you do it.

I hope that helps, please take all my advice with a large pinch of salt because I am the last person you should be asking