L-R vs Normal Reading

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
User avatar
lusan
Green Belt
Posts: 463
Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:25 pm
Location: Greensboro, NC, USA
Languages: Spanish(Native)
English (Naïve)
French(Intermediate)
Italian(Intermediate)
Polish(In Alcatraz)
x 985

Re: L-R vs Normal Reading

Postby lusan » Sat Sep 18, 2021 1:58 pm

german2k01 wrote:Now your explanation is making sense to me. L-R is a legit system.

Do you know any book series or authors in English who have written edge-of-the-seat plots in English? /Detective/Crimes/Murder/mystery?
I would read them in German. Translated ones of course. You need a compelling story plot to stick with L-R every day.



Try
J-C Grange - French
Donato Carrisi - Italian

Both could be found in many different languages. I think you want to read the genre noire. If I am not mistaken.
4 x
Italian, polish, and French dance
FSI Basic French Lessons : 10 / 24 17 of 24 goal

hasen
White Belt
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Aug 28, 2021 1:19 am
Languages: English (N), Chinese (C1), French (beginner).
x 5

Re: L-R vs Normal Reading

Postby hasen » Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:29 am

Dragon27 wrote:Not sure what that means. The statement is true though, regardless. Except when you supplement the text in the target language with translation, in that case we're talking about parallel texts (which is what the beginner should use anyway).


You said you need a 'decent' comprehension in the language. I would not say you'd need a decent level to understand a children's book in your target language. Therefore you were making the statement to shoot yourself in the foot ie giving yourself C2 material and trying to understand it when you're only A1 when you should obviously be reading A1 material.

Dragon27 wrote:Walking/running analogy doesn't necessarily apply (like any analogy). Books already contain the language of all the necessary stages, so you don't skip anything important (but it may be overwhelming for a beginner that only expects bite-sized primitive sentences). With adequate preparation it's perfectly doable, and the pay off is all the greater for the added challenge.


Simpler text will repeat simpler grammatical structures way more often while an advanced text will contain far more new vocabulary. Instead of getting used to the basics of grammar you'll be learning loads of obscure words. That's exactly why kids watch these kinds of things since they need to get used these simpler patterns and won't understand a wide range of words. You should look up 'spaced repetition'. Therefore it most certainly would be running before you walk.

Dragon27 wrote:So you read it all first and then switch on the audio?
No, what are you talking about? There's only the audio in the target language and two sets of text - text in the target language and translation.


It was your own statement "You don't listen to two languages at once, you quickly skim through the text in L1 in order to grasp the meaning". Therefore you're reading it first and then listening to the audio...

Dragon27 wrote:I quoted your question/claim, so that the original goalposts (which tend to shift in the discussion) could be clearly seen, and added lusan's post to that, to show how this kind of question seems to crop up from time.


Nothing shifted, the discussion just evolved into different aspects. The only difference given so far between movies with subtitles and audio with text is that you have to manually match the text with the audio. To which I stated that was valid but don't see any actual benefit to the exercise. Worthy of note is that you'd probably only need about 20-30% understanding to actually do that. The rest would be relying on intonation, punctuation and any known words to keep up with where you are.

Dragon27 wrote:I've also noticed that you seem to go off very limited description of how the method is supposed to work by referring to a short introduction on "the learnanylanguage wiki".


I don't see what that description is missing, it's a basic description of the method. There's no need for anything simple to be missing from there like "it's a method designed for reading material way above your level". If that was indeed part of the original method it would be there. Also it does not say you read the text first and then listen to the audio. If you're using a different method to the one on the wiki then fine, but if you could please explain what it is.

Dragon27 wrote:L-R method never touted itself as universal. If it's not for you, then it's not for you. L-R gives you the opportunity to directly engage with authentic books (written for natives by natives) with minimal preparation (in case of a closely related language - practically from zero), but it can be demanding (both time and effort-wise). You have to find out for yourself whether it can work for you or you rather prefer some other approach.


You also have to analyse a method to see if it will actually be beneficial. One of the biggest problems in language learning is believing you comprehend more of the content than you actually do. It seems if you're reading English and listening to the foreign language that would be most likely to happen - especially if the content is also way above your level to begin with.
0 x

hasen
White Belt
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Aug 28, 2021 1:19 am
Languages: English (N), Chinese (C1), French (beginner).
x 5

Re: L-R vs Normal Reading

Postby hasen » Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:44 am

RyanSmallwood wrote:I mean its pretty clear in the original write-up of the method is using novels written for adult native speakers as a beginner, so again its going to be tricky for you to meaningfully contribute to the discussion if you don't understand what the method being discussed actually entails and we have to re-type stuff to explain to you what's been written down in guides.


Well it doesn't say that in the wiki about the guide. It would only be a single sentence and would be very important to add into the introduction since it seems from what you're saying, that is the whole premise the method is based on.

RyanSmallwood wrote:As for subtitles versus L-R this has been addressed earlier, so I'm not going to repeat stuff and keep the discussion going in circles.


The subject was brung up so I responded to it.

RyanSmallwood wrote:Informed criticism is important and helpful,


Yes I'm glad we agree on that.

RyanSmallwood wrote:People here are criticizing watching movies in-so-far as you brought it up here and it doesn't substitute for the things Listening-Reading is trying to do.


Of course, and if their criticisms aren't valid I will equally state why they are not.

RyanSmallwood wrote:If there was a thread about using phrasebooks versus learning basic conversation from a tutor before traveling to a country it would be weird if I went into the thread and said to everyone there "I've never used phrasebooks, but I don't think you learn phrases from them,


If you had logic and reasoning to back up your statement of course it would be perfectly fine. You don't have to try everything to give an opinion on it. Most language learning methods are similar in one way or another. Assimill was mentioned as being similar to this method so if someone has done Assimil then they have tried something very similar. Although Assimil is not designed to read way above your level which makes a lot more sense. I've also watched movies with English subtitles which is also very similar. Based on these experiences and using logic and reasoning I can certainly give an opinion on whether it would be useful or not.

Like if for example I was to suggest a method, from total beginner, listening to Arabic radio all day long as a sole method to learn - with no looking up of words either since you wouldn't know how to do that anyway at that stage. You wouldn't need to actually try it to know it would be almost completely useless.

RyanSmallwood wrote:Anyways apologies if this meta-discussion has taken us further afield from the actual discussion. I just feel like every time I discuss Listening-Reading anywhere there's always someone who wants to guess how it works without having tried it.


Well someone messed up big time with the wiki on this method it seems. Maybe someone should contact them and get them to add in the somewhat vital sentence "This is a method designed for learners to read way above their level".
0 x

User avatar
einzelne
Blue Belt
Posts: 804
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:33 pm
Languages: Russan (N), English (Working knowledge), French (Reading), German (Reading), Italian (Reading on Kindle)
x 2882

Re: L-R vs Normal Reading

Postby einzelne » Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:52 am

lusan wrote:
luke wrote:That's the beauty.


Agree. However, I read for fun and pleasure, those almost forgotten words are, for me, awful distractions. I target 40+ pages/days. I prefer not to have them in front of me if I cannot deduct them from their context. I believe that writers do it with the pretension of renewing the language or because of pedantismo.-ah, I have not used this word in 45 years! An excellent example of pedante!


The phrases like "to open a tab" or "reverse gear" are certainly more practical and useful in everyday life than "this empyreal substance cannot fail" (Milton) or "a beast that wants discourse of reason" (Shakespeare), yet it is the last two ones (and the likes) that at the end of the day justify all the effort I put into my English. It's the same story with other languages, even my own native Russian. “A great writer is always like a foreigner in the language which he expresses himself, even if this is his native tongue. <...>. He is a foreigner in his own language: he does not mix another language with his own language, he carves out a nonpreexistent foreign language within his own language. He makes the language itself scream, stutter, stammer, or murmur” (Gilles Deleuze).
5 x

Dragon27
Blue Belt
Posts: 616
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:40 am
Languages: Russian (N)
English - best foreign language
Polish, Spanish - passive advanced
Tatar, German, French, Greek - studying
x 1375

Re: L-R vs Normal Reading

Postby Dragon27 » Sun Sep 19, 2021 8:40 am

hasen wrote:You said you need a 'decent' comprehension in the language. I would not say you'd need a decent level to understand a children's book in your target language.

You need the level of reading comprehension good enough for the target text (whatever the level of that target text is). You don't need that level to start L-Ring the same text.

hasen wrote:Simpler text will repeat simpler grammatical structures way more often while an advanced text will contain far more new vocabulary. Instead of getting used to the basics of grammar you'll be learning loads of obscure words. That's exactly why kids watch these kinds of things since they need to get used these simpler patterns and won't understand a wide range of words. You should look up 'spaced repetition'. Therefore it most certainly would be running before you walk.

What does spaced repetition have to do with any of this? Simpler patterns would repeat themselves quite often anyway (since they are the backbone of any written text), as well as the common vocabulary.
I'm not going to say that your reasoning doesn't make sense. Not everybody is in the position (like the author of the method) to immediately start with Nabokov's Lolita. Here's an example of some literary texts divided by levels from the method's page
LEVELS
(English literature or translated into English)

0
Didactic texts: simplified readers: Oxford Bookworms, etc
If you're a good learner and a good L1 reader, you can skip this level.

1
Authentic texts: The Little Prince, Winnie-the-Pooh by Milne, Andersen, Dahl (for children), Alice in Wonderland, Harry Pottaa, Wilde – fairy tales

2
Crime stories – Christie, Sherlock Holmes
Fair stood the wind for France by Bates, The Pearl by Steinbeck, Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene, Animal Farm by Orwell

3
Some more difficult popular stuff (Ellis Peters)
Orwell 1984, Wilde, Kafka

4
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowels, Tess of the d’Urbervilles Faithfully Presented By Thomas Hardy, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Anna Karenia, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Proust, Ulysses by James Joyce

5
Poetry
Old literature – Fanny Hill, Milton, Willy-Nilly Shakespeare

If you're a beginner, though, even the "simple" children literature is already too advanced for you to read (and practically any native text is). That's why we have all these readers and adapted literature directed at the learners of the language (and ranked by level from A1 to C2).
But you can immediately start with the native texts (that are too difficult for a beginner by default) with the help of the L-R method. If you're an experienced learner (and the language is closely related) you can probably go for more difficult literature, otherwise you should choose some simpler, less "literary" genre.
So, in a sense, a certain consideration of the difficulty of the target material is still there, but it's on a completely different scale, so to speak.

hasen wrote:It was your own statement "You don't listen to two languages at once, you quickly skim through the text in L1 in order to grasp the meaning". Therefore you're reading it first and then listening to the audio...

Oh, I've misunderstood you then. Yes, you read first, then listen and comprehend. In the best-case scenario you should attentively listen to one sentence while at the same time reading the next sentence (so that you know the meaning of what comes up in the audio next). It's quite difficult and probably unfeasible for a beginner (that's why you need all the above-mentioned tricks to facilitate the process).

hasen wrote:Nothing shifted, the discussion just evolved into different aspects. The only difference given so far between movies with subtitles and audio with text is that you have to manually match the text with the audio. To which I stated that was valid but don't see any actual benefit to the exercise.

That's not the only difference, you've just dismissed all the other points by "evolving" discussion. You can turn watching movies (or TV shows) into a learning exercise, but that's would be a completely different matter.

hasen wrote:Worthy of note is that you'd probably only need about 20-30% understanding to actually do that. The rest would be relying on intonation, punctuation and any known words to keep up with where you are.

It's not going to be of much benefit, then, if you don't pay much attention to the language and just passively note some familiar words to check where you are. No more beneficial than background listening while you're concentrated on some other activity.

hasen wrote:I don't see what that description is missing, it's a basic description of the method. There's no need for anything simple to be missing from there like "it's a method designed for reading material way above your level". If that was indeed part of the original method it would be there.

That's why you can't fully rely on basic descriptions of anything, the method is obviously more complicated than that.
hasen wrote:If you're using a different method to the one on the wiki then fine, but if you could please explain what it is.

The links to more detailed explanations have been provided both by me and by the wiki itself.

hasen wrote:You also have to analyse a method to see if it will actually be beneficial. One of the biggest problems in language learning is believing you comprehend more of the content than you actually do. It seems if you're reading English and listening to the foreign language that would be most likely to happen - especially if the content is also way above your level to begin with.

It turned out to be quite beneficial for me. I personally regard it as a sort of energetic jumpstart into the language (and directly into native-level material).
It's not that easy to analyze something you don't understand the inner workings of and only regard from a theoretical, 'hands-off' point of view. You may not be looking at the method the same way the author looks at it (or the people who use it look at it) and miss the entire point. You certainly can't give proper analysis based only on some short and inadequate descriptions.
Using extreme examples à la "listening to Chinese radio on an uninhabited island with no internet" to justify your overall dismissal of the method are a little off the mark.
3 x

User avatar
RyanSmallwood
Orange Belt
Posts: 187
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:15 pm
Languages: Native: English
x 779

Re: L-R vs Normal Reading

Postby RyanSmallwood » Sun Sep 19, 2021 1:41 pm

hasen wrote:Well it doesn't say that in the wiki about the guide. It would only be a single sentence and would be very important to add into the introduction since it seems from what you're saying, that is the whole premise the method is based on.

Well I didn't write the wiki, but it does link to the full guide, which is more helpful for understanding the method. Though I also think its pretty common sense that, if you can understand something without the help of translation, you don't need to use a translation, I think that was the point rdearman was making earlier. Either way hopefully its clearer now what the method is trying to achieve so we can move on.

hasen wrote:If you had logic and reasoning to back up your statement of course it would be perfectly fine. You don't have to try everything to give an opinion on it. Most language learning methods are similar in one way or another. Assimill was mentioned as being similar to this method so if someone has done Assimil then they have tried something very similar. Although Assimil is not designed to read way above your level which makes a lot more sense. I've also watched movies with English subtitles which is also very similar. Based on these experiences and using logic and reasoning I can certainly give an opinion on whether it would be useful or not.

I mean you can reason about things to some extent, but we can't deduce anything and everything from pure reasoning. My experience is that I learned a lot from Listening-Reading, so no reasoning you give will ever convince me to forget all the stuff I learned from it, you can of course disbelieve me and end the conversation if you wish. I can only share my experiences, and its up to everyone else to what extent they trust what I say.

I brought up Assimil only insofar as its an example of other people learning by listening and reading translations, but it differs from Listening-Reading in other respects. I've also watched many hundreds of hours of subtitled television and movies before I got into language learning, and it was a totally different experience from Listening-Reading for me. I wouldn't have kept using Listening-Reading for years if it was similar to my experience watching subtitled television.

hasen wrote:Like if for example I was to suggest a method, from total beginner, listening to Arabic radio all day long as a sole method to learn - with no looking up of words either since you wouldn't know how to do that anyway at that stage. You wouldn't need to actually try it to know it would be almost completely useless.

Well we'd have strong reasons to be skeptical, but we'd have to reconsider if A) They could prove they did learn Arabic that way or B) If they could explain some function that allowed them to learn that we hadn't considered and that we could try ourselves to see if it worked and felt it had the potential to save us enough time reaching our goals to be worth the risk of spending time testing it.

As I said earlier people can easily test the Listening-Reading for themselves if they find a TL audiobook with a sufficiently expressive narrator, and re-listen to some early chapters while looking at a translation, then try re-listening without a translation and see if the translation caused them to block out the audio completely or if they remember hearing some things after different passes. There are a lot of variables, so its hard to say everyone's first experience will go the same way, but if people think its potentially helpful enough, they should be able to make up their mind before committing too much time to it.

Of course I don't know if people will want to use the method, or if people will distrust me. But I've tried to explain how it functions and given people a way to easily test for themselves if anyone thinks the method is suitable for their goals they can decide if its worth testing. You've raised your skepticism which is fine, and people have answered them, if you decide to try the method yourself, you can share your experiences and that will give people more information.

For people who already use the method and find it works for them, nothing you say will ever convince us out of our past experiences, you can try to offer better alternatives if you think they exist, but again they have to accomplish the things people use Listening-Reading for, and so far the methods you've mentioned don't seem to substitute. If you think there are new points that haven't been addressed you can of course raise them to see the answers of people who use the method and that will benefit anyone who is still undecided if they want to try it or not, but at some point you'll just have to accept that several people are satisfied with the method and will keep using it unless someone can offer a better alternative.
4 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests