How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
jimmy
Green Belt
Posts: 396
Joined: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:08 pm
Languages: ...
x 182

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby jimmy » Sat Jul 16, 2022 11:14 am

one day I challenged to one of my friends who was a student in medicine and now is expert medical doctor in pediatry, he easily constructed a sentence which made me angry but I almost agreed at the end to him:

he said : "hey jimmy do you know both you and I cannot work more than 2-3 hours a day every day (but this is the average amount)"

that was correct that I was particularly working hard but surely, while some days I was perfectly performing 22 hours a day, some days 0 (zero) hours a day.

so,...
Last edited by jimmy on Sat Jul 16, 2022 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
0 x
Self Taught - Autodidactic

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17565

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jul 16, 2022 1:41 pm

Le Baron wrote:
rdearman wrote:Better one page per day, than "none" page per day. We don't have to be perfect, just better than yesterday.

Better than nothing yes, but perhaps in some cases not really enough. Or rather not the best approach for enjoyable learning. At the start of a language even a page can be exhausting, but it's why I reject page counting because there's a tendency to project this as 5000 or whatever pages, but at a page a day... Slow steady could win the race (okay it's not a race), but you don't want to die of natural causes halfway.

There's also that thing of choosing enormous books. Baffling. When I sat at my dad's tailoring table learning to sew, he didn't start me off on a morning coat and say: 'let's see where this is in 5 years'! I made pockets, then trousers, then a waistcoat....

I seek out books at max 200 pages (and preferably 150 -175), slightly larger type, short chapters. That way you don't want to just read a page a day, you want more and you can manage more. I don't even want to read a 1000-page book in English. I have done and probably would again if I thought it was really worth the investment, but in a foreign language I'm actually learning? No thanks. When I started reading German it wasn't Hegel or Die Blechtrommel. I wanted to actually learn not die.


I struggle with the idea, that the reading should be done every day at all costs. Nope, not at the cost of struggling with one page every day, never getting to enjoy the story. One page of a chore is in my opinion worse than "none" page per day.

What I propose as a better way are some days without reading, but some days with a whole chapter (for example). I am totally convinced that a person getting through a chapter (or a similar meaningful and enjoyable bit of a book) twice a week is more likely to stick to the habit and improve, than a person getting through one page a day as a chore.

It may not be as popular, but I am more of a believer in being just better than last week, not necessarily than yesterday :-) Weekly approach allows more adaptable planning but still enough of accountability and habit forming. And in some ways more enjoyment and therefore more progress. The every day accountability simply gives a too high probability to fail, often due to external circumstances.

About the length of books:I think this really depends on the reader. For most, shorter books will be a much better path at first. But as a fantasy lover, genre notorious for long books and long series, I'd propose the long books to similarly minded readers. Not as "see, where you'll be in five years" but more like "see how much more material you can devour as you enjoy the story" thing.
6 x

User avatar
Herodotean
Orange Belt
Posts: 217
Joined: Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:55 am
Languages: English (N)
x 905

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby Herodotean » Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:17 pm

Cavesa wrote:It may not be as popular, but I am more of a believer in being just better than last week, not necessarily than yesterday :-) Weekly approach allows more adaptable planning but still enough of accountability and habit forming. And in some ways more enjoyment and therefore more progress. The every day accountability simply gives a too high probability to fail, often due to external circumstances.

This is why I dropped out of the 365-day challenge and why I'm finding the Super Challenge much more congenial to my habits: if I missed one day of the former, I had automatically failed to achieve a perfect score (if only by one day). But if I miss a day (or two, or three, or seven) in the Super Challenge, I can make a plan to catch up (as I am in fact doing now). On the other hand, I have found in my own study that missing one day easily leads to a week, which easily leads to a month, which then makes me reluctant to come back to the language or book at all (I'm looking at you, Persian . . .). I'd rather aim to do something, however small, every day, knowing that some days might be one page and other days will be much more. I think individual learners just have to experiment with different approaches. I do tell my students that they need to do something every day, because beginning and intermediate students are likely not to have strong habits yet, and I believe strong habits are most easily built at the beginning with daily engagement, however small, which then leads to more (either higher frequency or higher volume).
7 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: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby einzelne » Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:57 pm

BeaP wrote:I've realised that I missed a lot of important English novels during studying Spanish, and I started to read Against the Day, which is around 1200 pages. (I can hear Le Baron shouting.) There's no way I can finish this book, unless I dedicate most of my free time to reading. If I stop, I forget the details, I can't take it up again after 2 months, because I won't remember what happened. These books require your concentration, time and energy.


I can definitely relate to this story because it mirrors my own experience.

Herodotean wrote:I'd rather aim to do something, however small, every day, knowing that some days might be one page and other days will be much more.


Elsewhere on forum I described my experience with reading in French and English. I set a goal of reading in French 15 minutes min and it resulted in 20 books per year, while the aim of reading 30 pages in English resulted in 4 books only.
4 x

Sprachprofi
Orange Belt
Posts: 116
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2022 7:35 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Languages: German (N), English (C2+), Esperanto (C2), French (C2), Modern Greek (C2), Latin (teaching), Chinese (rusty C1), Italian (rusty C1), Dutch (B2), Spanish (B2), Serbocroatian (B1/B2), very rusty Japanese, Swahili, Indonesian, Hebrew, Arabic...
x 467
Contact:

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby Sprachprofi » Sun Jul 17, 2022 10:26 am

Cavesa wrote:About the length of books:I think this really depends on the reader. For most, shorter books will be a much better path at first. But as a fantasy lover, genre notorious for long books and long series, I'd propose the long books to similarly minded readers. Not as "see, where you'll be in five years" but more like "see how much more material you can devour as you enjoy the story" thing.


The advantage of a short book is that it's less daunting and interminable. The advantage of reading a long book is that you get used to that author's vocabulary. There are native speakers who use less than 1000 words actively. Among writers, the number is more likely to be 5,000. But these 5,000 don't overlap with the next author. So in order to read and understand everything by one author, you probably need passive knowledge of 5,000 words, while to read and understand everything by several authors you probably need passive knowledge of 20,000 words.

The solution to this dilemma: read several short books by the same author.

Also keep in mind the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio (my term). Some authors have a really high interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio, e.g. Dan Brown, so much action, so many twists in the story... Whereas you can read even 30 pages of Sartre and still nothing much has happened.

In my view you need X interesting things to happen during your reading session in order to gladly keep reading. If your typical reading session is 30 minutes long and your reading speed in your target language is 3 minutes per page, i.e. you manage to read 10 pages in one go, the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio tells you that you'll come across at least one and probably more interesting new developments during that time in Dan Brown, whereas reading Sartre you can spend several sessions just dragging yourself through the book until something finally happens. Now, if your reading speed is 1 minute per page, i.e. you manage to read 30 pages in one go, Sartre may start to become more accessible - you stand a chance of having something happen most of the times you pick up the book. For the densest, most boring authors, a high reading speed is essential. Or a love of the way they pick their words - if you find that interesting, and your language level is high enough to appreciate it, that vastly increases the "interesting things per 10 pages" of some classic authors.
4 x

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1967
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4049

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 17, 2022 11:33 am

Sprachprofi wrote:
Also keep in mind the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio (my term). Some authors have a really high interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio, e.g. Dan Brown, so much action, so many twists in the story... Whereas you can read even 30 pages of Sartre and still nothing much has happened.

In my view you need X interesting things to happen during your reading session in order to gladly keep reading. If your typical reading session is 30 minutes long and your reading speed in your target language is 3 minutes per page, i.e. you manage to read 10 pages in one go, the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio tells you that you'll come across at least one and probably more interesting new developments during that time in Dan Brown, whereas reading Sartre you can spend several sessions just dragging yourself through the book until something finally happens. Now, if your reading speed is 1 minute per page, i.e. you manage to read 30 pages in one go, Sartre may start to become more accessible - you stand a chance of having something happen most of the times you pick up the book. For the densest, most boring authors, a high reading speed is essential. Or a love of the way they pick their words - if you find that interesting, and your language level is high enough to appreciate it, that vastly increases the "interesting things per 10 pages" of some classic authors.
Ken Follett used to have a writing advice page on his website that set out a plan like that, something big/little to happen every x pages. You can still find older versions of his website, with that advice, via archive.org's wayback machine.
2 x

lichtrausch
Blue Belt
Posts: 511
Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2015 3:21 pm
Languages: English (N), German, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean
x 1379

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby lichtrausch » Sun Jul 17, 2022 12:33 pm

Sprachprofi wrote:Also keep in mind the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio (my term). Some authors have a really high interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio, e.g. Dan Brown, so much action, so many twists in the story... Whereas you can read even 30 pages of Sartre and still nothing much has happened.

In my view you need X interesting things to happen during your reading session in order to gladly keep reading. If your typical reading session is 30 minutes long and your reading speed in your target language is 3 minutes per page, i.e. you manage to read 10 pages in one go, the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio tells you that you'll come across at least one and probably more interesting new developments during that time in Dan Brown, whereas reading Sartre you can spend several sessions just dragging yourself through the book until something finally happens. Now, if your reading speed is 1 minute per page, i.e. you manage to read 30 pages in one go, Sartre may start to become more accessible - you stand a chance of having something happen most of the times you pick up the book. For the densest, most boring authors, a high reading speed is essential. Or a love of the way they pick their words - if you find that interesting, and your language level is high enough to appreciate it, that vastly increases the "interesting things per 10 pages" of some classic authors.

Maybe plot twists is the word you're looking for?
1 x

User avatar
rdearman
Site Admin
Posts: 7231
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 4:18 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Languages: English (N)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1836
x 23120
Contact:

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby rdearman » Sun Jul 17, 2022 3:40 pm

einzelne wrote:Grammar is no longer an issue, it's thousands and thousands of words and expressions you need to master in order to read comfortably without a dictionary. It's a long process which take years.


I am a native English speaker, I could walk into just about any library in the UK and pick 100 fiction books to read. The chance of me coming across unknown words is almost zero. Why? Because most fiction books are written to a Flesch reading ease score of 60 or higher, meaning they are written so that the average high school student will not have any difficulty reading. So I was thinking about your question, and thinking about how does a native speaker increase their vocabulary?

I think reading, is brilliant, and I'm not advocating that you don't read, but I would say switch from fiction to non-fiction since the amount of uncommon words will be higher in non-fiction than fiction. I would also argue that for the sake of efficiency waiting to run across unknown words while reading is suboptimal. It might be worthwhile to just get a paper dictionary and read a couple of pages per day, or wordlists like Iversen. You'll be guaranteed to see new words and when and if you encounter them with reading then you'll have seen them before. Natives who wish to improve vocabulary often subscribe to "word of the day" emails from websites. I did this with Mandarin awhile back in order to get a new character(s) sent to me. (My level was too low for this to be much benefit, however.)

Let me readdress your question with this suggested organisation. Rotate each language such that you read one and only one book at a time, but the next book with be in another language. So the suggested order: Russian, English, German, French. (rinse, lather, repeat). But spend some time with a dictionary in the other languages, or word of the day or whatever.

(I was going to expand on this, but you get the idea)
2 x
: 0 / 150 Read 150 books in 2024

My YouTube Channel
The Autodidactic Podcast
My Author's Newsletter

I post on this forum with mobile devices, so excuse short msgs and typos.

User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10461

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Jul 17, 2022 3:51 pm

lichtrausch wrote:
Sprachprofi wrote:Also keep in mind the interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio (my term). Some authors have a really high interesting-things-per-10-pages ratio, e.g. Dan Brown, so much action, so many twists in the story...

Maybe plot twists is the word you're looking for?


Not necessarily. Although Dan Brown's works are full of twists, I like the stories because they're action-packed like almost nothing else I've ever read.
1 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1967
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4049

Re: How do you organize your reading if you happen to read in 3+ foreign languages?

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:16 pm

rdearman wrote:I am a native English speaker, I could walk into just about any library in the UK and pick 100 fiction books to read. The chance of me coming across unknown words is almost zero. Why? Because most fiction books are written to a Flesch reading ease score of 60 or higher, meaning they are written so that the average high school student will not have any difficulty reading. So I was thinking about your question, and thinking about how does a native speaker increase their vocabulary?

I think reading, is brilliant, and I'm not advocating that you don't read, but I would say switch from fiction to non-fiction since the amount of uncommon words will be higher in non-fiction than fiction. I would also argue that for the sake of efficiency waiting to run across unknown words while reading is suboptimal. It might be worthwhile to just get a paper dictionary and read a couple of pages per day, or wordlists like Iversen. You'll be guaranteed to see new words and when and if you encounter them with reading then you'll have seen them before. Natives who wish to improve vocabulary often subscribe to "word of the day" emails from websites. I did this with Mandarin awhile back in order to get a new character(s) sent to me. (My level was too low for this to be much benefit, however.)
The testyourvocab website (now changed, but archive.org's wayback machine have their old website) found that reading fiction rather than non-fiction led to a larger vocabulary size.
09 May 2013

We now have data to answer another one of the new questions we introduced almost two years ago. This time it's correlation between reading habits and vocabulary size for native English speakers, by age:

We have three main findings from this chart. The first is that while increasing your reading matters, increasing your reading of fiction, specifically, matters equally as much. That fiction reading would increase vocabulary size more than just non-fiction was one of our hypotheses — it makes sense, after all, considering that fiction tends to use a greater variety of words than non-fiction does. However, we hadn't expected its effect to be this prominent.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190309122 ... .com/blog/
3 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests