Graded Readers, or Harry Potter?

[drp9341]

Hello everyone, I have been learning Polish since I moved to Poland in June, (about 4 months, minus one month I spend in Italy, and two weeks I spent in NY, so actually a little less,) and I'd like some of the more experienced language learners here advice.

I'm getting a lot of speaking and listening practice through immersion and conversation with natives, so the main thing I need advice with is what the best source of input is.

option 1 - Harry Potter: Today I started reading Harry Potter (the 2nd one.) I got through the first chapter, and on average I didn't know about 12 words per page.
It's slow. It takes me a long time to read at my level. However, I am learning lots of useful vocabulary. The only thing is, I read like 5 pages and I have enough words and good expressions to put into anki for that day.

option 2 - 'Intermediate' Graded Reader: I also have an intermediate graded reader that I was using until recently. This is much much easier, however I don't think the vocabulary is as useful, and my girlfriend who is a native speaker, (and also checks all the sentences I put into anki,) says that the way things are phrased in my graded reader is very odd and I'm unlikely to ever encounter similar sentences like that again.


One of the reasons I'm asking, is because with Polish I am trying a very, very input heavy approach. My reason being that the grammar, sentence structures, and declensions in Polish is so different from any language I've ever studied. I don't want to start making mistakes and have them become fossilized. Obviously I have people close to me who can correct me, but for me personally, it seems to be a much better approach to go heavy on the input. In past languages I focused mostly on output and getting corrections, which wasn't a problem given that I was learning romance languages and already spoke Italian, so my errors weren't so big, and didn't affect getting my message across that much, unlike my errors with Polish.

I was thinking about doing both, but I prefer to spend a few weeks getting input one way, then getting bored, and switching to a different way of getting input.

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for any other materials? I know Polish isn't a popular language on these forums, but it doesn't hurt to ask .

[Cavesa]

If I were you, I'd choose Harry Potter. I find graded readers boring but that is just a personal opinion. But if your polish girlfriend finds the used language weird, there is not much to discuss.

Polish may not have that many learners around here, but that doesn't mean it is totally unpopular. It is high on my list of languages to learn, when the amount of my free time allows it. And one of the main reasons are their fantasy books, scifi, and to lesser extent other genres.

Poland is one of the major players, when it comes to european comic books, as I found out in a specialised bookshop in Prague last year. I've only seen some translated pieces, but they looked interesting. French learners use comic books frequently as an entrance to reading in the language. Why shouldn't it work for Polish?

I cannot tell you whether the original versions of Sapkowski, Kossakowska, Gredowicz, Zajdel, Lem, Sienkiewicz, and many others are difficult or easy, but your girlfriend could help you choose some.

And I have no doubts lots of easy books get translated as well, if you cannot find anything original suitable for your level. I cannot judge the quality of the Polish translations, but stuff like Narnia or the Sookie Stackhouse novels (which surprisingly include tons of useful language!), Pullman's books, all that tends to be a good start.

I am not learning Polish (yet), but I'd love to read of your experience on the journey through tons of Polish input!

[aaleks]

option 1 - Harry Potter: Today I started reading Harry Potter (the 2nd one.) I got through the first chapter, and on average I didn't know about 12 words per page.
It's slow. It takes me a long time to read at my level. However, I am learning lots of useful vocabulary. The only thing is, I read like 5 pages and I have enough words and good expressions to put into anki for that day.

When I started reading the first Harry Potter (in my case in English) I had about 7-10 unknown words per page. It's less than you have but still close. My reading pace back than was 5 page per hour/day. I didn't use Anki though, so it probably was less time consuming.
I can't say anything about graded readers, I didn't read them. Too boring .
But doing both could be a good decision.

edited

[reineke]

You can also try with bilingual books and parallel texts.

There's also The Little Prince

https://www.odaha.com/antoine-de-saint- ... aly-ksiaze

[DaveBee]

A book about Poland I'd like to read is Adam Zamoyski's History of Poland. If that appeals to you, you could buy that in English and Polish, and read them together.

[rfnsoares]

My first book was Duma Key by Stephen King. English was my target language that time. I remember very well how hard it was. I do not know exactly how many new words by page, probably 15 words on average. Patience is required
I read the Harry Potter series next. I never read Graded Readers and probably I never will. Actually I prefer reading newspapers for starters and then whenever my vocabulary improves I'll dive into real books.
Another author which I found interesting was Dan Brown. I am not a huge fan but his book series is easy to read. Besides the chapters are very short. You could try reading one a day.

[reineke]

I am a purist myself but I think that graded readers and adapted audiobooks could prove very useful language learning tools. With Polish your vocabulary and grammar load is 2x that of a novice Spanish learner and since you are used to the Romance discount the work may feel 4x as hard. I have no insight into the quality of Polish resources but I do know that native speakers often make these comments. You don't need to load these sentences into Anki, though. Your priority should be to pick up some vocabulary and being able to figure out whether you are coming or going.

[ASEAN]

You may already know this, but David Snopek learned Polish by reading the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately Snopek's more recent website chronicling the entire process no longer exists. I believe it took four months for him to finish the first book and each successive book took less time. I am not sure but he may have finished the series in about a year.

His older website detailing his experience starting the first Harry Potter book is still around and so is his old Polish-language YouTube channel.

http://hackyourlife.org/p/25
https://www.youtube.com/user/dsnopek/videos

[tarvos]

Whichever you like reading best.

I would pick whichever has more interesting content because if you don't like HP you won't want to spend your 300 pages reading how Mouldyvort murdered Harry's parents.

[rdearman]

Personally I would rather rip my eyes out with a fork than read Harry Potter again. You could just read a newspaper, online or paper. It would probably be cheaper too. On an average day, New York Times print edition has 150,000 words, most national papers would be similar, and you'd get a greater variety of vocabulary I figure.