My Frustrations with Graded Readers- A Minor Rant

[mercutio]

ok this is a mini rant.

I love the idea of graded readers and enjoy using graded readers, the problem is so many totally suck and are not useful.

Let me explain, when I was around a1/a2 I bought a few readers from well known brands like ELI, SPIGA and so on, but they were unreadable yet I could have fairly complex conversations, I realised that they were stock full of totally un useful words (especially for a1/a2) for example, a white hart? anyone use that in daily convo? its a white mythical deer by the way, also a lot were translations of old myths, ( I love old myths) but were full of archaic kind of "literary" words, instead of "he called" it would be "he hearkened" or something like that, instead of he was brave knight, he was a most valiant knight. My point is this isn't that useful, I tried looking at different subject matter too but still thee same problem, unuseful words which made reading hard and not fun or useful

I found the owner TPRS readers and they were useful but then I ran out of those

ideally with graded reader I was hoping to find one brand I could work through from a1 upwards but sadly there doesnt seem one really great brand of graded reader

[Tomás]

I agree. The easy reader brand is the best, since they bowdlerize existing literature instead of writing original and bad literature

[reineke]

ok this is a mini rant.

I love the idea of graded readers and enjoy using graded readers, the problem is so many totally suck and are not useful.

Let me explain, when I was around a1/a2 I bought a few readers from well known brands like ELI, SPIGA and so on, but they were unreadable yet I could have fairly complex conversations, I realised that they were stock full of totally un useful words (especially for a1/a2) for example, a white hart? anyone use that in daily convo? its a white mythical deer by the way, also a lot were translations of old myths, ( I love old myths) but were full of archaic kind of "literary" words, instead of "he called" it would be "he hearkened" or something like that, instead of he was brave knight, he was a most valiant knight. My point is this isn't that useful, I tried looking at different subject matter too but still thee same problem, unuseful words which made reading hard and not fun or useful

I found the owner TPRS readers and they were useful but then I ran out of those

ideally with graded reader I was hoping to find one brand I could work through from a1 upwards but sadly there doesnt seem one really great brand of graded reader

Stop looking for useful words, they will find you on their own.

"The White Hart ("hart" is an archaic word for a mature stag) was the personal badge of Richard II, who probably derived it from the arms of his mother, Joan "The Fair Maid of Kent", heiress of Edmund of Woodstock." Many hotels, inns and restaurants bear this name. "Valiant" is a fairly common word.

I see that SPIGA carries Ivanhoe and Robin Hood so I wouldn't be surprised if you picked some of these words from there. Words such as these give books their flavor and in a graded reader they constitute a minute percentage of the overall text. If you totally stripped a book of such terms it would be like trying to enjoy a chocolate milkshake with no chocolate.

La Spiga readers:

"The stories are written with a vocabulary of about 600-1000 words; the text is on the left-hand page and activities (exercises to revise the student's grammatical knowledge and test comprehension) on the right-hand page.

Some are available with an audio CD, the length is about 70 minutes and is read by native speakers."

Sounds like a reasonably well thought out book series. These are graded readers based on popular literature, not conversation textbooks.

[mercutio]

La spiga was one of the Series I don't find useful for the reasons I note above

They are full of really non useful stuff and not logical for beginners

The best I've ever found are tprs ones but I would like a good other brand

[mercutio]

ok this is a mini rant.

I love the idea of graded readers and enjoy using graded readers, the problem is so many totally suck and are not useful.

Let me explain, when I was around a1/a2 I bought a few readers from well known brands like ELI, SPIGA and so on, but they were unreadable yet I could have fairly complex conversations, I realised that they were stock full of totally un useful words (especially for a1/a2) for example, a white hart? anyone use that in daily convo? its a white mythical deer by the way, also a lot were translations of old myths, ( I love old myths) but were full of archaic kind of "literary" words, instead of "he called" it would be "he hearkened" or something like that, instead of he was brave knight, he was a most valiant knight. My point is this isn't that useful, I tried looking at different subject matter too but still thee same problem, unuseful words which made reading hard and not fun or useful

I found the owner TPRS readers and they were useful but then I ran out of those

ideally with graded reader I was hoping to find one brand I could work through from a1 upwards but sadly there doesnt seem one really great brand of graded reader

Stop looking for useful words, they will find you on their own.

"The White Hart ("hart" is an archaic word for a mature stag) was the personal badge of Richard II, who probably derived it from the arms of his mother, Joan "The Fair Maid of Kent", heiress of Edmund of Woodstock." Many hotels, inns and restaurants bear this name. "Valiant" is a fairly common word.

I see that SPIGA carries Ivanhoe and Robin Hood so I wouldn't be surprised if you picked some of these words from there. Words such as these give books their flavor and in a graded reader they constitute a minute percentage of the overall text. If you totally stripped a book of such terms it would be like trying to enjoy a chocolate milkshake with no chocolate.

La Spiga readers:

"The stories are written with a vocabulary of about 600-1000 words; the text is on the left-hand page and activities (exercises to revise the student's grammatical knowledge and test comprehension) on the right-hand page.

Some are available with an audio CD, the length is about 70 minutes and is read by native speakers."

Sounds like a reasonably well thought out book series. These are graded readers based on popular literature, not conversation textbooks.

I forgot to add I'm reading in foreign language and English is my first language so I knew what White hart was in English but it's really not useful to know in Spanish and the book was full of such non useful words

Please remember we are talking about a1/a2 here

Tprs were great cos they use real normal language but the stories still interesting

[reineke]

You left out some crucial information. What Spanish words and sentences did you find problematic? What TPRS readers are you referring to? If you ran out of those maybe it's time try something else? Side by Side Bilingual Books like Stories from Mexico are pretty good. The text is easy but it obviously isn't a graded reader and you may not find an example sentence in there how to hail a cab in Spanish.

[jeffers]

No doubt in the world of "easy readers" there is a load of rubbish out there. First off, I would have to agree with Reineke that you can't really expect a reading book to avoid unusual words entirely. It really depends entirely on the story you are reading. I have an A2 story about an adventure at sea, and there are a number of nautical terms in the story. However, dull stories are much worse than stories with a few unusual words. A truly enjoyable easy reader is hard to find, but probably worth its weight in gold. The best thing to do is look for recommendations. I'll list a few French readers I've found to be pretty enjoyable despite being made for low levels, and hopefully others could mention good readers for other languages.

Enquête Capitale by Marine Decourtis is an A1 reader with audio which actually has a pretty engaging story. CLE has a couple of Maigret stories aimed at A2 students, and I found them to be quite enjoyable, notably Maigret et la jeune morte and Maigret et la veille dame (both A2ish). Pas d'oscar pour l'assassin and Jus de chausettes are two enjoyable A2 stories by Vincent Remède. I've tried a handful of other easy readers in French, but these five books were the only readers I would recommend without hesitation. In fact, I keep mentioning these again and again in discussions of easy readers.

[Speakeasy]

In my opinion, the complaints relative to the “practicality” of the language deployed in Graded Readers are over-stated and most likely stem from a misunderstanding of the role that these supplements are meant to play in the student’s development of the four linguistic skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

I have a very large collection of Course Books, Grammars, Special Interest books, Graded Readers, Parallel Readers, Magazines and other authentic materials for studying German. In my experience, the vast majority of the A1-A2 course materials, whether designed for classroom instruction or for independent study, emphasize what-I-would-describe-as “transactional” levels of vocabulary. This level of vocabulary is “practical” in the sense that it allows the student to exchange vital information in predictable situations; however, it is quite insufficient for holding a conversation on a wide range of subjects and it is woefully inadequate for reading authentic print media for which the target audience is educated adults.

The purpose of Graded Readers is NEITHER to REPEAT nor DUPLICATE nor to EXPAND UPON the “transactional” vocabulary at the A1-A2 levels in the course books, but rather to SUPPLEMENT it with a view to augmenting the student’s skills of comprehension and expression at each successive level. In addition, Graded Readers often include vital clues as to the culture of the target language; acquiring such knowledge, too, forms part of the education process.

Quoting Dr. James B. Constant, “the main purpose of studying a foreign language is to obtain something approaching a mastery of that language … and by mastery is surely meant the ability to read the literature published in the language and, in the case of a modern language, to converse with considerable fluency and accuracy with an inhabitant of the country in question.” Contrary to what the OP suggests, there IS a practical value in being able to understand the more complex literary and technical formulations of print media directed at educated, adult, native-speakers of a language. Graded Readers are meant to assist the student in the acquisition of a vocabulary appropriate for “conversing with considerable fluency and accuracy with an inhabitant of the country in question” … meiner Meinung nach!

Nonetheless, I truly appreciated Reineke's formulation "Stop looking for useful words, they will find you on their own."

[mercutio]

You left out some crucial information. What Spanish words and sentences did you find problematic? What TPRS readers are you referring to? If you ran out of those maybe it's time try something else? Side by Side Bilingual Books like Stories from Mexico are pretty good. The text is easy but it obviously isn't a graded reader and you may not find an example sentence in there how to hail a cab in Spanish.

My favourite tprs readers were the Mira Canion written ones but a few others from tprs publishing were great also, I generally found them to be the best I've found so far as far as graded readers

I bought either from tprs publishing direct or tprs nederland
There's one or two more I haven't read on the sites but I'm just frustrated there's no one series you can follow as the idea of graded readers is obviously the difficulty grows as your skill grows but a lot of them interpret a1/a2 differently (and all the cefr grades)

I beleive a graded reader at a1/a2 has failed when even the native speakers I've asked say the words are not useful and in some cases didn't even know the words

[mercutio]

P.s my ideal grade readers would also fit the "compressible input" idea

I would like graded readers to make it easy to find my reading levels but I can read one brand and not another, one brand I can read with maybe looking up one word every other page and others I can barely read a page

I don't find reading fun with a dictionary open, I beleive it should be just hard enough to challenge but easy enough to enjoy, so hence I feel the frustration because there doesn't seem many "go to" brands you can work through