Carl wrote:There's an article on the wiki that reminds me of how many options there are for reading a target language book: reading silently vs. aloud; monolingual vs. bilingual texts; reading with the eyes and ears at the same time; etc.
I think the 1-in-25 rule mentioned by rdearman is brilliant. A huge portion of the benefit of the Super Challenge seems to come from the sheer volume. Volume helps take stuff you already know—or which you can puzzle out—and consolidates it into automatic knowledge. But that occasional deep dive provides a chance to figure out more complicated things.
For my current Challenge, I'm starting with a bilingual book, because I'm trying to read real adult books very early in the learning process. And bilingual books can allow reading at a surprisingly low level. But there's a lot to be said for using graded readers or easy children's books, if you can find them.
After that, my next step is likely to be graphic novels. Graphic novels are amazing for French, because you have so many different choices in so many different genres, and there are plenty of actual literary quality. In Spanish, I'll probably try Blacksad, a noir graphic novel starring an anthropomorphic cat.
After a few books, an ereader with a pop-up dictionary should get easier. Especially if I read a couple of books in Spanish that I already know very well in English.
Really, the most important thing about a reading method is that it makes you want to read books! Everything else is secondary to that.
