I thought I was the only one doing this. I wrote a murder mystery novel in the style of Lingua Latina. It's 41 chapters long, and it teaches English. I finished it last year, so I am currently writing a Spanish one. I'm half way finished with it. I'm glad to see someone else taking this serious, and yes! Story Story Story! I don't see way they have to be boring. I'm going to have to subscribe to your channel. Can't wait to read your novel .
@nicholaslemosdecarvalho5328 Yes. I published the English version on my website, but it looks like the algorithm thinks I am spamming so I can't provide the link here. However, I talk about it a lot hint hint. The reason I published it as a web app instead of a book is because I am a software developer and was able to include professional audio narration with automatic word highlighting, I also added shadowing, and AI to it. I am currently working on adding a quiz section at the end of every chapter. I plan on doing the same for the Spanish version. Spanish is just too popular not to do it. This really is the best way to learn a language and seeing Cloin is also doing it is so great. We need more of this style of language teaching.
Longtime lurker here. I have been eagerly awaiting Oswald for what feels like centuries. I really love LOGOS for Ancient Greek, I can't wait to compare the effectiveness of the different pedagogical styles
I will look forward to seeing how reading Osweald Bera compares with my Lingua Latina and Athenaze experiences. I think LLPSI is an inspired work of genius, despite some elements we might quibble with. I thought Athenaze [the English, not Italian version] was just a grammar-translation book dressed up with a story. I showed your video introducing Osweald to my Latin students, and they had fun figuring out what the Old English meant.
Hi, Colin. Greetings from Colombia! I just found your channel last week and have enjoyed your perspective a lot. I study koine Greek, modern/biblical Hebrew, and live in Spanish (so learn something new almost every day). I loved your point about making the reader a story. I've been trying to get through the Assimil B2 Hebrew book for a while. I like their method, except it's hard to just study random topics with no plot. אני שונא את זה! עם סיפור זה יהיה הרבה יותר קל!
My experience of Italian Athenaze is that it is a bit too ambitious with how many words it introduces in each chapter. I've never done the stats though. There's an interesting blog post from Magister P. about this, although it used the English Athenaze: the author found that the first chapter introduced 73 items, 20 of which were verbs. Source: magisterp.com/2017/02/08/cant-read-greek-unsurprised-but-angry/
Yes, I'm a long time Greek student and I found the vocab jumps between chapters (the IT version) to be a bit ridiculous. It didn't help that I had to look the glosses up by hand because I don't know Italian.
@@ZackSkrip I learned UItalian as a research language but used the English Athenaze back in the early 1990's. Previously the uni had used a series called "Reading Greek" which really did not introduce the language at all. TBH I was greatly pleased with Athenaze.
I'm currently trying to learn Latin through Lingva Latina per se Illustrata. One of the things I really like about the book is that the stories are genuinely interesting.
Perhaps you’re sick of my comments but I really can’t wait for Osweald Bera! I wish there was a way I could preorder it because I definitely would 😂. I check like every day while I have a second at work to see if it’s out!
Thanks, Colin, for your thoughts. From my own knowledge of language acquisition, I agree with all that you have shared......the limitation that I have found in my own learning (Swedish) at this point is that the graded readers are few and far between. If you have hints as to how to find them, I (and I bet others) would greatly appreciate your suggestions
Very interesting video and I can definitely agree that the plot, the story is very important. I teach Polish and English as foreign languages and graded readers work differently in this context. First, a graded reader is all at the same level. So an e.g. A2 student takes this book and everything is at A2 level - the grammar and vocabulary. Of course, it's impossible to predict which words the person knows, so there is no need to put emphasis on repetition (we might end up repeating those words the person already knows). It's important to keep them at the proper level, which is easier for the A1-B1 levels. As a guide we have topics that the student should be familiar with at each level, so it makes the vocabulary choice easier. Readers are not textbooks, Familia Romana is not a reader - it's a textbook. A reader should have also the grammar limited to the certain level, so the A2 student can read it without encountering new grammar. A reader is for reviewing, getting input, not learning. I agree that thematical chapters can be boring but that's why in teaching modern languages we do it gradually. So first you learn only a few colours and the rest comes later. That's true about every vocabulary group. So there will be a lesson on weather at every level from A1 to C2. Familia Romana bring grammar to around C1 level but vocabulary wise it's A2/B1 (it's less then 2000 words and C1 is around 10 000). Nevertheless LLPSI provides a framework, so there can be a reader for those who have read it till chapter XX. Such a reader should contain 98% of vocabulary that's already known and no new grammar. Otherwise it would become a textbook. As a learner I don't want to read a story (for extensive reading) which I have to read only after I have covered the whole grammar of the language or that introduces vocabulary in a way that I have to learn it in a way that's moving from one level to a higher, and another higher one etc. I want (and this is how it works in English) a story that I can read in the evening or two evenings, at the weekend. I', not sure if it was Krashen or P. Nation who researched that extensive reading should be even at a slightly lower lever (especially grammar wise) so that students' motivation is boosted up by the sense of achievement, those 2% of new vocabulary items easily acquired and (that's my observation) that students start learning syntax and a long term focus on a text. This is probably just another perspective, but as a Latin learner I see there are some IMHO false ideas about the levels of language acquisition (like the idea that LLPSI Familia Romana brings the student to C1 level as far as vocabulary is concerned) and that readers should be like Julia by Reeds or "Ora Maritima". They are materials that a teacher can use to enrich what a textbook offers but a graded reader is IMHO something different - it's a full story that's aimed at learners at a certain level and is an interesting story that they can read easily. Therefore both vocabulary and grammar have to be adapted to the level (be it A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 or C2).
8:54 what you're describing here is the difference between an analytical approach (red, yellow, blue introduced together because they form their own class when you analyze them) and holistic approach (red, fire truck and blood introduced together because they're all similar in some way)
Can't agree more on your last point. Very few graded readers are actually enjoyable to read Also, having an actual story and thus genre makes it easier to use words and grammar in a more natural context. You don't need to contrive bizarre situations to explore the subjunctive, because, say, a detective story is almost tailor made for words related to appearance and time, while the majority of the text will be in past tense and subjunctive mood as the story follows people's past actions, desires and motivations I would add another point: story complexity matters. It so happened that I never used a graded reader as an adult and learned the languages through grammar books and exposure, so I may be completely missing something, but text complexity and story complexity are kind of inversely dependent. A simple formulaic story may allow for a more complex text. Think "Conan the Barbarian". Words and structures Howard uses are far from simple and basic. Some of them are quite poetic. But the stories themselves are usually rather formulaic and simple. So even if you can't parse something you aren't lost. There is nowhere to be lost. On the contrary, a complex story requires a simple text. Think "The Big Sleep". Chandler wrote a dynamic story with twists and turns, but he rarely has sentences longer than five words and every grammatical structure is as textbook as it gets, so, again, you aren't lost and can always recover because gramatical relationships are never obscured by poetic choices
That's an excellent point about plot complexity being entirely unrelated to complexity of language! Come to think of it, Conan the Barbarian would be lots of fun in Old English...
Chambers, The Greek War of Independence is very good as a graded reader for Ancient Greek. The story is strong (if you like history) and he did a good job of repeating vocabulary.
It’s great for building up reading and listening stamina as a beginner and cementing vocab in long term memory, and there’s lots of other options for other vocab ranges.
On point 1: You said that new words should take up only 2%-10% of the word count. I assume that means the total number of new words and the total number of words in the chapter, period, rather than the total number of unique new words and unique words in the chapter? Assuming it's the total word count, I assume your 5% new word budget doesn't involve having each new word just appear once, or having just one new word take up 5% of the chapter, so how do you find the balance between repeating a word and the number of unique new words introduced?
You're correct - the calculation is new lemmata / total running word count. As you point out, ideally you would repeat these new words to aid in their learning. I don't think there's a good set of guidelines for how many repetitions you need to learn a word. I suspect it varies a lot depending on how abstract the word is, whether it's a "cognate" (in the SLA sense, e.g. biologist / biólogo), whether it's introduced with distractors, etc. I suspect it's somewhere between 15-25 repetitions for most words but that's a gut instinct. Getting these repetitions without sacrificing the story is very difficult, which is why I think authors need to encourage rereading - and this means writing a story that holds up to rereading.
I know you're talking about beginners, but once you get to intermediate level, you just really have to throw yourself into the deep end to some extent and get stuck in with original texts and be prepared to refer to a good dictionary a lot. In my case, that was coming to terms with Caesar's DBG.
I thought I was the only one doing this. I wrote a murder mystery novel in the style of Lingua Latina. It's 41 chapters long, and it teaches English. I finished it last year, so I am currently writing a Spanish one. I'm half way finished with it. I'm glad to see someone else taking this serious, and yes! Story Story Story! I don't see way they have to be boring. I'm going to have to subscribe to your channel. Can't wait to read your novel .
This is really interesting! Are you going to publish it somewhere?
@nicholaslemosdecarvalho5328 Yes. I published the English version on my website, but it looks like the algorithm thinks I am spamming so I can't provide the link here. However, I talk about it a lot hint hint. The reason I published it as a web app instead of a book is because I am a software developer and was able to include professional audio narration with automatic word highlighting, I also added shadowing, and AI to it. I am currently working on adding a quiz section at the end of every chapter. I plan on doing the same for the Spanish version. Spanish is just too popular not to do it. This really is the best way to learn a language and seeing Cloin is also doing it is so great. We need more of this style of language teaching.
@@Sochi-app Oh, I didn't realize your username was the name of the website. I've just found it. Thank you for your work
@@nicholaslemosdecarvalho5328 My pleasure and thank you for checking it out.
Very nice! Your project looks really well done - congratulations!
Longtime lurker here. I have been eagerly awaiting Oswald for what feels like centuries. I really love LOGOS for Ancient Greek, I can't wait to compare the effectiveness of the different pedagogical styles
I will look forward to seeing how reading Osweald Bera compares with my Lingua Latina and Athenaze experiences. I think LLPSI is an inspired work of genius, despite some elements we might quibble with. I thought Athenaze [the English, not Italian version] was just a grammar-translation book dressed up with a story. I showed your video introducing Osweald to my Latin students, and they had fun figuring out what the Old English meant.
Hi, Colin. Greetings from Colombia! I just found your channel last week and have enjoyed your perspective a lot.
I study koine Greek, modern/biblical Hebrew, and live in Spanish (so learn something new almost every day).
I loved your point about making the reader a story. I've been trying to get through the Assimil B2 Hebrew book for a while. I like their method, except it's hard to just study random topics with no plot.
אני שונא את זה! עם סיפור זה יהיה הרבה יותר קל!
I used Athenaze for ancient Greek and found it introduced about 20 new words per lesson.
My experience of Italian Athenaze is that it is a bit too ambitious with how many words it introduces in each chapter. I've never done the stats though. There's an interesting blog post from Magister P. about this, although it used the English Athenaze: the author found that the first chapter introduced 73 items, 20 of which were verbs. Source: magisterp.com/2017/02/08/cant-read-greek-unsurprised-but-angry/
Yes, I'm a long time Greek student and I found the vocab jumps between chapters (the IT version) to be a bit ridiculous. It didn't help that I had to look the glosses up by hand because I don't know Italian.
@@ZackSkrip I learned UItalian as a research language but used the English Athenaze back in the early 1990's. Previously the uni had used a series called "Reading Greek" which really did not introduce the language at all. TBH I was greatly pleased with Athenaze.
I'm currently trying to learn Latin through Lingva Latina per se Illustrata. One of the things I really like about the book is that the stories are genuinely interesting.
Perhaps you’re sick of my comments but I really can’t wait for Osweald Bera! I wish there was a way I could preorder it because I definitely would 😂. I check like every day while I have a second at work to see if it’s out!
You’re so kind! I just learned yesterday that preorders are going to open on Nov 1, so not too long at all now!
@@ColinGorrie That's news worth spreading!
You had me at Old English.
Thanks, Colin, for your thoughts. From my own knowledge of language acquisition, I agree with all that you have shared......the limitation that I have found in my own learning (Swedish) at this point is that the graded readers are few and far between. If you have hints as to how to find them, I (and I bet others) would greatly appreciate your suggestions
Very interesting video and I can definitely agree that the plot, the story is very important. I teach Polish and English as foreign languages and graded readers work differently in this context. First, a graded reader is all at the same level. So an e.g. A2 student takes this book and everything is at A2 level - the grammar and vocabulary. Of course, it's impossible to predict which words the person knows, so there is no need to put emphasis on repetition (we might end up repeating those words the person already knows). It's important to keep them at the proper level, which is easier for the A1-B1 levels. As a guide we have topics that the student should be familiar with at each level, so it makes the vocabulary choice easier. Readers are not textbooks, Familia Romana is not a reader - it's a textbook. A reader should have also the grammar limited to the certain level, so the A2 student can read it without encountering new grammar. A reader is for reviewing, getting input, not learning. I agree that thematical chapters can be boring but that's why in teaching modern languages we do it gradually. So first you learn only a few colours and the rest comes later. That's true about every vocabulary group. So there will be a lesson on weather at every level from A1 to C2. Familia Romana bring grammar to around C1 level but vocabulary wise it's A2/B1 (it's less then 2000 words and C1 is around 10 000). Nevertheless LLPSI provides a framework, so there can be a reader for those who have read it till chapter XX. Such a reader should contain 98% of vocabulary that's already known and no new grammar. Otherwise it would become a textbook. As a learner I don't want to read a story (for extensive reading) which I have to read only after I have covered the whole grammar of the language or that introduces vocabulary in a way that I have to learn it in a way that's moving from one level to a higher, and another higher one etc. I want (and this is how it works in English) a story that I can read in the evening or two evenings, at the weekend. I', not sure if it was Krashen or P. Nation who researched that extensive reading should be even at a slightly lower lever (especially grammar wise) so that students' motivation is boosted up by the sense of achievement, those 2% of new vocabulary items easily acquired and (that's my observation) that students start learning syntax and a long term focus on a text. This is probably just another perspective, but as a Latin learner I see there are some IMHO false ideas about the levels of language acquisition (like the idea that LLPSI Familia Romana brings the student to C1 level as far as vocabulary is concerned) and that readers should be like Julia by Reeds or "Ora Maritima". They are materials that a teacher can use to enrich what a textbook offers but a graded reader is IMHO something different - it's a full story that's aimed at learners at a certain level and is an interesting story that they can read easily. Therefore both vocabulary and grammar have to be adapted to the level (be it A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 or C2).
I'm so surprised this came up in my feed it's like the algorithm knew I was reading Paul Nation haha
8:54 what you're describing here is the difference between an analytical approach (red, yellow, blue introduced together because they form their own class when you analyze them) and holistic approach (red, fire truck and blood introduced together because they're all similar in some way)
Can't agree more on your last point. Very few graded readers are actually enjoyable to read
Also, having an actual story and thus genre makes it easier to use words and grammar in a more natural context. You don't need to contrive bizarre situations to explore the subjunctive, because, say, a detective story is almost tailor made for words related to appearance and time, while the majority of the text will be in past tense and subjunctive mood as the story follows people's past actions, desires and motivations
I would add another point: story complexity matters. It so happened that I never used a graded reader as an adult and learned the languages through grammar books and exposure, so I may be completely missing something, but text complexity and story complexity are kind of inversely dependent. A simple formulaic story may allow for a more complex text. Think "Conan the Barbarian". Words and structures Howard uses are far from simple and basic. Some of them are quite poetic. But the stories themselves are usually rather formulaic and simple. So even if you can't parse something you aren't lost. There is nowhere to be lost. On the contrary, a complex story requires a simple text. Think "The Big Sleep". Chandler wrote a dynamic story with twists and turns, but he rarely has sentences longer than five words and every grammatical structure is as textbook as it gets, so, again, you aren't lost and can always recover because gramatical relationships are never obscured by poetic choices
That's an excellent point about plot complexity being entirely unrelated to complexity of language! Come to think of it, Conan the Barbarian would be lots of fun in Old English...
The narrative orientation versus the semantic field orientation makes sense, but I have considered it before.
Chambers, The Greek War of Independence is very good as a graded reader for Ancient Greek. The story is strong (if you like history) and he did a good job of repeating vocabulary.
Bookmarking this!
@@ColinGorrie it's on our list at the Greek Learner Texts Project
Chinese has some of the best and most extensive graded learning materials from any of the languages I’ve tried.
Imagin8Press makes a version of Journey to the west that starts at 600 know words and the audio is over 30 hours long
It’s great for building up reading and listening stamina as a beginner and cementing vocab in long term memory, and there’s lots of other options for other vocab ranges.
What are your recommendations?
100% - I'm reading it myself right now!!
DuChinese seems the most popular in terms of value, interest, and amount of content.
when is that book coming?????????? we need it. Plenty of manuals for Latin and Greek but very few for old English and none in this method.
Something in my comment keeps getting filtered by TH-cam so I’m going to try splitting it up into a few, sorry if it’s annoying. 😅
On point 1: You said that new words should take up only 2%-10% of the word count. I assume that means the total number of new words and the total number of words in the chapter, period, rather than the total number of unique new words and unique words in the chapter? Assuming it's the total word count, I assume your 5% new word budget doesn't involve having each new word just appear once, or having just one new word take up 5% of the chapter, so how do you find the balance between repeating a word and the number of unique new words introduced?
You're correct - the calculation is new lemmata / total running word count. As you point out, ideally you would repeat these new words to aid in their learning. I don't think there's a good set of guidelines for how many repetitions you need to learn a word. I suspect it varies a lot depending on how abstract the word is, whether it's a "cognate" (in the SLA sense, e.g. biologist / biólogo), whether it's introduced with distractors, etc. I suspect it's somewhere between 15-25 repetitions for most words but that's a gut instinct. Getting these repetitions without sacrificing the story is very difficult, which is why I think authors need to encourage rereading - and this means writing a story that holds up to rereading.
I know you're talking about beginners, but once you get to intermediate level, you just really have to throw yourself into the deep end to some extent and get stuck in with original texts and be prepared to refer to a good dictionary a lot. In my case, that was coming to terms with Caesar's DBG.
I am learning italian and greek lol
must buy bear book 😵💫💸🧸📙
Will Osweald Bera be print only?