Hi professor. I've been studying with the method of 15 minutes proposed by you in another video and the results couldn't be more fruitful. I'm a spanish native speaker, proficent in english and now my aim is to improve my french or learn flemish. Hope that you continue to upload videos the way you do and I think you will, because we've seen your steadiness. Also, happy birthday!
If you would like to improve your ability to read French, German, Latin, or Spanish Literature with me via Zoom in my virtual academy, you can apply here: alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ I also offer Great Books seminars and guided consultations for those teaching themselves foreign languages. If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
I think the topic of realistic reading is of great practical importance to most learners because that is the longest and hardest process imo, and I am very grateful for this video. For my part, I am trying to go through it in Russian and classical Greek by reading Brothers Karamazov (which I read before in translation) and Plato's Republic with the Loeb bilingual library. Indeed, I get motivated to read aloud well-written pages since they are part of the great literature. My level is probably ~94% in Russian and ~85% in Greek, and hopefully I can reach the real extensive-reading level in a matter of several years each. Kudos to every future polyglot reading this! I started learning English seriously at the age of 16 with what turned out to be something very close to Arguelles' method, and now I am studying at an American university ;)
Thank you for your interesting and realistic comments. The realization that one must have an honors level understanding of grammar and vocabulary to consider literary reading without a safety net of reference material is daunting and discouraging. Exacerbating matters is a preference for current non-fiction, either social, political, legal, or business topics, or, even more challenging, up-to-date technological materials with even more specialized, and changing, vocabularies. More specifically, economics and politics in Spanish, and science and technology in German, not to mention current events in many languages, suggest that translators will not be unemployed in the foreseeable future.
Thanks for commenting, and I concur that neither literary nor technical translators will be out of business any time soon, no matter how good Google translate does get for ordinary sentences.
Hello i felt like you should know that you help so many people even if you don't know it, first of all you give so much content that is found nowhere else and with the actual academic knowledge behind it with you there is no doubt if the things you say are true because you are highly educated. Secondly you incite long deep conversations about language in remote corners of the world me and my friends get together and discuss your videos and discuss language aspect that you bring up, i am from a small village in Finland and your thoughts are spread all the way here so do know that you are known world wide and your videos help even the people very far away from you !
Having learned many languages to varying degrees, totally for the pleasure of appreciating the characteristics of each written language and its literature, I have my own way of doing it. I generally dive right into a book I want to read after having perused a grammar. I don't memorize or "study" anything; I let my brain do the "studying" in its own mostly subconscious way as I scan the target text with the aid of a translation which is as literal as possible. I start noticing words or stems which crop up frequently. I make some use of a dictionary, especially to nail down the more common or more noticeable words (e.g., a word with an odd consonant cluster or a word that reminds me of a word in another language). I gradually start to figure out patterns within sentences. Maybe I see that the verbs, which I might be able to spot due to their endings, come last in most sentences, for example. I have a high tolerance for not-knowing, and I love noticing the constant small transitions to knowing. My translated copy generally serves as my "dictionary," imperfect though it might be. I'm sure this is not for everyone, but for me the motivation of dealing with original text in a target language is magical. Over the last few months I've gone from knowing nothing about Homeric Greek, for instance, to being able to enjoy much of the original text. I look forward one day to being able to simply sit down, pick up the Odyssey in Greek, turn to a favorite section, and begin to read with fluency. (In fact, a friend of mine who is skilled in all book arts, from paper making and letterpress printing to writing and illustrating and successfully publishing his own books, and with whom I've worked on several languages over the years, has recently taken digital Greek text of the Odyssey and turned it into a book with far better fonts and layout than are now available, just so we can have that very pleasure...just to pick up the book and read.) Over the years, this approach has worked for me with French and German, it's gotten me more recently into mid-range facility reading Italian and Dutch, and I'm getting started on Homeric Greek, Norwegian, and Polish. Inspired by the epic Odyssey, I've collected a lot of materials for reading the epic Kalevala in Finnish. What a great adventure!
Thank you so much for the detailed comment, which makes reading through this section valuable for those interested in this topic. As I stated in the video, there are a few people - and you are clearly one - for whom this approach works very well. I believe Heinrich Schliemann was another, so you are in good company!
@@ProfASAr Thank you for your kind reply. I thought of a couple of other things that someone might find helpful. For me, motivation is all. I'll use anything to keep my interest high. I recently read a Dutch mystery, for example, which pulled me along just so I could find out what was going to happen. On the other hand, I try to acquire the most wonderful editions of books that I can find to enhance the reading experience and make it a sort of act of devotion. I have beside me, for example, a very large, beautifully illustrated, large-print edition of the Polish epic Pan Tadeusz. Just to spend time with it is a pleasure, so I'm drawn to patiently work through paragraphs now and then throughout the day. If all I can get is a cheap paperback, that's OK, but if I can obtain books that are well-designed and feel good in the hand (and which, needless to say, are filled with reliable content), I'm very happy to pay extra for them. That's why I use the Teubner edition of the Odyssey and the large Aschehoug edition of Kristin Lavranskatter by Sigrid Undset.
You are my hero. I'm thinking about getting into Greek or Norwegian. Can I ask you which one of those languages would you choose if you could only pick up one? That would be my 7th language and probably the last one to learn, to fluency, if possible.
@@whitehawk-42 Please look at the Q&A of my site where I just yesterday wrote about Greek resources. I don't know what your other 6 are or what your motives are for choosing between these two. If you care to write me a detailed mail there, I'll answer it.
Thank you so much for posting this wonderfully insightful lecture (and for free no less!) I can see that you make for a wonderful professor, your past (and present) students are incredibly lucky!
Thank you so much for the kind words of appreciation. Have a look at the offerings at my academy from time to time, and if any of them suit you, apply and we might spend some time learning together.
My first novel in English was an intensive reading. It took me 6 months to finish it. I filled 60 pages of a notebook where I translated vocabulary and expressions that I did not understand. At first, it was a very slow and frustrating process, but I progressed so much by the end of the book. I was also so proud of myself and it gave me the confidence to keep going. About the realistic reading, I completely understand your approach, however, I don't think I can do it as I would feel frustrated to not understand some words.
Excellent recap and extension of some of your previous recordings! Your recommendation to read aloud with a second pass but with emphasis is a great idea. I struggle with knowing how to read a German passage with that emphasis. I would love to see an overview of how to pick up context clues to know which words to emphasize like I normally do reading in my native language. Thank you for sharing your insights as usual!
You are very welcome for your appreciation. As to your issue, however, about when to pick up context clues, that is not something that can be covered in general in a video, but rather that must be taught in specific in a small circle. If you are at that level, please sign up for one.
@@ProfASAr That's what I figured! I still feel like I'm in the preliminary stages. I just purchased a half dozen graded readers to start up an extensive reading phase. However, my learning goal certainly corresponds with your own goal as stated in the intro of your lecture. I will certainly be signing up within the next few months as I build up a bit more confidence! Thank you so much for the reply!
Very interesting, I was starting to reach these conclusions myself, but I didn’t realise how much of a difference there is between 75 and 98%. I’ve tried reading Japanese but as you say it’s very frustrating and I burn out pretty quickly. I’m probably more like 50-75% with most texts. So on a good day it’s like your 75% example haha. I think for me I will continue with the language without much reading for now, until my comprehension is higher. Graded readers and the like do exist in a limited capacity for Japanese but I tend to be someone who wants to read what they want to read, and just reading a graded reader feels incredibly boring to me, even if it would be helpful!
Hi, I've learned a lot from your videos, it has been so fulfilling in my learning experience. Because of you, I've found the Assimil method. I'm currently studying French using the Assimil French course, I hope that within three, or four years I will reach fluency in French.
Indeed, the part where one summarises what one has read is of utmost importance, and it is also the one that I myself overlook far too often. The time constraints are too restricting, as soon as the 10 minutes for my reading in a language are up, I go right on to the next one because otherwise I won't be get everything done fast enough. I'll try to implement that summary into the time allotted for Catalan and Dutch, as well as Old English. Also, this video reminds me of those educational tapes for new employees at an 80's workplace, only this is an educational video for people about to get started with your Academy!
Professor Arguelles, Thank you for posting another helpful video. Something that you may want to cover in a future video is what one can do when one knows the meaning of every word in a sentence but has no idea what the sentence means. This happens to me even in texts in which I know the meaning of at least 98 percent of the words. Currently, I am likely to type all or part of the sentence into Google translate when that happens. I think that idioms can cause much more difficulty in reading a foreign language text than the not knowing the meaning of individual words. If I look up a word in a dictionary thinking that it may be part of an idiom there may be a long list of idioms to read through hoping to find one that works in the context of what I am reading. Something that adds to the confusion with idioms is that the individual words that make up the idiom may be scattered throughout the sentence. An example of this is the Dutch phrase "uitgaan ervan", which means "assume". It has four parts (uit gaan er van) that can be scattered throughout a sentence. There can be even more pieces if the word "gaan" is conjugated in a form with more than one word (such as "is gegaan").
Hello Professor, Appreciate this video. Something I've been struggling with for a long time without being entirely sure what to do and if it was the right thing to do. Reading aloud seems to be overlooked a lot, but a very important step to take. Reading is definitely one of my personal goals...esp. extensive reading. Listening takes you only so far, but reading gets you further; I love diving into literature written in the original language rather than, let's say, a translation. "Realistic Reading Steps", will definitely incorporate into my life since reading beyond the intermediate stage has been a struggle of mine personally. Thank you for the valuable content you've shared with the community.
I recommend _Polyglot: How I learn languages_ by _Kató Lomb_ for an interesting discussion of intensive reading. Kató claims in her book to have learnt various languages primarily by reading easy crime and mystery novels with a dictionary.
For me, the Kindle has been a true game-changer. Being able to look up unknown words, and even whole sentences, with a tap has made it possible to read much earlier in the learning process than I ever could before. I remember how tough and frustrating it used to be... until that magic moment when you realize an hour has gone by without looking something up in the dictionary. But to get there? A lot of hard work. Now I find I need to discipline myself in a new way. Because it's so easy, I find I lose the flow of the experience by constant tapping. And most of the time I'm just confirming what I already know, anyway. Earlier, I would just get too lazy to look up things in a physical dictionary and would just tough it out... I realize now, that this is a helpful stage in the learning process and now make a conscious effort to restrict looking things up.
Right you are on the uninterrupted flow factor, but the ease itself can be a double-edged sword if you forget it just as swiftly as you looked it up, whereas if you have to go through the trouble of searching for it and then also write it down, that helps fix it in the memory.
Another fantastic video as always, Professor. I have a few outstanding questions though about the efficacy of the 95% comprehensibility principle, especially in reference to a technique you once detailed in an old HTLAL post from years ago. In my own experience learning languages, it simply hasn't been possible to maintain anywhere close to 95% comprehension until I've already reached quite an advanced stage. Most of my grunt work slogging through the intermediate stages has been spent either intensively reading with a dictionary at hand or reading and rereading extensively with a gratuitous margin of ambiguity - let's say between 50 - 80% known words. Years ago on HTLAL you mentioned your journey with Russian involving an intense extensive-reading schedule where you read an original Russian work alongside a translation at hand - working progressively paragraph by paragraph through each until you could read chapters and eventually the entire novel cover-to-cover with a high degree of understanding and pleasure. *This* post revolutionized the way I approached reading exercises, and has since been my go-to for reading practice in the languages I've learned; not only does it allow one to approach and enjoy texts that fall outside of this tenuous range of comprehensibility, but it also fuses extensive and intensive reading in a way that allows one to recognize a large number of words based on repeated exposure to an author's idiolect instead of repetitive dictionary searches or simply ignoring potentially relevant words. Could you perhaps give your thoughts on this method, especially in comparison to the "realistic reading" approach mentioned in this video? A video about this would be much appreciated. For reference, here are a couple of my outstanding questions regarding the efficacy of "realistic reading" method in comparison to above mentioned unnamed strategy: 1) how tenable is realistic reading at the different stages of comprehension (A2 - C1), especially in regards to text selection / availability and crossing level bridges? (e.g. jumping from young adult novels to fiction, works of literary merit, etc) 2) What degree of unknown words / ambiguity would suffice for successive application of the above mentioned strategy?
Thank you so much for this wonderfully substantive post. Since you know HTLAL, I am trying to recreate that kind of data base in the Q&A of my new site. Please submit this there so that I can answer it in a way that can be indexed and found later. I would also like to migrate that original post about Russian here, so if you could give me the date I wrote that, it would help me find it.
Dear Alexander! I liked it a lot. Especially the idea that in Realistic Reading you search for only a small portion of words. What discourages me though is the fact that I would need to retell the story or what I got from it IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE, for one, and also that I would have to READ THE TEXT THREE TIMES, IDEALLY ALOUD. That seems like an awfull amount of WORK actually. And lazy though I am I honestly prefer to use kindle and search for more words rather than read and reread immediately the same passage.
At 16:09 Prof. you read, what work? You mentioned it but I was multitasking and now can't find where you said the name of book, I got Jack London, is it from Call of the Wild or White Fang?
I'm coming back to this video and wanted to know what you thought about tools that are used online to help bridge that gap between levels of proficiency in language. Imagine you are sitting down with a dictionary, a text in a language you're learning, and a translation of that text. If you see a word you don't know in the text, you can look at the sentence in English and look up the single word on its own in a dictionary. There are websites that do this all in one, showing you the translation side-by-side and the translation of a word by clicking on it, instantaneously. My favorite of these is LanguageCrush, but much more popular is Steve Kaufmann's LingQ. When using these, I feel it is much faster and more efficient than doing it with physical books, but perhaps the speed of the translation doesn't make me slow down enough to get the foreign language word stuck in my brain, but if I use repetition, then it helps.
I don't use any of these. I am old school and prefer a paper dictionary. Using these tools a) keeps you chained to a multi-tasking device, b) gives you the words so quickly that they can go easy in-easy out.
Thank you Professor for such an insightful presentation. A few questions if I may: i) Would the summarisation stage also be done in the target language or in our own native tongue? I see here you both read and then summarised the passage in English which is your native language, no doubt for illustration purposes. It did leave me wondering however in which language the summary would be performed. It would appear to make most sense to do so in your native language but I do hope you can clarify. ii) With regards to the grading of texts, are you aware of tools such as LingQ and Readlang? The former can provide a percentage estimate of unknown words of a given text based uponn previous reading done through the program whilst offering electronic translations of unknown words. The latter is far simpler but does grade imported texts according to their respective CEFR level. I'm sure others along with myself would be interested to know how and if you would incorporate such tools into your reading schedule. Thanks, Tom
Hello Tom, and thanks for the great questions. 1) Summary should be done in the target language. 2) Thanks for providing information about these useful programs. I might use them if I were still trying to get up to speed in new languages, but I have long since decided that I have my hands full with what they are already holding, and I know my levels in these.
@@ProfASAr Thank you for your reply Professor. I am more or less at the "Harry Potter" stage with Spanish and will incorporate the procedures you have kindly outlined as I work through Las Crónicas de Narnia. Thanks again.
Learning both Modern and Ancient Greek, here, with a heavy emphasis on Koine. Focusing much less on Biblical Hebrew, and have placed my Latin on hold until I get good at Greek.
You describe here the kind of sacrifices we all sometimes have to make in order to concentrate more on brining one up a significant notch. Best of success to you in your studies!
I think an internet connection along with apps and translators gets rid of so many of the problems you associated with intensive reading. You no longer need to flip through a dictionary when you can get the translation instantaneously by touching the screen!
Dr. Arguelles, first off - thanks for sharing your wisdom and tips with us! I just watched your video on The Harry Potter Stage and immediately ordered the Latin, English, and Ancient Greek versions. Question: can you suggest any Sanskrit materials that might ease the learning burden? Good graded readers? Must-have grammars? Anything that perhaps provides Sanskrit in comparison to Latin/Greek so as to learn by analogy etc?
You are very welcome. For Sanskrit, you should get The Ramopakhyana - the Story of Rama in the Mahabharata An Independent Study Reader in Sanskrit, by Peter Scharf, published by Routledge Curzon.
I can do something even "worse" to intensive reading with 75% comprehension. I directly start reading a dictionary as a book. And the "bad" thing about it is I really like to do this, its fun and pleasant to me, but it surely doesnt lead me to fluency fast. I even copy half of dictionary entries by hand into my notebooks. I have fun and I directly forget all the words. I only remember that I have seen before. and I start doing these things directly from day one if I can already read the script well. if the script is new to me I train the sctipt for around one year and then directly start with native content which is even hard for natives, dictionaries, wikipedia pages ... I sometimes try to memorize verses from poems (I dont understand, cheating with a translation, its memorizing syllables and orthography, but it is fun to me.
@@ProfASAr Correct. One would suppose that I would understand more Spanish than English and French, but I had a lot more exposure to English than to Spanish. And while I can understand spoken Spanish better than spoken French, I have read substantially more in French than in Spanish, which explains my percentages in the previous comment. I read Les misérables in French on my kindle. It took me about 5 years (on and off) to finish reading it. I started the book having to use the dictionary every 6 or 7 words. I didn't count, but it seemed that frequent. By the end of the book, I would look up a word out 20 approx. Of course, I consumed more material in French during that period, but I owe perhaps the knowledge of more than a thousand words (wild guess, as I don't takes notes) in French solely to Victor Hugo.
Dan Brown was a rather poignant recommendation with your history of langugaes ;^) Thanks for this, I prefer to learn by reading as it forces you into the thoughts of someone in that language and requires you to learn the alphabet handidly.
I am glad you found it useful. Embarrassing typos that we only see after we hit send are the bane of digital existence. I do think the machines cause them at times...
Any tips for dialling down perfectionism while reading? I have a real problem with that: i.e. wanting to understand absolutely everything about a particular passage to the point where I'm Googling every word and reference I don't understand, my pace slows to a crawl, and all the joy of reading evaporates. Maybe ditching the tech would be a good start? Underlining things to look up later, and if I never bother to look some of them up, then I guess it means I can live with not knowing them? Okay, maybe I just answered my own question. Anyway, great video, as always! I really admire your enthusiasm for words and language!
Happy late birthday! Also, sorry for commenting on an unrelated post but I just got my assimil books for Spanish and Arabic and just finished taking notes on the shadowing technique! But, I got confused should I do each stage till I cannot or cycle through them on day 1. Like with stage one being blind shadowing, just to blind shadow until I get tired of it like for days or to blind shadow till I get tired of it then do stage 2 in that same day? I already know a bit in the languages I'm learning so I'm not sure sorry for asking if this was obvious I just couldn't figure it out. Have a good night!!! and hope you stay well!
Hello Mikr and thank you for the kind wishes. I can't give you guidance for how to shadow in bits in pieces in a comment section. If you are just starting out with Spanish and Arabic simultaneously with Assimil and you want to be sure to get off to a good footing, then you might consider enrolling in the language learner's support group, where we can work out a schedule for you and help you understand and stick to it.
I've never heard of anything like this and I'm definitely going to try it with one of my weaker languages (Spanish) in which I reckon that I'm at about the 95-6% level. Moreover, I think it would work wonderfully with scriptorium if one were to write out the best passages with attention to detail. I do, however, have one question regarding this: is this method better with several hundred page novels or short stories? Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the appreciation and asking for clarification about an important point that is often overlooked when people talk about extensive reading. It really is supposed to be literally extensive, i.e., applied to long texts. Therefore, it works better for novels, although short-story collections by the same author also work, and indeed are easier because that connecting thread does not have to be held as long.
I'm a Russian native speaker and I want to read in English without encountering unknown words or at least as many as in my native tongue. I think I'm getting there as I'm at that 95-98% comprehension level depending on an author. Reading something like Adam Douglas is around 98% I guess but Lovecraft is at 95%. Though I spent last 6 months of intensive reading and I guess it hepled a lot but it feels so eternal to reach that point when you can understand like 99% Btw my French is at around 90% and completely understanding a story is hard though I didn't really reach so called basic fluency in French. For me it's that point when you can understand a spoken language with no difficulty and it's kinda easy to think in that language. You can do that by watching a lot of shows, movies, TV series in a target language and it can make your accent better and boost your listening, recognizing accents and all that kind of stuff
@@ProfASAr I think there's a huge rise in polyglottary and language learning in general especially among young people because of the Internet. Even talking about me, I'm from small village in the south of Siberia and if it weren't for the Internet, I wouldn't have a mass exposure to the English language. Have you heard about Japanese learning community? There're various online communities that have approaches based on immersion and comprehensible input. The most known is AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) Here's a video on this topic are th-cam.com/video/KygsjMUj_C0/w-d-xo.html
@@ProfASAr Because they're so easy to learn, they're low-hanging fruit. I find it very satisfactory to know the names of things. Having to memorize concepts, especially those that don't exist in your native tongue, can be a pain in the ass.
Thank you for the guided lecture. I have been learning japanese for a few months and still in the beginner phase which i understood hira and kana. I have hit a wall where i am confused on which path do i need to focus first. Do i go learning vocab or grammar or just diving into children book. Thank you professor
Based on what you have written, I would say that you need to study Japanese grammar and vocabulary for longer than a few months before you attempt children's books.
Hi there, just wonder which 98% vocab coverage testing website were you talking about? Since English is my foreign language, I couldn't spell that out, thanks
The main researcher behind the whole idea of extensive reading is named Paul Nation. On his website, he has tests you can take to see how many English word families you know: www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources/vocabulary-tests
Dear Dr. Arguelles, I couldn't help but be reminded of a video that a friend of mine did not too long ago about a similar practice, though with a few differences. I'm not necessarily asking you to say anything about it, but just in case you hadn't seen his video before, you might find it find it interesting to see what others say about a similar practice. th-cam.com/video/JTWKpNy96EM/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for providing this link! No, I hadn't seen it before, but it looks excellent for doing something similar to this while one is still in the learning / textbook stage.
The 75% and 90% indeed look intimidating. But I am not convinced: neither by your argument nor by Paul Nation's. In many situations, such as learning a language related to one that is known, the unknown words are not featureless black rectangles but, instead, strings of letters with, often, some glimmer of a cognate beneath their surface. And even when they seem nonsense syllables (or when the language is not related), there is at least the possibility of remembering the word, or noticing if one meet it again. This contrasts to the black rectangles, which offer no clues or hints or (true or false) cognates, or even features by which one could recognize them later. 75%, IF in a known story ("Harry Potter" e.g.--or, in days of yore, the Bible), AND with vaguely sensed cognates swimming beneath the surface, AND with real words offering the possibility of re-recognition: this becomes possible. Even: if one knew the passage from Herodotus in English, and one paused on the unknown Greek words (that one knew, very roughly, what they had to mean), one would be picking up quite a lot from context. Or at least, some would: including myself. This takes a high tolerance for ambiguity, however! MY procedure is to read for pleasure, pausiing to wonder or admire both content and expression, and (reading on a e-reader) touching the word if I just HAPPEN to WANT to: MUCH easier than looking up in a dictionary. Btw, realistic reading's great new friend is the e-reader that can open a dictionary by touching the word.
You are quite right that we do not see unknown words as black rectangles but can guess and tease information out of them. However, if you don't have that 98% level, you will soon loose the thread of any longer connected narrative.
I get my woman to read books in English aloud by herself while I'm sitting next to her, and then translate each sentence one by one. If she doesn't understand something or understand in wrong, I correct her. It seems to be effective so far
❤This was an outstanding lecture on "practical" reading strategies in a foreign language. You are a blessing
Thank you kindly.
Hi professor. I've been studying with the method of 15 minutes proposed by you in another video and the results couldn't be more fruitful. I'm a spanish native speaker, proficent in english and now my aim is to improve my french or learn flemish. Hope that you continue to upload videos the way you do and I think you will, because we've seen your steadiness.
Also, happy birthday!
Thank you for all the good wishes, and I am glad the 15-minute at a time bursts are doing you well.
I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking, why flemish specifically?
If you would like to improve your ability to read French, German, Latin, or Spanish Literature with me via Zoom in my virtual academy, you can apply here: alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ I also offer Great Books seminars and guided consultations for those teaching themselves foreign languages. If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
I think the topic of realistic reading is of great practical importance to most learners because that is the longest and hardest process imo, and I am very grateful for this video. For my part, I am trying to go through it in Russian and classical Greek by reading Brothers Karamazov (which I read before in translation) and Plato's Republic with the Loeb bilingual library. Indeed, I get motivated to read aloud well-written pages since they are part of the great literature. My level is probably ~94% in Russian and ~85% in Greek, and hopefully I can reach the real extensive-reading level in a matter of several years each. Kudos to every future polyglot reading this! I started learning English seriously at the age of 16 with what turned out to be something very close to Arguelles' method, and now I am studying at an American university ;)
Thank you for the appreciation. I wish you all the best in your studies.
I’ve always appreciated how humorous as well as educational your videos are.
Thank you kindly!
Thank you for your interesting and realistic comments. The realization that one must have an honors level understanding of grammar and vocabulary to consider literary reading without a safety net of reference material is daunting and discouraging. Exacerbating matters is a preference for current non-fiction, either social, political, legal, or business topics, or, even more challenging, up-to-date technological materials with even more specialized, and changing, vocabularies. More specifically, economics and politics in Spanish, and science and technology in German, not to mention current events in many languages, suggest that translators will not be unemployed in the foreseeable future.
Thanks for commenting, and I concur that neither literary nor technical translators will be out of business any time soon, no matter how good Google translate does get for ordinary sentences.
Hello i felt like you should know that you help so many people even if you don't know it, first of all you give so much content that is found nowhere else and with the actual academic knowledge behind it with you there is no doubt if the things you say are true because you are highly educated. Secondly you incite long deep conversations about language in remote corners of the world me and my friends get together and discuss your videos and discuss language aspect that you bring up, i am from a small village in Finland and your thoughts are spread all the way here so do know that you are known world wide and your videos help even the people very far away from you !
Thank you so much for writing. It is notes like this that make it all worthwhile! I really appreciate your appreciation.
Having learned many languages to varying degrees, totally for the pleasure of appreciating the characteristics of each written language and its literature, I have my own way of doing it. I generally dive right into a book I want to read after having perused a grammar. I don't memorize or "study" anything; I let my brain do the "studying" in its own mostly subconscious way as I scan the target text with the aid of a translation which is as literal as possible. I start noticing words or stems which crop up frequently. I make some use of a dictionary, especially to nail down the more common or more noticeable words (e.g., a word with an odd consonant cluster or a word that reminds me of a word in another language). I gradually start to figure out patterns within sentences. Maybe I see that the verbs, which I might be able to spot due to their endings, come last in most sentences, for example. I have a high tolerance for not-knowing, and I love noticing the constant small transitions to knowing.
My translated copy generally serves as my "dictionary," imperfect though it might be. I'm sure this is not for everyone, but for me the motivation of dealing with original text in a target language is magical. Over the last few months I've gone from knowing nothing about Homeric Greek, for instance, to being able to enjoy much of the original text. I look forward one day to being able to simply sit down, pick up the Odyssey in Greek, turn to a favorite section, and begin to read with fluency. (In fact, a friend of mine who is skilled in all book arts, from paper making and letterpress printing to writing and illustrating and successfully publishing his own books, and with whom I've worked on several languages over the years, has recently taken digital Greek text of the Odyssey and turned it into a book with far better fonts and layout than are now available, just so we can have that very pleasure...just to pick up the book and read.)
Over the years, this approach has worked for me with French and German, it's gotten me more recently into mid-range facility reading Italian and Dutch, and I'm getting started on Homeric Greek, Norwegian, and Polish. Inspired by the epic Odyssey, I've collected a lot of materials for reading the epic Kalevala in Finnish. What a great adventure!
Thank you so much for the detailed comment, which makes reading through this section valuable for those interested in this topic. As I stated in the video, there are a few people - and you are clearly one - for whom this approach works very well. I believe Heinrich Schliemann was another, so you are in good company!
@@ProfASAr Thank you for your kind reply. I thought of a couple of other things that someone might find helpful. For me, motivation is all. I'll use anything to keep my interest high. I recently read a Dutch mystery, for example, which pulled me along just so I could find out what was going to happen. On the other hand, I try to acquire the most wonderful editions of books that I can find to enhance the reading experience and make it a sort of act of devotion. I have beside me, for example, a very large, beautifully illustrated, large-print edition of the Polish epic Pan Tadeusz. Just to spend time with it is a pleasure, so I'm drawn to patiently work through paragraphs now and then throughout the day. If all I can get is a cheap paperback, that's OK, but if I can obtain books that are well-designed and feel good in the hand (and which, needless to say, are filled with reliable content), I'm very happy to pay extra for them. That's why I use the Teubner edition of the Odyssey and the large Aschehoug edition of Kristin Lavranskatter by Sigrid Undset.
Kalevala vai kalavale😄
You are my hero. I'm thinking about getting into Greek or Norwegian. Can I ask you which one of those languages would you choose if you could only pick up one? That would be my 7th language and probably the last one to learn, to fluency, if possible.
@@whitehawk-42 Please look at the Q&A of my site where I just yesterday wrote about Greek resources. I don't know what your other 6 are or what your motives are for choosing between these two. If you care to write me a detailed mail there, I'll answer it.
Thank you so much for posting this wonderfully insightful lecture (and for free no less!) I can see that you make for a wonderful professor, your past (and present) students are incredibly lucky!
Thank you so much for the kind words of appreciation. Have a look at the offerings at my academy from time to time, and if any of them suit you, apply and we might spend some time learning together.
Your view on learning languages is special and magnetic. Thanks a lot for sharing!
I am glad it was helpful for you.
Furthermore, I appreciate the detail. Krashen is always talking about comprehensible input but never to what degree it is to be so. This is helpful.
I am pleased to be of assistance.
My first novel in English was an intensive reading. It took me 6 months to finish it. I filled 60 pages of a notebook where I translated vocabulary and expressions that I did not understand. At first, it was a very slow and frustrating process, but I progressed so much by the end of the book. I was also so proud of myself and it gave me the confidence to keep going. About the realistic reading, I completely understand your approach, however, I don't think I can do it as I would feel frustrated to not understand some words.
Thank you for sharing your experience with your first novel and with intensive reading, which I am sure others can relate to well.
Excellent recap and extension of some of your previous recordings!
Your recommendation to read aloud with a second pass but with emphasis is a great idea.
I struggle with knowing how to read a German passage with that emphasis. I would love to see an overview of how to pick up context clues to know which words to emphasize like I normally do reading in my native language.
Thank you for sharing your insights as usual!
You are very welcome for your appreciation. As to your issue, however, about when to pick up context clues, that is not something that can be covered in general in a video, but rather that must be taught in specific in a small circle. If you are at that level, please sign up for one.
@@ProfASAr That's what I figured! I still feel like I'm in the preliminary stages. I just purchased a half dozen graded readers to start up an extensive reading phase. However, my learning goal certainly corresponds with your own goal as stated in the intro of your lecture. I will certainly be signing up within the next few months as I build up a bit more confidence!
Thank you so much for the reply!
Very interesting, I was starting to reach these conclusions myself, but I didn’t realise how much of a difference there is between 75 and 98%. I’ve tried reading Japanese but as you say it’s very frustrating and I burn out pretty quickly. I’m probably more like 50-75% with most texts. So on a good day it’s like your 75% example haha. I think for me I will continue with the language without much reading for now, until my comprehension is higher. Graded readers and the like do exist in a limited capacity for Japanese but I tend to be someone who wants to read what they want to read, and just reading a graded reader feels incredibly boring to me, even if it would be helpful!
I am very glad it was helpful.
Hi, I've learned a lot from your videos, it has been so fulfilling in my learning experience. Because of you, I've found the Assimil method. I'm currently studying French using the Assimil French course, I hope that within three, or four years I will reach fluency in French.
Good luck to you!
What a great channel! Also, I like your style, very classy and cozy. Love the cat too
Thank you so much! I appreciate it.
10:36 clean edits of rap songs be like
??
Indeed, the part where one summarises what one has read is of utmost importance, and it is also the one that I myself overlook far too often. The time constraints are too restricting, as soon as the 10 minutes for my reading in a language are up, I go right on to the next one because otherwise I won't be get everything done fast enough. I'll try to implement that summary into the time allotted for Catalan and Dutch, as well as Old English.
Also, this video reminds me of those educational tapes for new employees at an 80's workplace, only this is an educational video for people about to get started with your Academy!
Don't worry, Yan, we will drill the habit into you in the Latin circles!
Professor Arguelles, Thank you for posting another helpful video.
Something that you may want to cover in a future video is what one can do when one knows the meaning of every word in a sentence but has no idea what the sentence means. This happens to me even in texts in which I know the meaning of at least 98 percent of the words. Currently, I am likely to type all or part of the sentence into Google translate when that happens.
I think that idioms can cause much more difficulty in reading a foreign language text than the not knowing the meaning of individual words. If I look up a word in a dictionary thinking that it may be part of an idiom there may be a long list of idioms to read through hoping to find one that works in the context of what I am reading. Something that adds to the confusion with idioms is that the individual words that make up the idiom may be scattered throughout the sentence. An example of this is the Dutch phrase "uitgaan ervan", which means "assume". It has four parts (uit gaan er van) that can be scattered throughout a sentence. There can be even more pieces if the word "gaan" is conjugated in a form with more than one word (such as "is gegaan").
Thanks for the good point - indeed, that is maddening when you know all the words but still don't get the sentence.
Hello Professor,
Appreciate this video. Something I've been struggling with for a long time without being entirely sure what to do and if it was the right thing to do.
Reading aloud seems to be overlooked a lot, but a very important step to take.
Reading is definitely one of my personal goals...esp. extensive reading. Listening takes you only so far, but reading gets you further; I love diving into literature written in the original language rather than, let's say, a translation.
"Realistic Reading Steps", will definitely incorporate into my life since reading beyond the intermediate stage has been a struggle of mine personally. Thank you for the valuable content you've shared with the community.
I am very glad that I could provide material that is of use to you!
I recommend _Polyglot: How I learn languages_ by _Kató Lomb_ for an interesting discussion of intensive reading. Kató claims in her book to have learnt various languages primarily by reading easy crime and mystery novels with a dictionary.
Thanks for the recommendation.
For me, the Kindle has been a true game-changer. Being able to look up unknown words, and even whole sentences, with a tap has made it possible to read much earlier in the learning process than I ever could before. I remember how tough and frustrating it used to be... until that magic moment when you realize an hour has gone by without looking something up in the dictionary. But to get there? A lot of hard work. Now I find I need to discipline myself in a new way. Because it's so easy, I find I lose the flow of the experience by constant tapping. And most of the time I'm just confirming what I already know, anyway. Earlier, I would just get too lazy to look up things in a physical dictionary and would just tough it out... I realize now, that this is a helpful stage in the learning process and now make a conscious effort to restrict looking things up.
Right you are on the uninterrupted flow factor, but the ease itself can be a double-edged sword if you forget it just as swiftly as you looked it up, whereas if you have to go through the trouble of searching for it and then also write it down, that helps fix it in the memory.
Another fantastic video as always, Professor. I have a few outstanding questions though about the efficacy of the 95% comprehensibility principle, especially in reference to a technique you once detailed in an old HTLAL post from years ago. In my own experience learning languages, it simply hasn't been possible to maintain anywhere close to 95% comprehension until I've already reached quite an advanced stage. Most of my grunt work slogging through the intermediate stages has been spent either intensively reading with a dictionary at hand or reading and rereading extensively with a gratuitous margin of ambiguity - let's say between 50 - 80% known words. Years ago on HTLAL you mentioned your journey with Russian involving an intense extensive-reading schedule where you read an original Russian work alongside a translation at hand - working progressively paragraph by paragraph through each until you could read chapters and eventually the entire novel cover-to-cover with a high degree of understanding and pleasure. *This* post revolutionized the way I approached reading exercises, and has since been my go-to for reading practice in the languages I've learned; not only does it allow one to approach and enjoy texts that fall outside of this tenuous range of comprehensibility, but it also fuses extensive and intensive reading in a way that allows one to recognize a large number of words based on repeated exposure to an author's idiolect instead of repetitive dictionary searches or simply ignoring potentially relevant words. Could you perhaps give your thoughts on this method, especially in comparison to the "realistic reading" approach mentioned in this video? A video about this would be much appreciated. For reference, here are a couple of my outstanding questions regarding the efficacy of "realistic reading" method in comparison to above mentioned unnamed strategy:
1) how tenable is realistic reading at the different stages of comprehension (A2 - C1), especially in regards to text selection / availability and crossing level bridges? (e.g. jumping from young adult novels to fiction, works of literary merit, etc)
2) What degree of unknown words / ambiguity would suffice for successive application of the above mentioned strategy?
Thank you so much for this wonderfully substantive post. Since you know HTLAL, I am trying to recreate that kind of data base in the Q&A of my new site. Please submit this there so that I can answer it in a way that can be indexed and found later. I would also like to migrate that original post about Russian here, so if you could give me the date I wrote that, it would help me find it.
Very enjoyable and helpful video. My only goal for most of the languages I want to learn is to read the literature.
I am glad to hear that there are others with the same goals.
Dear Alexander!
I liked it a lot. Especially the idea that in Realistic Reading you search for only a small portion of words. What discourages me though is the fact that I would need to retell the story or what I got from it IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE, for one, and also that I would have to READ THE TEXT THREE TIMES, IDEALLY ALOUD. That seems like an awfull amount of WORK actually. And lazy though I am I honestly prefer to use kindle and search for more words rather than read and reread immediately the same passage.
Thanks for commenting. The simple fact is that learning a language does require lots of work.
At 16:09 Prof. you read, what work? You mentioned it but I was multitasking and now can't find where you said the name of book, I got Jack London, is it from Call of the Wild or White Fang?
That is the beginning of White Fang.
@@ProfASAr thank you.
Oh yeah😎
Cheers prof Arguelles
Thank you kindly.
I'm coming back to this video and wanted to know what you thought about tools that are used online to help bridge that gap between levels of proficiency in language.
Imagine you are sitting down with a dictionary, a text in a language you're learning, and a translation of that text. If you see a word you don't know in the text, you can look at the sentence in English and look up the single word on its own in a dictionary. There are websites that do this all in one, showing you the translation side-by-side and the translation of a word by clicking on it, instantaneously. My favorite of these is LanguageCrush, but much more popular is Steve Kaufmann's LingQ. When using these, I feel it is much faster and more efficient than doing it with physical books, but perhaps the speed of the translation doesn't make me slow down enough to get the foreign language word stuck in my brain, but if I use repetition, then it helps.
I don't use any of these. I am old school and prefer a paper dictionary. Using these tools a) keeps you chained to a multi-tasking device, b) gives you the words so quickly that they can go easy in-easy out.
@@ProfASAr thank you!
Thank you Professor for such an insightful presentation.
A few questions if I may:
i) Would the summarisation stage also be done in the target language or in our own native tongue? I see here you both read and then summarised the passage in English which is your native language, no doubt for illustration purposes. It did leave me wondering however in which language the summary would be performed. It would appear to make most sense to do so in your native language but I do hope you can clarify.
ii) With regards to the grading of texts, are you aware of tools such as LingQ and Readlang? The former can provide a percentage estimate of unknown words of a given text based uponn previous reading done through the program whilst offering electronic translations of unknown words. The latter is far simpler but does grade imported texts according to their respective CEFR level.
I'm sure others along with myself would be interested to know how and if you would incorporate such tools into your reading schedule.
Thanks, Tom
Hello Tom, and thanks for the great questions. 1) Summary should be done in the target language. 2) Thanks for providing information about these useful programs. I might use them if I were still trying to get up to speed in new languages, but I have long since decided that I have my hands full with what they are already holding, and I know my levels in these.
@@ProfASAr Thank you for your reply Professor. I am more or less at the "Harry Potter" stage with Spanish and will incorporate the procedures you have kindly outlined as I work through Las Crónicas de Narnia. Thanks again.
The last part is something that I do at Duolingo Events with Russian classics, happy to find support of Mr. Arguelles on how useful it can be.
And I am happy to find corroboration for this as well: thank you!
A wonderful video professor, thanks.
You are very welcome.
Learning both Modern and Ancient Greek, here, with a heavy emphasis on Koine. Focusing much less on Biblical Hebrew, and have placed my Latin on hold until I get good at Greek.
You describe here the kind of sacrifices we all sometimes have to make in order to concentrate more on brining one up a significant notch. Best of success to you in your studies!
Intensive reading with Kindle is great with its built in dictionary/ translator
Thank you professor
You are very welcome
I think an internet connection along with apps and translators gets rid of so many of the problems you associated with intensive reading. You no longer need to flip through a dictionary when you can get the translation instantaneously by touching the screen!
Highlighting words and having them give you an automatic translation is not the same thing as intensive reading.
Dr. Arguelles, first off - thanks for sharing your wisdom and tips with us! I just watched your video on The Harry Potter Stage and immediately ordered the Latin, English, and Ancient Greek versions.
Question: can you suggest any Sanskrit materials that might ease the learning burden? Good graded readers? Must-have grammars? Anything that perhaps provides Sanskrit in comparison to Latin/Greek so as to learn by analogy etc?
You are very welcome. For Sanskrit, you should get The Ramopakhyana - the Story of Rama in the Mahabharata An Independent Study Reader in Sanskrit, by Peter Scharf, published by Routledge Curzon.
@@ProfASAr thanks, again - this recommendation is just the sorta thing I was looking for!
I can do something even "worse" to intensive reading with 75% comprehension. I directly start reading a dictionary as a book. And the "bad" thing about it is I really like to do this, its fun and pleasant to me, but it surely doesnt lead me to fluency fast. I even copy half of dictionary entries by hand into my notebooks. I have fun and I directly forget all the words. I only remember that I have seen before. and I start doing these things directly from day one if I can already read the script well. if the script is new to me I train the sctipt for around one year and then directly start with native content which is even hard for natives, dictionaries, wikipedia pages ... I sometimes try to memorize verses from poems (I dont understand, cheating with a translation, its memorizing syllables and orthography, but it is fun to me.
Thanks for confirming "different strokes for different folks."
I understand about 95% of a text written in Catalan. About 97% of Spanish and Italian. And 98% of a text written in English or French.
From a Portuguese base, correct?
@@ProfASAr Correct. One would suppose that I would understand more Spanish than English and French, but I had a lot more exposure to English than to Spanish. And while I can understand spoken Spanish better than spoken French, I have read substantially more in French than in Spanish, which explains my percentages in the previous comment. I read Les misérables in French on my kindle. It took me about 5 years (on and off) to finish reading it. I started the book having to use the dictionary every 6 or 7 words. I didn't count, but it seemed that frequent. By the end of the book, I would look up a word out 20 approx. Of course, I consumed more material in French during that period, but I owe perhaps the knowledge of more than a thousand words (wild guess, as I don't takes notes) in French solely to Victor Hugo.
Thank you for your information
You are very welcome.
Dan Brown was a rather poignant recommendation with your history of langugaes ;^)
Thanks for this, I prefer to learn by reading as it forces you into the thoughts of someone in that language and requires you to learn the alphabet handidly.
Languages* This darn website no longer lets me edit on mobile it seems
I am glad you found it useful. Embarrassing typos that we only see after we hit send are the bane of digital existence. I do think the machines cause them at times...
Any tips for dialling down perfectionism while reading? I have a real problem with that: i.e. wanting to understand absolutely everything about a particular passage to the point where I'm Googling every word and reference I don't understand, my pace slows to a crawl, and all the joy of reading evaporates. Maybe ditching the tech would be a good start? Underlining things to look up later, and if I never bother to look some of them up, then I guess it means I can live with not knowing them? Okay, maybe I just answered my own question. Anyway, great video, as always! I really admire your enthusiasm for words and language!
Indeed, you did answer your own question: ditch the tech! Good luck to you, and thanks for the appreciation.
Happy late birthday! Also, sorry for commenting on an unrelated post but I just got my assimil books for Spanish and Arabic and just finished taking notes on the shadowing technique! But, I got confused should I do each stage till I cannot or cycle through them on day 1. Like with stage one being blind shadowing, just to blind shadow until I get tired of it like for days or to blind shadow till I get tired of it then do stage 2 in that same day? I already know a bit in the languages I'm learning so I'm not sure sorry for asking if this was obvious I just couldn't figure it out. Have a good night!!! and hope you stay well!
Hello Mikr and thank you for the kind wishes. I can't give you guidance for how to shadow in bits in pieces in a comment section. If you are just starting out with Spanish and Arabic simultaneously with Assimil and you want to be sure to get off to a good footing, then you might consider enrolling in the language learner's support group, where we can work out a schedule for you and help you understand and stick to it.
I've never heard of anything like this and I'm definitely going to try it with one of my weaker languages (Spanish) in which I reckon that I'm at about the 95-6% level. Moreover, I think it would work wonderfully with scriptorium if one were to write out the best passages with attention to detail. I do, however, have one question regarding this: is this method better with several hundred page novels or short stories?
Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the appreciation and asking for clarification about an important point that is often overlooked when people talk about extensive reading. It really is supposed to be literally extensive, i.e., applied to long texts. Therefore, it works better for novels, although short-story collections by the same author also work, and indeed are easier because that connecting thread does not have to be held as long.
That makes sense. Thank you!
@@ProfASAr May I ask for the reason? I guess it has something to do with the repetition of the words.
That "Diary Of A Wimpy Kid in Latin" reference/allegory was hilarious!
I am glad you caught it and appreciated it!
There is a Latin translation titled "Commentarii de Inepto Puero".
@@tmhc72_gtg22c Which was translated by the Vatican lexicographer, Msgr. Daniel Gallagher.
I'm a Russian native speaker and I want to read in English without encountering unknown words or at least as many as in my native tongue. I think I'm getting there as I'm at that 95-98% comprehension level depending on an author. Reading something like Adam Douglas is around 98% I guess but Lovecraft is at 95%. Though I spent last 6 months of intensive reading and I guess it hepled a lot but it feels so eternal to reach that point when you can understand like 99%
Btw my French is at around 90% and completely understanding a story is hard though I didn't really reach so called basic fluency in French. For me it's that point when you can understand a spoken language with no difficulty and it's kinda easy to think in that language. You can do that by watching a lot of shows, movies, TV series in a target language and it can make your accent better and boost your listening, recognizing accents and all that kind of stuff
Thank you for the substantive comment providing your interesting experience in this area.
@@ProfASAr I think there's a huge rise in polyglottary and language learning in general especially among young people because of the Internet. Even talking about me, I'm from small village in the south of Siberia and if it weren't for the Internet, I wouldn't have a mass exposure to the English language.
Have you heard about Japanese learning community? There're various online communities that have approaches based on immersion and comprehensible input. The most known is AJATT (All Japanese All The Time)
Here's a video on this topic are th-cam.com/video/KygsjMUj_C0/w-d-xo.html
I actually love concrete nouns.
Good thing, if you contemplate it.
@@ProfASAr Because they're so easy to learn, they're low-hanging fruit. I find it very satisfactory to know the names of things. Having to memorize concepts, especially those that don't exist in your native tongue, can be a pain in the ass.
Thank you for the guided lecture. I have been learning japanese for a few months and still in the beginner phase which i understood hira and kana. I have hit a wall where i am confused on which path do i need to focus first. Do i go learning vocab or grammar or just diving into children book. Thank you professor
Based on what you have written, I would say that you need to study Japanese grammar and vocabulary for longer than a few months before you attempt children's books.
@@ProfASAr understood thanks
Readings within translation sense......target particular meanings...self balance between literature...
Thanks for commenting.
Hi there, just wonder which 98% vocab coverage testing website were you talking about? Since English is my foreign language, I couldn't spell that out, thanks
The main researcher behind the whole idea of extensive reading is named Paul Nation. On his website, he has tests you can take to see how many English word families you know: www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources/vocabulary-tests
@@ProfASAr Cheers, thanks
Hello professor
If our comprehension is an 80 per cent what should we do to reach the 96 per cent level?
Intensive and/or realistic reading.
@@ProfASAr Thanks!
Dear Dr. Arguelles, I couldn't help but be reminded of a video that a friend of mine did not too long ago about a similar practice, though with a few differences. I'm not necessarily asking you to say anything about it, but just in case you hadn't seen his video before, you might find it find it interesting to see what others say about a similar practice.
th-cam.com/video/JTWKpNy96EM/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for providing this link! No, I hadn't seen it before, but it looks excellent for doing something similar to this while one is still in the learning / textbook stage.
The 75% and 90% indeed look intimidating. But I am not convinced: neither by your argument nor by Paul Nation's.
In many situations, such as learning a language related to one that is known, the unknown words are not featureless black rectangles but, instead, strings of letters with, often, some glimmer of a cognate beneath their surface. And even when they seem nonsense syllables (or when the language is not related), there is at least the possibility of remembering the word, or noticing if one meet it again. This contrasts to the black rectangles, which offer no clues or hints or (true or false) cognates, or even features by which one could recognize them later. 75%, IF in a known story ("Harry Potter" e.g.--or, in days of yore, the Bible), AND with vaguely sensed cognates swimming beneath the surface, AND with real words offering the possibility of re-recognition: this becomes possible. Even: if one knew the passage from Herodotus in English, and one paused on the unknown Greek words (that one knew, very roughly, what they had to mean), one would be picking up quite a lot from context.
Or at least, some would: including myself. This takes a high tolerance for ambiguity, however! MY procedure is to read for pleasure, pausiing to wonder or admire both content and expression, and (reading on a e-reader) touching the word if I just HAPPEN to WANT to: MUCH easier than looking up in a dictionary.
Btw, realistic reading's great new friend is the e-reader that can open a dictionary by touching the word.
You are quite right that we do not see unknown words as black rectangles but can guess and tease information out of them. However, if you don't have that 98% level, you will soon loose the thread of any longer connected narrative.
I get my woman to read books in English aloud by herself while I'm sitting next to her, and then translate each sentence one by one. If she doesn't understand something or understand in wrong, I correct her. It seems to be effective so far
That sounds like intensive one-on-one work!
😮g😅p
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Thank you professor
You are very welcome