I noticed that as soon as I started reading German books on a daily basis, my speaking, and capacity to understand improved drastically and instantaneously. I have lived in Berlin for maybe ten months and have made more progress in last last month than during the nine months prior. I also listen to conversational podcasts and German radio daily which is great too. So addictive!
+James Heron I have experienced the same thing with French, although I've noticed that I sometimes have to catch myself before I say something that sounds very literary, and not like natural speech!
Luca your voice is not loud enough to hear. I'm sorry, the context is great yet the volume is low. maybe you guys would consider adding a microphone next time?
I was blaming my hearing problem, since i have tinittus on my right ear, that i had to see the video 4 to 5 times in order to be able to hear such an important information of course the street noise didn't help any!
Which is harder for you, listening or speaking? Work on the skill where you're weakest and eventually you'll be able to converse. Speaking? Try talking to yourself in the language with the help of dictionaries, vocabulary books, and a notebook to write down new words as you look them up in a dictionary. Listening? Buy graded readers, if available, with CD's--so you read each book once and then listen to the CD (audiobook version of the book) several times until you understand most of it. If graded readers aren't available, use textbooks with CD's so you can listen to the dialogs over and over, eventually with the book closed. Lingq was also useful for me in converting my reading skills into listening skills. As your listening and/or speaking improves, your conversation practice sessions will become easier and more fruitful. This has been my experience, anyway.
You could read a book for which an audio book is available. If reading the book is easy then read once with the book and then some time later listen to the audio book without consulting the text, for more practice speak along with the audio book or act out the dialogues between characters. This way can make repeat readings more interesting
I'm reading Harry Potter y la camara secreta. It is certainly above my reading level but that's how I learned to read well in my native language and I'm motivated by fun and nostalgia to read it. However, if I'm tired Pablo Neruda is great :)
I use my Kindle. Built in dictionary and translator makes things so convenient. Plus Kindle Unlimited through my Prime membership gives me a huge library of books in my target language to read for free (well of course I pay yearly for the membership, but it's worth it.)
What are your attitudes and experiences with bilingual books, or translated works? For instance, Professor Argelles has spoken about reading translated familiar works, such as the case of a missionary in the Pacific who learned the language from reading translations of the New Testament, and I've seen others mention the importance of using familiar topics to aid you.
Select one of your favorite books, you can read the same book in every new language you learn. This can be very efficient. I know Luca uses this approach with movies.
This is the ultimate catch-22 situation. 1- Reading is important for language acquisition and vocabulary range... 2- Albeit how do you get to read in a foreign language? Say you want to read Classical Greek. You know the alphabet though nothing else... How to get over the word-by-word checking dictionary phase? Needless to say if it's a language with a complex morphosyntactic system such as Latin.
So you start by reading the reading selections in a number of beginner textbooks, and the grammar information in the textbooks will help you. Next read readers designed for intermediate learners. When you want to try reading real works, try reading short portions of them, alongside translations that others have made into your own language. It's all reading, and it will all help you. But, you might have to learn a lot of grammar before you can get very far, depending on the language. I found this to be the case with Japanese.
By the way, you'd be surprised what has been translated into Latin: Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, The Little Prince, Dr. Seuss books, The Giving Tree, The Hobbit, and Alice in Wonderland. Project Gutenberg has some free works in both Latin and English that you can read side-by-side. Harry Potter has also been translated into ancient Greek.
Great, thanks guys, I learnt a lot from your talk: Read interesting short articles; Read extensively and intensively; and, Digest and use the words and the ideas behind them.
Great advice on the importance of reading to achieve a high level of proficiency in a language. Thanks! For the question of how to read and lookup words - you may like to try out my web-app readlang.com which streamlines the kind of method mentioned here. It allows you to: 1. Read articles, novels or websites. 2. Click on words, or drag across phrases to translate. 3. Every word is stored to your account along with it's context sentence for you to study later with flashcards. Please drop me some feedback if you try it out, I'm always looking for ways to improve it!
It looks like an inexpensive substitute for Lingq if audio is not important or if someone already has the audio file to go with each text. However, there are a couple of free applications that do much of the same. On a positive note, I like the large font and the clean, simple look of your site. And it could be used on PC's on which (for whatever reason) the free apps can't be installed. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Luca I have a way I learn by reading if that's okay. First I read for recognition and not comprehension until i know how to speak the words and see them quickly after reading a large amount of material(no transcripts) with a pop up dictionary or any kind to help with pronunciation but not the translation. I've been able to read a paragraph or two in about 3 or more days ago. After that when I come across words I keep seeing frequently I then use the dictionary for meaning. Oh, and I it's good for grammar because by the time I read a lesson I've already came across what was in the lesson already because it's easier to recognize that to recall! But what do you think and if so could you make a video about this.
My French vocabulary and skills (listening, speaking, conversation, reading) were all poor until I read a bunch of easy, graded readers (which I found at Continental Book Company, though I ended up buying some of them from AbeBooks because CBC doesn't keep everything in stock). Eventually, I was ready to try children's and teen novels such as the French translations of _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_, young Indiana Jones novels (called Indiana Jones Jr. in French) and _City of Ember._ Especially in the young Indy novels, I still don't know half the words and have to read for the gist of meaning, but I can certainly follow the story and rarely look any word up in the dictionary as I read. Now I'm ready for non-fiction, so I read news articles from RFI and I'm starting a middle school textbook which I found on Amazon. Meanwhile, I'm also buying easy readers with CD's so I can listen to the CD's as easy audiobooks to improve my listening skills. Soon, I'll move up to TH-cam videos in French and radio programs. Once I can follow the radio in French, I'll really feel like I've finally mastered the language. I'm also getting some conversation practice on Skype via italki. My point is that it would have taken me a lot longer to reach this point, I believe, if I hadn't done so much extensive reading with graded readers first. But note that I already had a firm foundation of grammar when I started.
J’ai bien aimé cette vidéo ! Ces deux polyglottes fournissent beaucoup de motivation à moi et je sais qu’ils ont fait pareil aux autres. D’ailleurs, y a-t-il quelque chose à lire (en français) que vous me recommanderiez ?
Dear Luca, In one of your videos, I think it was this one, you mentioned a language map. I want to see which languages are related to each other, for curiosity, and then maybe study themacourding to what group they're in so I can study all of the related ones, so they are easier to learn, and then move on to another language family, but there are many language maps and to make things simple I want to see one that has all of the languages catalogued by linguists in the world, if that is possible, but do you know where to find such a map, because it's hard to find one that is so complete, and the ones I do find seem to show the map of languages spoken in one section of the world, not the whole world, so is there a language map of all the languages spoken in the world? And if there is, where could I find one? Thank you!
I think you want to search for lexical distance between languages. For example Italian and Spanish have a very short lexical distance because the vocabulary is so similar.
I love your videos!!! What do you think about reading through the movies with the subtitles? What is better a book or a movie with subtitles in the target language?
dude, first work on your grammar. The sentence should be: "My friend, please how do you memorize a foreign word." Your translating directly from your native language and it sounds incredibly weird and it's very difficult to understand. Try to pay attention to the ORDER of words, and the way natives express ideas in English. With your current understanding of grammar, even if you memorized every word in the dictionary people still would not be able to understand you.
It will take time to learn grammar, but the goal is to communicate. You have done that, because I can understand your question well enough. What I do to learn words is take simple internet courses in the language, and get language books, including a dictionary and a grammar book.. I copy words and organize them in categories in a notebook. And I make flashcards. I test myself every day with the word lists and flashcards.
If you live in the country that doesn't mean you'll have conversations with people to train speaking. I mean if it wasn't at school I know lots of you already finished it ,sow if it wasn't at school with my friends I wasn't having conversations with people. I mean you don't go to a stranger on the road and just start talking There's where I'm having more difficulty can you help me there?
I disagree with Luca about reading short articles being easier than reading books. In my experience reading books is a lot easier because when reading a thick book you have same context for about 300 pages, and it is easier than having totally new context every couple page as when reading short stories or articles.
You misunderstood. Reading an article is not easier because it is intrinsically, but because it is shorter. Knowing you'll get to the end of an article in 20minutes is more encouraging than having to think you'll struggle for 300 pages. As you pointed out correctly, books become easier to read as we advance through the pages, however the problem is that most people don't get to page 300. They give up. Reading a short and intense article gives you quality time with the language and allows you to walk away feeling you've accomplished something substantial almost always. Furthermore, it's a repeatable process which makes it easier to stay consistent and win often. This puts one into a success spiral, which is essentially momentum - very important for achieving anything in life. Doing too much too soon is one of the main reasons learners burnout and give up. Reading articles is a way to access a language and build your competence, while spending quality time with a language regularly, and at the same time reduce frustration and the risk of burnout. Win/Win Definitely the way to go when getting started.
***** First of all, I think the message of this video(which is "Read!") is the best advice you can give to a language learner. But in my experience, when you have read the first article in the language you learn you feel like a champion. You have kind of same feeling when muddled through the second one and maybe third. Then you start feeling like you have been reading a bunch of nothing and it's not getting any easier, every new article is the same struggle like the one before. Reading a book on the other hand is painful for about first 20 pages, then it starts flowing, you feel it getting easier and easier page after page. And when you finish it, it feels like something. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but reading 300 page book is less of a struggle and less of an undertaking than reading 10 average sized articles. Anyway, great advice from Luka and great interviewing from you, David.
I like reading scientific articles. I'm not a big fan of fiction. Also, the level of language is much easier to understand on articles than on fiction. It's also shorter, so it is much easier to commit.
+Alex Borovinskih I agree in some ways, as I discovered when working through a French translation of The Hobbit. (BTW, it's helpful to read a translation of a book that you've already read in your native language so that you (a) don't miss out when you don't understand a section very well, and (b) have some context so that the book makes sense despite limitations in understanding.) If you stick with the same book, however, there is likely to be far less variation in vocabulary, since the whole book will be on more or less the same subject and written in the same style, by the same author. This is good for reinforcement, but not as much for acquiring a varied vocabulary. My advice is to read both, probably starting with articles, then beginning a novel after sufficient vocabulary has been acquired.
If you start reading in English I recommend Jurassic Park. It's not that difficult and interesting. In the book there was one big tyrannosaurus and one smaller. Don't remember if they had that in the movie.
A questo momento non posso leggere spesso l'italiano perché ho deciso di imparare anche l'ungherese. Ho voglia di muovere a Budapest per insegnare l'inglese così ho cominciato di studiare la lingua. È una lingua molto diverso e anche molto difficile della mia lingua madre e anche l'italian così devo studiare molto e poi non ho tempo per l'italiano. Ho paura che dimenticherò tutto l'italiano che so. There are not enough hours in the day!
RICKtoSICK10 I sometimes do to practice pronunciation and to speak with more fluidity, I would recommend that you at least try it because it’s quite useful
The Study System that Will Unlock Your Potential to Master Any Language: www.lucalampariello.com/free-3-video-training/
I noticed that as soon as I started reading German books on a daily basis, my speaking, and capacity to understand improved drastically and instantaneously. I have lived in Berlin for maybe ten months and have made more progress in last last month than during the nine months prior. I also listen to conversational podcasts and German radio daily which is great too. So addictive!
Your comment is very interesting !
+James Heron I have experienced the same thing with French, although I've noticed that I sometimes have to catch myself before I say something that sounds very literary, and not like natural speech!
James Heron what would you recommend to read sorry I know you posted this a long time ago.
David is one of the best interviewers in the world.
Facts!! 💯💯💯❤
Luca your voice is not loud enough to hear. I'm sorry, the context is great yet the volume is low. maybe you guys would consider adding a microphone next time?
Plus the background sounds...
I was blaming my hearing problem, since i have tinittus on my right ear, that i had to see the video 4 to 5 times in order to be able to hear such an important information of course the street noise didn't help any!
It was the very first time when I was so exited about bad sound! Thank you guys for street noise it helps to get some listening sort of hardness.
Read is easy , speak fluently without reading is the hard part.
Which is harder for you, listening or speaking? Work on the skill where you're weakest and eventually you'll be able to converse. Speaking? Try talking to yourself in the language with the help of dictionaries, vocabulary books, and a notebook to write down new words as you look them up in a dictionary. Listening? Buy graded readers, if available, with CD's--so you read each book once and then listen to the CD (audiobook version of the book) several times until you understand most of it. If graded readers aren't available, use textbooks with CD's so you can listen to the dialogs over and over, eventually with the book closed. Lingq was also useful for me in converting my reading skills into listening skills. As your listening and/or speaking improves, your conversation practice sessions will become easier and more fruitful. This has been my experience, anyway.
You could read a book for which an audio book is available. If reading the book is easy then read once with the book and then some time later listen to the audio book without consulting the text, for more practice speak along with the audio book or act out the dialogues between characters. This way can make repeat readings more interesting
I love the way that you teach languages...I really appreciate....!!! A great hug!!!
I'm reading Harry Potter y la camara secreta. It is certainly above my reading level but that's how I learned to read well in my native language and I'm motivated by fun and nostalgia to read it. However, if I'm tired Pablo Neruda is great :)
randomly, I had been reading the manga murcielago and learned that it means "bat" (animal) from harry potter
I use my Kindle. Built in dictionary and translator makes things so convenient. Plus Kindle Unlimited through my Prime membership gives me a huge library of books in my target language to read for free (well of course I pay yearly for the membership, but it's worth it.)
Fantastic - thank you so much David and Luca. Starting to read in Thai and this has given me excellent ideas for my strategy.
Very interesting video. One of the best I've seen on the topic. Thank you!
What are your attitudes and experiences with bilingual books, or translated works? For instance, Professor Argelles has spoken about reading translated familiar works, such as the case of a missionary in the Pacific who learned the language from reading translations of the New Testament, and I've seen others mention the importance of using familiar topics to aid you.
Select one of your favorite books, you can read the same book in every new language you learn. This can be very efficient. I know Luca uses this approach with movies.
I enjoy watching your video luca, unfortunately the quality of the audio was compromised by the outside noise.
It's to develop your listening comprehension.
Good timing, I've just started the HTLAL Super CHallenge 100 books & 100 films.
You are guys great! Useful and interesting as always!
This is the ultimate catch-22 situation.
1- Reading is important for language acquisition and vocabulary range...
2- Albeit how do you get to read in a foreign language?
Say you want to read Classical Greek. You know the alphabet though nothing else... How to get over the word-by-word checking dictionary phase?
Needless to say if it's a language with a complex morphosyntactic system such as Latin.
So you start by reading the reading selections in a number of beginner textbooks, and the grammar information in the textbooks will help you. Next read readers designed for intermediate learners. When you want to try reading real works, try reading short portions of them, alongside translations that others have made into your own language. It's all reading, and it will all help you. But, you might have to learn a lot of grammar before you can get very far, depending on the language. I found this to be the case with Japanese.
By the way, you'd be surprised what has been translated into Latin: Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, The Little Prince, Dr. Seuss books, The Giving Tree, The Hobbit, and Alice in Wonderland. Project Gutenberg has some free works in both Latin and English that you can read side-by-side. Harry Potter has also been translated into ancient Greek.
The Bible has been translated into virtually every language on Earth. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and in most countries it is easy to find.
@@jayp9715 because the Bible is the:
Basic
Instruction
Before
Leaving
Earth
Great, thanks guys, I learnt a lot from your talk:
Read interesting short articles;
Read extensively and intensively; and,
Digest and use the words and the ideas behind them.
Great advice on the importance of reading to achieve a high level of proficiency in a language. Thanks!
For the question of how to read and lookup words - you may like to try out my web-app readlang.com which streamlines the kind of method mentioned here. It allows you to:
1. Read articles, novels or websites.
2. Click on words, or drag across phrases to translate.
3. Every word is stored to your account along with it's context sentence for you to study later with flashcards.
Please drop me some feedback if you try it out, I'm always looking for ways to improve it!
It looks like an inexpensive substitute for Lingq if audio is not important or if someone already has the audio file to go with each text. However, there are a couple of free applications that do much of the same. On a positive note, I like the large font and the clean, simple look of your site. And it could be used on PC's on which (for whatever reason) the free apps can't be installed. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Luca I have a way I learn by reading if that's okay.
First I read for recognition and not comprehension until i know how to speak the words and see them quickly after reading a large amount of material(no transcripts) with a pop up dictionary or any kind to help with pronunciation but not the translation. I've been able to read a paragraph or two in about 3 or more days ago. After that when I come across words I keep seeing frequently I then use the dictionary for meaning. Oh, and I it's good for grammar because by the time I read a lesson I've already came across what was in the lesson already because it's easier to recognize that to recall! But what do you think and if so could you make a video about this.
❤ Tfs, this GREAT reading tip... I will add this to my lang learning journey! Have a great day!! 😊
My French vocabulary and skills (listening, speaking, conversation, reading) were all poor until I read a bunch of easy, graded readers (which I found at Continental Book Company, though I ended up buying some of them from AbeBooks because CBC doesn't keep everything in stock). Eventually, I was ready to try children's and teen novels such as the French translations of _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_, young Indiana Jones novels (called Indiana Jones Jr. in French) and _City of Ember._ Especially in the young Indy novels, I still don't know half the words and have to read for the gist of meaning, but I can certainly follow the story and rarely look any word up in the dictionary as I read. Now I'm ready for non-fiction, so I read news articles from RFI and I'm starting a middle school textbook which I found on Amazon. Meanwhile, I'm also buying easy readers with CD's so I can listen to the CD's as easy audiobooks to improve my listening skills. Soon, I'll move up to TH-cam videos in French and radio programs. Once I can follow the radio in French, I'll really feel like I've finally mastered the language. I'm also getting some conversation practice on Skype via italki. My point is that it would have taken me a lot longer to reach this point, I believe, if I hadn't done so much extensive reading with graded readers first. But note that I already had a firm foundation of grammar when I started.
really good video, so read in my own language and study and read in my target language..
1.58 David: *Im watching you!*
J’ai bien aimé cette vidéo ! Ces deux polyglottes fournissent beaucoup de motivation à moi et je sais qu’ils ont fait pareil aux autres. D’ailleurs, y a-t-il quelque chose à lire (en français) que vous me recommanderiez ?
Should we be reading out loud???
Someone said to read not out loud, I think is better so...
perché hai concesso inserzioni pubblicitarie sui tuoi video, Luca?
video molto interessante ad ogni modo
Dear Luca,
In one of your videos, I think it was this one, you mentioned a language map. I want to see which languages are related to each other, for curiosity, and then maybe study themacourding to what group they're in so I can study all of the related ones, so they are easier to learn, and then move on to another language family, but there are many language maps and to make things simple I want to see one that has all of the languages catalogued by linguists in the world, if that is possible, but do you know where to find such a map, because it's hard to find one that is so complete, and the ones I do find seem to show the map of languages spoken in one section of the world, not the whole world, so is there a language map of all the languages spoken in the world? And if there is, where could I find one?
Thank you!
I think you want to search for lexical distance between languages. For example Italian and Spanish have a very short lexical distance because the vocabulary is so similar.
I love your videos!!! What do you think about reading through the movies with the subtitles? What is better a book or a movie with subtitles in the target language?
My friend how to please a foreign word memorization is done
dude, first work on your grammar. The sentence should be: "My friend, please how do you memorize a foreign word." Your translating directly from your native language and it sounds incredibly weird and it's very difficult to understand. Try to pay attention to the ORDER of words, and the way natives express ideas in English. With your current understanding of grammar, even if you memorized every word in the dictionary people still would not be able to understand you.
It will take time to learn grammar, but the goal is to communicate. You have done that, because I can understand your question well enough. What I do to learn words is take simple internet courses in the language, and get language books, including a dictionary and a grammar book.. I copy words and organize them in categories in a notebook. And I make flashcards. I test myself every day with the word lists and flashcards.
Ciao Luca, ma il libro che stavi scrivendo a che punto è?
try bilingual books, you don't need to check the words in the dictionary
Should I be reading out loud??
No
If you live in the country that doesn't mean you'll have conversations with people to train speaking.
I mean if it wasn't at school I know lots of you already finished it ,sow if it wasn't at school with my friends I wasn't having conversations with people.
I mean you don't go to a stranger on the road and just start talking
There's where I'm having more difficulty can you help me there?
Thanks From Egypt
I disagree with Luca about reading short articles being easier than reading books. In my experience reading books is a lot easier because when reading a thick book you have same context for about 300 pages, and it is easier than having totally new context every couple page as when reading short stories or articles.
You misunderstood.
Reading an article is not easier because it is intrinsically, but because it is shorter. Knowing you'll get to the end of an article in 20minutes is more encouraging than having to think you'll struggle for 300 pages. As you pointed out correctly, books become easier to read as we advance through the pages, however the problem is that most people don't get to page 300. They give up.
Reading a short and intense article gives you quality time with the language and allows you to walk away feeling you've accomplished something substantial almost always. Furthermore, it's a repeatable process which makes it easier to stay consistent and win often. This puts one into a success spiral, which is essentially momentum - very important for achieving anything in life.
Doing too much too soon is one of the main reasons learners burnout and give up. Reading articles is a way to access a language and build your competence, while spending quality time with a language regularly, and at the same time reduce frustration and the risk of burnout.
Win/Win
Definitely the way to go when getting started.
***** First of all, I think the message of this video(which is "Read!") is the best advice you can give to a language learner. But in my experience, when you have read the first article in the language you learn you feel like a champion. You have kind of same feeling when muddled through the second one and maybe third. Then you start feeling like you have been reading a bunch of nothing and it's not getting any easier, every new article is the same struggle like the one before. Reading a book on the other hand is painful for about first 20 pages, then it starts flowing, you feel it getting easier and easier page after page. And when you finish it, it feels like something. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but reading 300 page book is less of a struggle and less of an undertaking than reading 10 average sized articles. Anyway, great advice from Luka and great interviewing from you, David.
I like reading scientific articles. I'm not a big fan of fiction. Also, the level of language is much easier to understand on articles than on fiction. It's also shorter, so it is much easier to commit.
+Alex Borovinskih I agree in some ways, as I discovered when working through a French translation of The Hobbit. (BTW, it's helpful to read a translation of a book that you've already read in your native language so that you (a) don't miss out when you don't understand a section very well, and (b) have some context so that the book makes sense despite limitations in understanding.)
If you stick with the same book, however, there is likely to be far less variation in vocabulary, since the whole book will be on more or less the same subject and written in the same style, by the same author. This is good for reinforcement, but not as much for acquiring a varied vocabulary.
My advice is to read both, probably starting with articles, then beginning a novel after sufficient vocabulary has been acquired.
Hi guys.very interesting.. но шум с улицы мешает.
If you start reading in English I recommend Jurassic Park. It's not that difficult and interesting. In the book there was one big tyrannosaurus and one smaller. Don't remember if they had that in the movie.
very helpful, thank you! x
Great!
me gusta mucho lo que oigo en tu canal.una manera estupenda de practicar jaja
there's a lot of noise at the background, that make the thing difficult to understand for me.....
A questo momento non posso leggere spesso l'italiano perché ho deciso di imparare anche l'ungherese. Ho voglia di muovere a Budapest per insegnare l'inglese così ho cominciato di studiare la lingua. È una lingua molto diverso e anche molto difficile della mia lingua madre e anche l'italian così devo studiare molto e poi non ho tempo per l'italiano. Ho paura che dimenticherò tutto l'italiano che so. There are not enough hours in the day!
baci da palermo ti ammiro tanto
Audio quality... :/
Should I be reading out loud??
RICKtoSICK10 I sometimes do to practice pronunciation and to speak with more fluidity, I would recommend that you at least try it because it’s quite useful