I believe in freeflow listening more so than freeflow reading. I’m ok with getting the gist and many of the details while listening but that level of ambiguity is unacceptable to me while reading. I will only read texts without enabling furigana or romaji, as that is the only reading that is enjoyable to me and the only style that gives me a feeling of accomplishment. If I’m sounding out words using pronunciation crutches, I’m better off listening to the lesson because I can understand what I’m hearing plus I get the reinforcement of proper pronunciation. With French, I only do listening unless the information or the story is only available in text with no audio (mostly news stories and posts I find interesting in Quora).
Oh yea, t_harangi mentioned in this post that he used only reading/listening to books with their audiobooks to study Spanish (at least in the phase he was in at the time). My Spanish From A0 Reading Experiment - Language Forum @ ....
But he didn’t say he only listened to them, why aren’t you reading anything you watch/listen to ever? I know with visuals for TV shows (or TPRS lessons) can give you clues of what’s going on and what words can mean, but listening to audiobooks that’s not the case. I usually watch what I read, sometimes before, sometimes after. Sometimes I don’t have a transcript so I do it just to test my listening ability.
That is a good question. I have been watching TV shows every day (without missing a single day). I have been watching them for the last 13 months (that’s when I started my language journey from a zero beginner). Basically two reasons for not reading anything that I watch.
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Outside my house when I interact with native speakers- I do not have any access to subtitles or any external aid. I need to train my ears to understand unfiltered spontaneous conversations. It is very hard but you have to keep at it.
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I have been carefully analyzing the behavior of my “subconscious mind” and it is my bold hypothesis that using any sort of aid during the process of watching TV shows hampers the process of “activation” of our subconscious mind.
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Once your subconscious mind is “activated”, you realize that you do not need to know so many words in a conversation. Only a word or two carry the “crux” of the message. Therefore, it feels like the whole conversation takes place on a subconscious level. It is a far superior way to understand each and every word in the conversation to infer the overall meaning.
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Not only the subconscious mind is good at identifying the meanings of words through contextual clues it even has the ability to use the right words/phrases in the right context at the right time.
P.S: t_harangi, pretty much nailed my whole experience of learning German. However, you need patience. In addition, I belong to Matt’s school of thought as well. You can “super-speed” this language acquisition process by bombarding your brain with hours and hours of language exposure.
The moment I stopped analyzing every bit of context was the moment I made a breakthrough.
I read 2000 words a day (you can think of it as 1 chapter of a Japanese light novel) and I usually read in full page view (instead of sentence view, which allows you to easily look up the sentence).
Works for me - even if I don’t understand every bit of detail. My reasoning for this method is:
a) it’s more enjoyable
b) I can read faster with less disruption
c) Even if I were to look up every bit of detail, I’d forget it by the end of the novel
d) I understand the story just fine without having to look up every detail.
The last part (d) requires me to find content that isn’t too difficult. So I aim to import content that contains 10-20% unknown words.
I find at B1 I can free-read easily, understanding nearly everything in context. What helps me improve is noticing how phrases are constructed, rather than stopping whenever I encounter strange vocabulary.
As certain expressions and words appear with regularity, I refine my LingQ definition using a standard French dictionary, as opposed to a bilingual one. This second, more active form of reading might seem slow and painstaking, but it really forces me to understand the nuances of the word and own it. In that sense, I’m making discoveries and still having fun.
thanks for useful tips
I think that you have brought up a brilliant point here, but this is more of an intermediate to advanced thing, for beginners I recommend only the words that are necessary and that you can for sure not get out of context
Good points to think about. I find that I need to do both. Sometimes I read for fun, as long as I am getting the gist of what I am reading. And sometimes I read to “study” and try to tease apart the meaning more particularly. I think both contribute to my learning. If I always made sure I knew every word, I would not really enjoy reading as much as I do (in French). But if I never took time to review phrases and sentences more carefully, I would miss meanings I need to learn. So I think they do best hand in hand.