So continuing my journey of learning Spanish as always I have been importing books and news articles and upon reading a book I loose interest and just find myself just skipping through the pages and just converting the blue words into known if I can guess them and converting the yellow words slowing into known.
I find myself losing interest really quickly in text and articles that I just skip through them only looking for the blue words.
Any advise on this would be great I feel like I have progressed a lot with my Spanish but am yet so far far away.
it might be a good idea I have been literally smashing it but then I feel like if I stop all the potential progression I could of made will make me feel behind.
It might be the case that at first, however Steve has said in many of his videos that taking a break actually helps in the long run. Once you start again after a short break (maybe a week or few) you’ll feel that you have lost a part of what you learn but once you go back to your daily routine you will noticed that a lot of what you thought you lost, you have actually consolidated.
Also I think “mental fatigue” can slow you down in the long run, for the last 3 months or more I have concentrated exclusively on German. Read articles and books and so on, I felt that I did improved (to an extent) and I felt good about it but in the last few weeks it felt more like torture. I even started to question myself why do I even learn languages, not just German but in general. I switched to doing a little bit of French and watched a few episodes and read through the transcripts of Cuentame (a Spanish program).
I almost immediately felt better and rediscovered my eager to learn languages. I study a few languages simultaneously and generally what I do is I read books (with the help of lingq obviously). I love reading so I tend to read at a quite quick pace and there has been at least a few times where I have felt like you, what you are describing a short break form the language you are studying will do a lot more good than bad in the long run.
you might be right don’t get me wrong I love the progression I have made with my Spanish and love speaking it but I keep on having to push myself to find somewhat interesting articles or books or whatever and me being the type of person to have only have read 1 book in English by choice is really difficult hahah! so I think I am still going to continue my 1 hour minimum of listening Per day but take a little break with the extensive reading which I have been doing a lot of these past months and perhaps start fresh on Monday when I re-motivate myself.
I think you just hit the bullseye. If you don’t read books in your native language, then you probably won’t enjoy reading books in a foreign language. Try to think of things you do enjoy reading (or even just doing) in English, and then read that stuff in Spanish. If you like football, read football articles in Spanish. If you like TV/movies, read show reviews etc in Spanish. If you like music, import lyrics from Spanish songs and use that as your reading, etc. You’ve got to do stuff you enjoy otherwise you will lose your motivation. So if reading books isn’t your thing, find out what is and do that. ¡Suerte!
Thanks for the feedback! Don’t get me wrong there are things I do enjoy reading and I do try to find a Spanish version of that but yeah it’s hard when even in my own native language I’m nothing like an avid reader haha!
Have you thought about taking a bit of time to practice other forms of the language? What if someone here in an English-speaking country read all day in English, added in an hour of watching television a day, and spoke English once a week for an hour? They didn’t speak English to anybody else at all, except for one other person. That’s what your regimen has sounded like - it’s been making you progress as far as reading is concerned, but it sounds like you need to jump in that Cadillac and take it for a test drive. Talk, talk, talk… when there’s nobody around, write, write, write. There was a point where I had to talk Spanish every day for a month until it got comfortable (I guess I did this twice, once in country, and once back home.) Now that I can talk and think to myself in Spanish and am back to a more reading regimen, I’ve dropped down to 4 days a week talking in Spanish. Which may sound like a lot, but then again: how many days a week do you speak English? Also, likewise, you can take a dip into writing your ideas out in short, real-life bursts: How many days a week do you write correspondence in English? Text friends in English? During the Super Bowl, I was having a long-running text convo in Spanish with a friend in Mexico, who thought it was cool that he could discuss the Super Bowl with an American. That’s more daily life, and more interpersonal communication, than reading a 20th novel in English or Spanish.
I am lucky in the fact that I have a really good female friend who I speak with everyday in Spanish this is either texts through WhatsApp and voice notes we do both every single day and I do 100% believe that having her to speak to has improved my Spanish, I feel like I’m gonna take a few days off reading and just chill but still do my listening and then restart fresh ready to continue my reading!
Yeah, I think that these frequent changes in routine are good too to keep it fresh. I went through “Spanish podcast” phases, and as much as I recommend making tons of friends in foreign countries and chatting over Whatsapp/Skype/whatever, I’ve changed up that Speak-Every-Day routine and am currently on more of a reading binge. I’ve also gone on Netflix Spanish show binges too. Gotta keep rotating so it feels fresh. The other benefit to doing rotations is that when you come back to an activity, you can visibly see and feel your progress in a way you couldn’t day after day. I just went back to music I haven’t touched in a while, and it was like “Oh wow! Look at these conjugations I can spot in real time, whereas before, I didn’t know more than 6 words to the chorus.” Lately, due to my reading binge, I’ve been trying out words I’ve only seen in print before into my conversation. Bad news though when the word is “ajetreado”, one of those all-vowels-and-a-Spanish-j words that’s impossible for an English speaker to pull of the page, store into memory, and use smoothly in context. That was a complete and funny faceplant, but I could see how this reading has made me gains in the other words I (more successfully) slid into my speaking, words I had gleaned from LingQ.
I am about 4,000 words or more behind you so congrats on your progress. And yet, I am wondering if maybe your word count isn’t quite sufficent for the books you are targeting. In other words, you might want to revisit these books when you are at say 25,000+ word count. I would imagine by then it would be easier to get through these books as you have been able to keep reinforcing all those words you know and so at that point they will be more automatic and less taxing to read.
Instead, I would dare recommend you keep focusing on articles which are shorter and won’t require as much of an attention span. And if you must choose books, right now opt for easier and/or shorter books. This way you will be able to finish them more easily. Or the other thing you could do is read the book in chunks where you read a chapter or two and then read something else and later come back to it.
Finally, I would make sure that the books you choose are in a subject you enjoy reading. For example, if you really like football and the book is about football, you will be willing to put up with the book a bit longer than on some other subject. At the same token, if you start to read a book and realize it isn’t what you hoped for, I would just set it aside and go find something else as you can always go back to it later if you choose.
In terms of reading strategy, I have started to go through each article and click through all the blue marked words and adjusting the yellows. Then, after doing this, I will come back and actually read the article. You could also adjust this to a book by going through the blue words on a certain number of chapters or books before going back and reading through them.
Hi jonesjack, because you’re learning Spanish I will try to give you some advice in that language. Hope it’ll help you XD
PS. Message without accents
Actualmente estoy estudiando tanto ingles como frances aqui en LingQ. En ocasiones me sucede lo mismo que a ti, pierdo el interes en continuar con mi aprendizaje de idiomas.
Un consejo general seria que variaras las actividades que haces. Ver videos en youtube, series y peliculas, leer libros, comics, etc. Escuchar podcasts, audios, etc en tus tiempos muertos (mientras esperas en filas, para el camion o metro, en bancos, al realizar la limpieza de tu casa, etc).
Otro consejo que me ha funcionado es enfocarme en material que me interese. Recientemente me motiva el tema del desarrollo personal, asi que he buscado libros y audios sobre ese tema y he encontrado material fabuloso de Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, AJ Hoge, entre otros.
Resumiendo: Enfocate mas en temas que te apasionen (no solo leer por leer, o por acumular estadisticas aqui en LingQ) y varia tus actividades para evitar aburrimiento.
Summarizing the message above: Focus on topics that you love, subjects that really motivate you a lot and try to vary your activities to avoid boredom.
The consensus seems to be: take a break. That could mean leaving Spanish/language study alltogether, or doing something else…maybe it’s time to start speaking. Maybe start studying grammar (I know it sounds boring, but I actually enjoy studying grammar after I have a solid base in a language). Try writing. Watch some movies.
Whatever you do, just take some time off from normal reading. I guarantee you’ll come back better.
muchas gracias por ustedes ayudo, es graciso porque mas o menos hace sies o oche meses yo penso eso yo podria nunca leer o hablar espanol, ahora puedo!
Sorry for my bad grammar I am was trying this on a keyboard not my phone haha! ( auto correct helps a lot )
New user here. That is me exactly too lol. Don’t worry. Learning an interest for books isn’t hard to be honest. But sticking to it something else lol. I’ve only ever read Animal Farm in my life. I’ve never even read a book in my home language, Afrikaans. Newspaper articles are the best I can do lol. But I’m trying to develop a habit for reading. I got myself the Witcher books, ready player 1 and IT. And I’m slowly reading through them. I was afraid I would hit a wall like you are doing now so I took preemptive measures I agree with the others and take a break, Maybe do some light reading It’s an enjoyable experience and even if you don’t like reading there is always audiobooks. I constantly switch between both to avoid losing interest.
Very interesting suggestion. I like the dual language books that tend to have a bunch of short stories to them especially at the start of learning a language. I have heard others recommend your suggestion of getting books in your original and target language and know it isn’t quite the same because they are writing with the idea of a direct translation and instead looking at the intent. It seems interesting. However, I am curious what people’s experience has been with this idea in practice? Is its main benefit that it allows you to better follow the story and not have your mind drift? Because if I am not mistaken if you upload the foreign version of the book into LingQ it would still give you the ability to look up individual words. I guess what I am wondering about is whether this is an issue of comprehension or one of the story being compelling enough to the person to want to keep reading and figuring it out? Maybe this is even a better strategy when the story isn’t as compelling as it provides a crutch to get around that aspect. For example, I sometimes have this hurdle when watching movies in Spanish as they will often have only English subtitles. This can be distracting for me as I would prefer it to show Spanish subtitles with the Spanish audio and so what can happen is I wonder how much learning I am doing as I catch myself reading the English subtitles. Although I imagine with a Spanish book right there this is less likely to happen.
I agree with the others and take a break, Maybe do some light reading