I have been reading “La Isla de Las Tormentas,” a novel by Ken Follett (originally “The Eye of the Needle”) for a few days now and I am on chapter 5 of 38. I have been reading it without the audiobook since I want to go at my own pace (I read pretty slowly) but I was wondering if I should reread chapters every once in a while with the audio? I just did this with chapter 1 and I noticed that I understood it slightly better even at this quick pace at which the audiobook goes. It also gives me a lot more “LingQs learned” and “words read” per day which I am trying to improve for sure. However, I don’t know if this time spent rereading would be more valuable reading new chapters and trying to finish the book so I can continue on to other books and be exposed to more vocabulary and read more words that way. What do most people here do and should I keep rereading with audio?
<<…I noticed that I understood it slightly better even at this quick pace at which the audiobook goes. It also gives me a lot more “LingQs learned” and “words read” per day which I am trying to improve for sure. I don’t know if this time spent rereading would be more valuable reading new chapters and trying to finish the book so I can continue on to other books and be exposed to more vocabulary and read more words that way. >>
This is the crux of the old internal debate: “how much do I need to understand before I move on to something else?”
In the scenario you just described above, it sounds like your re-reading is helping you. I myself have listened and read simultaneously after having looked up all the words and read it through once at my own speed. In fact, I believe that’s the “right” way to do it.
It’s really just a matter of how soon you’re going to get bored doing that. Personally, I have only done this with stories in the lingq library, speeches, short books, and similar. I don’t think I could do it with a full-length novel, chapter by chapter.
I’m sure you’ll find a lot of variations among Lingq users in this issue. The basic advice of acting according to your goals and your motivation applies.
I myself don’t use audiobooks at all. I also find that it imposes an unnatural pace plus I think it’s not a very realistic or satisfying kind of oral input: you don’t typically listen to long, uninterrupted narrations or descriptions. The main goal, IMO, should be to understand conversations and movies and similar material. Therefore, I only read the novels and use different materials for listening practice: online videos, scenes from movies, etc, which are closer to the content I really want to be able to understand and at the same tend to be easier to understand because of the addictional context you get from the images. Typically, there’s no transcript for such a material, which I find positive: it makes for more realistic and challenging. I sometime read synopses of movies as I watch them, to make sure I don’t lose important information.
My current schedule is: read part of a novel and watch some unrelated video material every single day.
So, my advice would be for you to “decouple” your reading and listening contents. In the case of the particular novel you mention, I would just read along and sometimes listen to excerpts from chapters that I have already read to check how much I can understand. I wouldn’t try to listen to the whole story.
Personally, I like audiobooks, including Edward Woodward’s reading of Eye of the Needle. I also like listening to lectures on various topics from decapitated frogs to the battle of Gettysburg, so audiobooks are fine for me. I think in order to get enough repetition, ocationally going back and rereading and following along with the audiobook is useful. For me, it’s partly where I’m at int he language. I certainly need repetition in Hebrew, but in Russian I can usually read and listen separately.