Plus Growing your Vocabulary with Reading
Reading is one of the four core skills that you need to develop when learning a foreign language.
First of all, let’s define what reading is. This might seem like a silly question but reading separate words, phrases and even simple dialogues in your target language, is still not reading per se. What you need to get used to is reading texts. And understanding them of course! So, how do you develop reading at different levels?
Starting to read texts when you are at elementary level is not simple and is very different from reading short phrases and recognising separate words here and there. Reading texts is super important though, as you won’t get too far with your language without it: being able to read and understand texts will take you further from just being able to make an order in a restaurant, ask for directions or sing a happy birthday song to your foreign friend in their language.
Besides, unless your goal of learning your target language is just a little bit for travelling and amusing your friends, you might get bored with “Une table pour deux, s'il vous plaît” kind of phrases after a couple of months of studying such stuff. So, once you have built up your vocabulary and have about 400 words under your belt, you need to grab a book and make it serious.
When starting with reading though, forget about the books for native speakers: they are too difficult for you at this point. And it’s not only words that you won’t be able to understand. Even if you are ok with looking up most of the words in these texts seating comfortably in your favourite armchair, leisurely leafing through a folio of a dictionary and biting off your fruit cake, grammar structures will be way too difficult for you to understand the meaning of the sentences.
What you will need instead is graded readers. These are books specifically designed for language learners. Search for elementary or A1/A2 level books, choose the ones you like and voilà!
Well, actually, even with easy books, this “voilà” of reading will not happen at once. But don’t be discouraged! Taking it step by step or page by page (even paragraph by paragraph at the very start) is absolutely fine. Even with this snail pace of a half-dead frozen tortoise, you will feel elated that you can read and understand some coherent text in your target language! Just don’t be too harsh imposing on yourself a whole chapter or even a few chapters for reading in one go, don’t risk getting fed up with too difficult a task too quickly, keep your reading effort sustainable.
When choosing what to read, you are likely to be not too spoilt for choice, even if the language you are learning is English, German, French or some other widespread tongue. Very often children’s books pop up as an option. So, if you cannot find anything other than books for underaged adventure lovers, you will have to dig out your inner child in you and read on till you progress to the next language level where you will have a wider choice of literary masterpieces. You might actually find reading the books in your target language, that you once read in your native language as a child, really sweet.
If you choose children’s books though, you might want to keep in mind that all these sweet fairy tales and wise fables have a very specific vocabulary. So, unless you are a children's author who has the ambition to translate their books into a foreign language and need to know their dragons, magic wands and fairy dust in this language, you might want to choose very down to earth and contemporary children’s books that tell simple stories about kids going to supermarkets, cinemas and parks with their parents or teenagers getting up to some mischief, making friends and enemies and falling in love for the first time.
Gradually, as you progress to intermediate level, you will be able to understand texts in your target language better and quicker and you will have more books to choose from. Even if you are experiencing language learning plateau, i.e. do not feel that you are developing your reading as fast as you were at elementary level, you need to keep reading in your target language.
First, if you stop reading at this point, there is a risk that your reading skill will deteriorate and it won’t be easy for you to restart reading and build up momentum again. Second, even if you feel that your reading is not as challenging as it was at elementary level and that you are not learning as much, it is important to keep reading as it provides you with your target language input that you need in order to be able to speak and write in this language.
It doesn’t mean, however, that you cannot or shouldn’t step up your reading game. While reading a lot is probably more important than reading more challenging texts at intermediate level, it’s a good idea to introduce new types of texts so that your vocabulary could get more varied. For example, you could start reading a newspaper from time to time (better stick to just one newspaper or news website at first) or some easy history books if you like history and would like to read more and more of such books as you progress with your language.
Once you have built up your language skills to advanced level, you don’t have to search for advanced level books for reading: books written for native speakers should be ok for you to read. Though, of course, it depends on a particular book: even if you are an advanced learner of English, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to read Shakespeare in the original (not every native English speaker can!)
While with elementary level the advice for reading is “Just start!”, for intermediate level, it is “Keep going!”, for advanced level, the recommendation is “Don’t stop!”
So, if you find a particular article or book difficult, it doesn’t mean that you haven’t learnt much or that you will never master your target language. If you try reading an academic article from a scientific periodical in your native language, you might start having doubts that you can speak this language either. So, with reading at advanced level you shouldn’t think about the language too much and focus on the content instead.
Thus, you can switch some of your usual reading, that you do in your native language, to your target language. For example, if you don’t have much time to read for pleasure, your excuse for reading novels could be reading them in your target language. Or you could split the time you allocate to reading news between your native and target languages. A nice bonus of such double news coverage is two different perspectives of the same events.
Whatever language level you are at, elementary, intermediate or advanced, you need to enjoy your reading. So, the texts you choose for reading need to be interesting (at elementary level they should be at least not super boring) and not too difficult for you. Thus you will be able to have immersion experience with your reading which is, actually, the whole point of this activity. Immersing into the language when reading helps your brain to get used to processing large amounts of information in your target language.
Sometimes learners use books with parallel translation into their native language to ensure they do not miss any detail of the story when they read it in their target language. For immersion experience, however, reading parallel translation is not too helpful.
First, you have this sharp contrast of total clarity in your native language and “walking in a haze” feeling in your target language, which doesn’t contribute to your confidence as a language learner.
Even if you understand everything in your target language, when you reread the same part in your native language, it feels as if you have just walked out of a haze and, suddenly, what you have read is crystal clear. This happens because your brain is more used to your native language than to your foreign language, it doesn’t mean that your foreign language skills suck. The more you read in your foreign language, the clearer you understand and this feeling of walking in a haze will gradually go.
Second, you are not training yourself to tolerate certain ambiguity and uncertainty which is an inevitable part of reading in a foreign language. So, next time when you don’t have access to translation to your native language for a certain book, it will be quite difficult for you to put up with this ambiguity and uncertainty and enjoy reading this book.
Third, with parallel translation you break the flow of reading in your target language, the translation serves as an unnecessary distraction in this respect.
With this in mind, it is actually ok not to understand all the details if they slow you down and do not contribute much to the general understanding of a plot or a news story. Instead, you need to focus on the story itself and keep reading to find out who the killer was in the detective story you are reading, if Jane will marry the love of her life in the romantic novel you have picked out or why another Hollywood couple decided to get a divorce from an article in Daily Mail.
Having said that, slowing down a bit to look up unknown words, so that you could learn them later, is essential as reading is also a great means of growing your vocabulary.
Growing your Vocabulary with Reading
Looking up and learning unknown words will ensure that you spend your reading time more productively, that you grow your vocabulary.
This is especially important if you don’t have much time for learning your target language and don’t have too much exposure to it through either reading or listening, so you won’t come across the same unknown words often enough to finally work out their meaning through different contexts and remember them naturally. This is, by the way, how you learnt your native language through years of exposure to the language, through multiple repetitions of the same words in different contexts.
However, if you have been struggling with a text trying hard to understand it and not lose a will to live at the same time, the last thing you want is breaking your hard-earned reading flow by looking up words in a dictionary and then recording them for learning.
Luckily, there is technology to help you out. I am not talking about online dictionaries or Google translate. I am talking about a pop up window with translation or explanation of an unknown word you click in the text, that you are reading online, and automatic recording of the words you have looked up, so that you could review them later and choose the ones you want to learn.
So, you don’t have to navigate to a different tab with a dictionary, type in the word, track down the translation among the numerous ads and, five minutes later, return to the original tab with the text you are reading after getting lost in all the open tabs in your browser. What was I reading about again? Duh! Oh, and on top of it, there is copying and pasting of the word and its translation, so that you could save and learn the word later.
So, how do you keep your reading flow and get a pop-up window with translation or explanation (or both in one window if you need them both) plus have them saved automatically? You need to get a free dictionary plugin vocBlocks LookUp.
Once it’s installed, you will be able to Ctrl double-click any unknown word in your text and read its translation or explanation. The tool will save all the words that you have looked up together with their translation, transcription and audio pronunciation into a vocabulary block (vocBlock) and send you an email reminder so that you don’t forget to learn these words by doing various exercises.
Pronunciation Pain. Part 2 - Welcome to the Language Gym
In the previous post, we tried to answer the question if you actually need to improve your pronunciation and how much it is ok for you to deviate from the standard pronunciation based on what you use your target language for. We examined what pronunciation and standard pronunciation is, the motives or reasons why you might want to get rid of your foreign accent, your chances of improving your pronunciation as an adult language learner and your pronunciation goal.
When drawing your language learning plan, you need to look at the whole picture and based on your language learning goals, areas of improvement, the time and other resources you are able to allocate to your language study, decide how much effort you are prepared to spend on improving your pronunciation.
The reason for this analysis is that pronunciation is a separate skill that requires specific work with full focus only on this skill.
What is Pronunciation Training?
So, what pronunciation training actually entails?
Depending on what your areas of improvement are, you might need to work either on separate sounds or intonation or both. If either of these two is off, your pronunciation might hinder communication, i.e. understanding.
If it is both separate sounds and intonation that you need to work on, usually, pronunciation practice starts with working on separate sounds.
Working on Separate Sounds
Here you are likely to need IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet) or any other transliteration system, especially if the language you are learning is not phonetic, i.e. words are spelt in a different way than pronounced. English is one of the examples of a language with traditional (read: nightmarish) spelling, i.e. the spelling that has stayed the same even though the pronunciation has changed a lot over the centuries. That’s why, by the way, English words are transcribed in our Ready vocBlocks and when you make your own vocBlocks transcription pops up automatically from the built-in dictionary.
When working on sounds, you might want to read or watch some theory on how certain sounds are pronounced, i.e. how and if your tongue, lips and soft palate move to form these particular sounds. It is especially important for the sounds that are very different from your native language. For example, /θ/ and /ð/ in English if you don’t have any such sounds in your mother tongue.
Don’t be surprised if your mouth refuses to articulate the sounds of your target language the way they should be pronounced and if your facial muscles hurt after the training. Articulating sounds of different languages requires work of different muscles, so if you have been speaking mainly your native language or if you have been articulating the sounds of your target language in an incorrect way, different muscles have been working, so the ones that are working now, when you are training correct pronunciation, hurt. Yep, welcome to the language gym!
When practising separate sounds, you need to monitor that your organs of speech are positioned and move correctly. While you won’t be able to see your soft palate or fully see your tongue, the position and movement of your lips can be easily monitored when you practise with a mirror.
And even if you don’t think much of this technique, don’t just brush it off as unnecessary: you will be surprised how easily your organs of speech slip back to the familiar moves they have got used to over the years of speaking your native tongue. Even when you think your organs of speech move and/or positioned correctly, a check in the mirror might prove otherwise. So, grab that mirror, beaut, to check you really round your lips in the right way for that /əʋ/ sound!
It doesn’t mean, of course, that from now on you are compelled to stare in the mirror every time you speak your target language. It’s necessary for your phonetic training, of course, but that’s where it ends. And though phonetic practice can turn out to be addictive for you if you are a bit of an actor or if you don’t mind checking that you look gorgeous while speaking your target language, it would be a bit on the wacky side if you pulled a compact mirror out of your briefcase in the middle of a contract negotiation with your foreign partners, glanced at it while pronouncing your /θ/ and packed it back smiling and nodding with satisfaction.
First of all, while having a real life conversation in your target language you are much less likely to be in control of your language per se, including pronunciation. You will have to think what to say not just how to say it!
And, secondly, you won’t have to think about your pronunciation. The muscles that work when you speak are just that, they are muscles. As other muscles in your body, after a long enough period of working out (phonetic practice) they start taking care of themselves. Same way as you don’t have to constantly think of correct posture or hold your stomach in after you have been working out in the gym for some time, you will be articulating sounds correctly without constantly making an effort to do so.
Working on Sounds in Context
The next step of phonetic practice is working on short phrases, sentences and tongue twisters so that you could train the sounds that you have been working on at the first step, in connection with other sounds.
The main feature of this kind of practice is exaggeration: you need to articulate the sounds you are working on very clearly and distinctly, much more clearly and distinctly than they are pronounced in real speech.
Again, this doesn’t mean that you will be articulating the sounds in this exaggerated manner in real life conversations going forward. Absolutely not. If you did, you would sound really weird (nobody does it) and you would sacrifice speed which is one of the parts of good pronunciation. But when training, you need to focus on one thing at a time (it’s not speed at this point) and exaggeration is necessary for you to learn to articulate the sounds correctly.
At this step of your phonetic practice, you might find it useful to monitor your pronunciation by recording your voice and playing it back to yourself. While listening to your own voice is not the most pleasant thing in the world, treat it as a necessary evil that will help you avoid slipping back to your old pronunciation mistakes or making new ones. For the next (third) step of your pronunciation training recording and playing back your voice can also help avoid any mistakes.
Working on Intonation
This third step is working on intonation. Intonation is the music of the language so just as with musical notes that people look at when playing a musical instrument or singing, you might need to employ some graphic means to mark whether the intonation goes up or down, which words in the sentences are stressed and where pauses are made.
You can mark the sentences and texts, you are working on, either based on the standard intonation patterns or by listening carefully to the audio of native speakers. A combination of both, i.e. marking texts while listening to the audio and applying your theoretical knowledge of standard intonation patterns is all the more effective and accurate, especially if your musical ear is a bit deaf.
Please note that the texts you use for this purpose should be the ones designed for language learners even if they were not specifically designed for training pronunciation. With real stuff from youtube, for example, you risk copying all sorts of deviations from the standard and might struggle with the complexity and irregularity of real thing that you don’t need for your phonetic training.
After you have marked the text, you need to repeat it sentence by sentence after the speaker copying the intonation, stressing the right words and pausing in the right places. If a sentence is too long, you can stop the recording where the speaker pauses and repeat a part of the sentence before listening and repeating the next part.
Once you feel confident enough with intonation, you could challenge yourself with repeating these texts with the same speed as the native speaker(s) of the recording.
Speaking in your target language with a native-like speed is quite important as (like other elements of pronunciation) it impacts communication.
It is like driving on a busy road: you need to have approximately the same speed as others so as not to break the flow (in the case of speaking, the flow of conversation). Too slow and other road users get impatient, too quick and other road users get uncomfortable.
If you cannot imitate the speed from the first attempt, don’t worry, it’s not that easy, especially if you are physically struggling to articulate all the sounds of your target language. It’s a matter of practice to make your target language speech quicker and more native-like, so keep trying!
And, by the way, if the text you have chosen happens to be a heated argument between two friends or spouses, an exchange of quick emotional remarks, good luck with that! It’s a tough but good practice which you might actually enjoy if you are a bit of an actor.
Now that you have an idea of what phonetic training is, you can decide if and how much time you can spend on it and (if it’s a yes) add working on the sounds, intonation and speed of your target language to your language learning plan.
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