How can you learn to write well? How can you enrich your vocabulary? What about improving your ability to express ideas and concepts? And how can you improve your language skills while having fun and enjoying yourself at the same time? If you want to improve your foreign language skills, the best advice would certainly be to read as much as possible! Likewise, if you want to keep learning new vocabulary and improving your ability to express yourself in a foreign language—whether orally or in writing—we strongly recommend that you read foreign-language stories or novels.
(CC Photo Credit: “A Boy Reading a Book” by Daehyun Park)
Why You Should Read in a Foreign Language
Many people think it takes highly advanced language skills to be able to read a book, but this isn’t the case at all! All you need to gain a general understanding of a text are 300 carefully chosen words. Right from the very first weeks of learning a new language, you can start benefitting from the joys of reading … Simply follow these tips:
- Use “graded readers”, books indicating their required reading level (details to follow).
- Choose books carefully. Don’t forget that reading should be enjoyable, despite the effort it takes. Select books that interest you and stories that intrigue you!
- Don’t start translating every word you don’t know, use context to help you understand the meanings of the sentences.
- Identify key phrases. If you don’t understand them, look up the most important words in the dictionary, and write down their meanings. MosaLingua applications will soon offer users the option to add their own flashcards …
- Start with short stories and texts so that you can become confident in your skills and won’t tire yourself out.
- Then, move on to novels. It’s best to choose compelling novels that you won’t be able to put down and that you will therefore finish faster.
In the next article, we’ll explore in detail a selection of books to read when you’re learning a foreign language.
Tips and Tricks to Help You Find Books to Learn a Foreign Language
Before we let you go, here are some tips to help you find the right types of literature to use as foreign language learning material.
Start with the basics
A great place to start is at the beginning, by reading children’s books! Really any books that contain short passages and short sentences will help you learn when you’re just starting out! It’s also a good idea to listen to accompanying audio. Trying to read a complicated newspaper or novel too soon will just make you frustrated, so have patience!
Read books (or other reading material) that you have already read in your native language
Even if you read something in your native language a long time ago, you will still have the general idea of what it is about, which will help you incredibly in picking up context clues and learning new vocab. You’ll be focused less on what the story is about and more on the language.
Listen to audiobooks
Listening to an audiobook while reading will help tremendously even if you don’t know every word that is being spoken. This is because it will help train your ear and get you used to the speed of a native speaker in the language. It is also recommended that you read along while listening to an audiobook if you are a beginner so that you can avoid missing some of the words.
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I have been wanting to read a Harry Potter book in German because it contains all the vocabulary that a young adult German would use/need. Each time I tried, I got discouraged and quit because there would be 40 to 50 words on each page that I didn’t know and by covering only a few pages a day I was overwelmed! So I changed strategy and now I am making progress. Instead of concentrating on memorizing vocabulary, I work on seeing, looking up, and then moving on from new vocabulary words, and letting the fact that the author will use the same vocabulary over and over again, to learn the words. That allows me to learn the new vocabulary from experiencing the words over and over again but in context. What I do is copy one page a day by hand, leaving a line of space between each line of text that I copy. Then I go back and write the translation in the space between the lines of german text that I copied, looking up the words I don’t know using an online translator. This process is faster than you would think and I cover a page a day in about 40 minutes. I started noticing by the 5th page that some of the unknown words were poping up for a second or third time and I was starting to learn these words. I am confident that after a month, I will have covered 30 pages and learned a lot of new vocabulary. The point is that I am learning the words in context, and by repitition in context, and I am progressing through the book.
It sure was nice when you reminded that reading should be enjoyable and that the person will achieve better results if they ever decide to go with a book that interests them. My sister is interested in every single storybook that I show her, so I really do not think this will be a problem. Though I will make sure to ask her this time because my main purpose is to improve her English vocabulary considering she didn’t grow up in the US.
Excellent advice on reading and language study! As a 25 year + language teacher, I fully agree.
Thanks!
What are those 300 words and any reading recommendations? Thanks!
cooll!!
!
Some really valuable points here, especially that of only needing 300 carefully chosen words for a good comprehension of a language. I can speak several languages now but some of these tips would have been invaluable when I started.
great!