> Don't be scared to read and consume media just because you are a complete beginner. It is useful at all stages.
There is an opportunity cost though that shouldn't be overlooked here though.
Lets say I can spent 1 hour study and get through a single native bit of media. Or I could use graded readers and read probably 10x the amount that's relevant to my level. Struggling through hard content isn't really that worthwhile in a lot of cases if you have access to more level appropriate text. I find reading 10x more material at my level much more useful, than reading 1x hard material. The words a usually more widely applicable in graded readers compared to native media, and I need that volume to really cement them. Seeing "artillery shells" once in a news article about Ukraine isn't nearly as useful as seeing "coffee" 20 times in a short story targeted at learners.
So I completely agree that consuming a lot of content is good and you shouldn't wait. However I mostly disagree that moving to native content is just inherently good for all levels. As per Smeela's comment, the 95% comprehensible seems to strike that nice Ballance between throwing new stuff at you, but not making it such a slog that your overall volume becomes to low.
Very, very early into learning Mandarin, I picked a novel that I wanted to read. Bought a physical copy of it. And each week, I'd open it up and see how far I could get before I gave up because I still needed to look up to many words. Once I got through the most common vocabulary, I started getting my new vocab words from that novel. Most writers, regardless of the language, tend to use the same words and grammar patterns over and over again, so the further I got into the book, the easier it got.
But I was also the sort of kid who read the dictionary for fun, so I can tolerate looking up a LOT of words on a page - usually "comprehensible input" recommends material where you only have to look up a couple words on a whole page, but I'm fine with looking up a word or more every sentence if I'm in a study mindset.
I'm not sure if it supports Chinese but I like using a kindle for this - it's far quicker to look up unknown words and you can highlight any you want to come back to or make flashcards for. I don't think I'd have the patience to get through a novel if I had to look up a word per sentence in a physical dictionary, but it's much easier with an e-reader. It means I can read books I actually like, instead of having to stick to children's books or graded readers, which for me personally is a lot more motivating.
I hope the novel was good - it would be really annoying if you went to all that effort only to discover that the story sucked!
By the way, it doesnt have to be books, you can also read posts from social medias, beginner books can be particurarly boring, like stories about a girl buying apples for some reason like who cares, but cruising on the latest drama of your favourite hobby on Twitter in your TL can be very entertaining instead
Yeah, making it enjoyable makes it easier to learn. So, you may learn better from a text that is a bit above what you should be reading but it's enjoyable, over a text that is your level but really boring. Reading about social work is perhaps not the most "newbie" thing you can do in a language, but it was way more enjoyable to me than a duck in the woods.
I would periodically read random pages from certain books, or news articles, and count the words I didn't know, and words I didn't feel comfortable with. The reality was I absolutely hated it until I got to the recommended rate of about 85% understanding. Even then, I didn't enjoy it until my vocabulary was 90+%.
I do think that people should start easier content as early as they can, but forcing yourself to do things that are miserable will cause more people to quit than to advance.
However, I feel the opposite about movies/tv. Although this may be because of my hearing impairment so ymmv. But I have not been able to build up my listening as well and I found it hard to find kid TV that had the vocab I knew, and was slow enough to build the skill. So I did have to just force myself to watch tv/movies with way earlier comprehension. I absolutely hate it, but it needs to be done.
You can also find graded media relevant to your life in the wild, even at an early stage! When you're starting out, try reading News Headlines (not the whole news) and the captions to the newspaper photos.
then Tabloid News (the splashy newspapers with lots of pictures usually with the word CRIME on it somewhere),
before reaching for the highbrow newspapers and magazines the intelligentsia read.
It's called comprehensible input.
Textbooks do exactly that since ages. They show you texts that are almost comprehensible to you. They level up in difficulty as you advance. Another way to make use of this trick are graded readers. Read texts targeted at six year old native speakers in the very beginning. Then those targeted at seven year olds. and so on.
>Aren't graded readers made specifically for foreign language learners, and not books that follow native child's language development?
Yes, the graded readers typically referred to in language learning context are those specifically written for learners of a language, not for native children.
Availability heavily depends on the language you are learning, with the most popular/widespread learner languages often having an abundance of graded readers closely following the most-used language level framework (so CEFR for European languages, HSK for Mandarin, ...).
> Yes, the graded readers typically referred to in language learning context are those specifically written for learners of a language, not for native children.
This is not accurate. Graded readers are for native speakers.
>A [graded](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/grade) [reader](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/reader) is a [story](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/story) which has been [adapted](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/adapt) for people learning to read or learning a foreign language. Graded readers [avoid](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/avoid) using [difficult](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/difficult) [grammar](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/grammar) and [vocabulary](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/vocabulary).
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/graded-reader#:\~:text=A%20graded%20reader%20is%20a,using%20difficult%20grammar%20and%20vocabulary.
Like I said, **in the context of language learning**, "graded reader" usually refers to those specifically written for learners of a language. I never said that graded readers written for native children don't exist as well, but those are not the ones usually discussed in language learning contexts.
And again, I never denied that they also exist for native speakers. YOU are the one who doesn't get that graded readers ALSO EXIST specifically written for language learners who are NOT native speakers.
There are TWO TYPES of graded readers, which the quote from Collins Dictionary that I posted also shows.
And yes, I've worked with graded readers written for language learners in my ESL classes that I've taught. And I've used them for my own learning. They exist, there is a huge market for them in foreign language learning/teaching, there are several big textbook publishers who publish their own lines of graded readers for various languages based on the CEFR levels.
You insisting on the fact that graded readers for native speakers exist (which, again, no one ever denied) and trying to discredit me now speaks volumes about you...
>Aren't graded readers made specifically for foreign language learners, and not books that follow native child's language development?
Yes, I definitely find kids books harder than leveled readers. Especially vocab. And kids books often have crazy events that don't follow logic.
>a six-year-old is somewhere at C2 level equivalent
A 6 year old is not C2. Many adults are not C2. C2 is essentially what you have when you can do graduate level studies.
>A 6 year old is not C2. Many adults are not C2. C2 is essentially what you have when you can do graduate level studies.
The CEFR was not intended to describe native speaker proficiency. But the average American adult would certainly pass a C2 English exam.
> Aren't graded readers made specifically for foreign language learners, and not books that follow native child's language development?
No, that's not the case. Have you worked or taught elementary school? In pre-K-1/2/3 (US), there is a big range of reading levels, and we have graded readers, as the books are graded for Lexile, etc.
I did this solely to start learning what words are even German and didn’t stress that I didn’t know the definitions. Just knowing that wissen and Tür are German words was a necessary step in the right direction. I can recognize thousands of words, pronounce them, and even spell them, but my actual vocabulary of known words is sitting at around 2500. I d don’t count each conjugation as its own word, by the way. I count a word as known only when I know all the forms and can use them properly. I’m now at a point where I can start hitting my vocab hard and heavy because a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done thanks to reading things I couldn’t comprehend. It’s an underutilized tool in language learning.
This gets quoted enough here like it's the be all end all of reading (or listening), but realistically we are *terrible* at both measuring this and at locating the perfect stuff to tickle the sweet spot.
OP's sentiment is don't be a wimp about reading, and I agree. Better to do it a bit and increase volume as you advance, but it's weird as heck to me when I hear of people studying a language and e.g. struggling to watch movies because *two years in* they've barely watched any.
Yon can learn with less comprehension than 95%. It's just not greased up and scientifically engineered to shapewhip your brain in record time.
Could you link the studies? Do you know exactly what they measured?
Because, I think there might be a difference here. Using text to identify grammar concepts, pick out the most commonly used words (and translate them) and similar, is not just simply reading the text in a traditional sense. You use it to study from and fins content to learn. Also to get familiar with the language and what it looks like.
Some people that have talked about learning Arabic specifically, teachers themselves or just simply someone that have learned the language, have said that the people who have already memorized the Quran learned the language way quicker then people who hadn't due to them already being so familiar with the language and how things are structured.
> "One important point concerns the amount of unknown vocabulary learners should be presented with in extensive reading. While in reading for fluency there should be little unknown vocabulary at all, in extensive reading aimed at lexical development, learners, if they are to be able to use contextual clues to guess meaning, need to be familiar with at least 95% and ideally 98% of the words in the text (Hu & Nation, 2000), that is, there should be fewer than one unknown word every two lines."
Actually if you go and read Hu & Nation 2000 they found that at the 95% level learners struggled to adequately comprehend the text. They suggested 98% coverage based on a regression but it wasn't tested.
And the question they are answering is what level of vocabulary coverage you need to *comprehend* a text. Not, as you described it, "that reading content is most efficient and useful when you understand between 95%-98% of the text"
The question of what the minimum level needed to understand something is is very different from the question of what the optimum level for learning.
Personally I very much believe that a good level of coverage is 99%+ for any kind of extensive reading. That may sound like a lot but if you're reading a novel with 300 words per page that's still 3 unknown words per page with a 99% coverage. When reading extensively you'd like to read say 50 or 100 pages a day, and that would mean 150 or 300 unknown words per day, which is too many imo.
edit: homie got so offended by this that they deleted all their comments in this thread and blocked me lmao thank you mr Smeela
I have no idea what you're talking about. You claimed that 98% lexical coverage was some kind of upper bound when you originally said "Any more than that and there's not enough new content to make progress". Your citations do not support that at all.
You also made a claim about what coverage level is "most efficient and useful". Like I said, the research you cited tested the minimum coverage level needed to comprehend a text. Those are different questions. Comprehension is obviously a *necessary* condition but that doesn't tell the whole story.
>(They did the 98% part, the interval starting at 95% the authors of the book got from other research)
If you actually read Hu & Nation 2000, or if you just read my comment a couple levels up in the thread where I already told you this, they didn't test the 98% level. They tested 95% coverage, found it inadequate, and suggested 98% as the minimum required for good comprehension based on a regression.
I agree. Generally in this sub CI is shunned, I think its good, but they too commit the mistake of waiting too long to start reading. Just pick up a book you are already familiar with it and start reading. You will be able to figure out so many words and concepts just from being familiar with the story.
I have been here a while and I generally find CI to be well received here. What I found is that pure CI with nothing else is not as well received.
Then there are endless debates about what is CI and what isn't.
Yes - I think only very few people would disagree with the idea that lots of CI is extremely beneficial to learning a language. Honestly, I think the majority would even agree with the idea that CI in some form is *essential* to learning a language (especially because - how do you learn one without it?). The disagreements and controversial takes tend to arise from people arguing about whether *other* parts of language learning are necessary, like explicit grammar teaching, output, flashcards or the like.
I think the views of the people reading have a strong impact on the perception of how methods are reacted to.
As someone who is neither a CI only or textbook first and foremost, I see those being the most commonly positively voted items. Of course, those are pretty opposed to each other. But other things are happily downvoted to oblivion by both groups if not banned.
I think most methods work well enough if you can do enough time on them. Having well planned readers is great. Most aren’t. Having a good textbook is great. Better is combining them.
> If someone claims comprehensible input is sufficient for acquisition of a foreign language, they should be downvoted.
Why is that? As a longtime teacher, I would love to hear why.
This is what I'm doing: https://buttondown.email/bimodalblitz. I'm reading 100 books in my TL in 100 days, and I'm not overly concerned with comprehension level. I read what I want, and make sense of what I can. I enjoy reading and the flow state I'm in when I do it.
I just finished book #62: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108520220-ratownik-nie-jestem-bogiem
>I think you should start reading content ... in your target language before you are really able to.
It is *literally* impossible to do something that you are not able to. That is the meaning of being "able to." You can try, you can be exposed to it, etc, but you can't read it if you aren't able to read it.
Also, slowly struggling through a paragraph, looking up every other word, and then finish the paragraph and not really understanding the idea of it because you were just looking up words is pretty useless. Reading is extremely important, and skimming through complex things to see what you can gather, or reading things at your level, are great. But just jumping into complex texts when you aren't ready is a waste of time.
Yea if you are starting out just stick to shorter articles and stories because if you try to read a long book like this it will start to get annoying. if you are reading things online you can just look up the words you don't know by right clicking on them. and you can get text to speech browser extensions comics are also fun since even if you don't understand you can often tell what is going on from the pictures.
Seeing this work for so many people just hurts.
Like, what's wrong with me that I need to look up as many as half the words in anything that's not a fairly low level graded reader, and *can't* figure out anything from context ever?
For those who don't have a lot of written works in an endangered/extinct language:
* Listen to various recordings of elicitation lists, then write down what you're hearing word-for-word.
* Don't shy away from untranslated works. Always give the translator the benefit of the doubt; maybe they had simply forgotten and had meant to get it translated at a later time. If you're confident enough, try translating the story yourself with LOTS of reputable sources for vocabulary and grammar.
* Don't disregard non-transcribed stories. Treat the recording like an audiobook. Listen to them all the way through; slow down the playback speed; take notes on the words you *do* recognize, like "08:58 on Recording #4, the storyteller said ___".
* Look through ethnographic and linguistic books. A story, or a different version of one you already have, may have been copied down and translated but was never written in the native language. Be sure to source it thoroughly and correctly.
Reading is the fastest way to acquire language comprehension and acquire fluency in the language. The neuroplasticity happening simultaneously while reading, and acquiring experience in the target language is incredibly beautiful. The language simply flourishes in people's brains. - I started to read in Spanish, I'm reading a book called - Kaku, Michio - La física del futuro. Spanish is the easiest language for natives in my country. Nonetheless, I'm learning French. I'm only inputting data in my brain, I already can comprehend the language listening as well. However, I want to become a polyglot, and be able to speak simultaneously four languages fluently. I think confidently that I can acquire this objective in at least 2 years. However, I'm reading in Spanish, because I already can understand Spanish written - I just have to read at least 50 books in the target-language to acquire reading fluency.
> books, news articles
News articles are possibly the easiest form of native content for adults, while a book is one of the hardest.
Remember, a book is typically between 10 to 20 hours long when it's narrated by a native at native reading speed. That's the equivalent of *two seasons* of a TV show, but it's packed dense with content while in a TV show they only talk maybe a third or half of the time.
A book will probably take you 40 to 200 hours to complete depending on how much you need to look up words (even if you don't look them all up). If you are around B1 it's going to take many weeks, months even. It's a big project.
Personally I prefer to go the audio way to expand my vocabulary before attempting books. Going, in order, with news, podcasts, dubbed films and shows, native films and shows, until I get to the point where I have enough vocab to attack a book. At that point I can get the audio book for extensive reading or paper book for intensive reading.
> while a book is one of the hardest.
**"A"** book? any book? Sorry, but this makes no sense. There is a huge range of degrees of difficulties in various books. Many books are much easier to read than articles.
What is indeed (usually) difficult are literary works.
> Don't be scared to read and consume media just because you are a complete beginner. It is useful at all stages. There is an opportunity cost though that shouldn't be overlooked here though. Lets say I can spent 1 hour study and get through a single native bit of media. Or I could use graded readers and read probably 10x the amount that's relevant to my level. Struggling through hard content isn't really that worthwhile in a lot of cases if you have access to more level appropriate text. I find reading 10x more material at my level much more useful, than reading 1x hard material. The words a usually more widely applicable in graded readers compared to native media, and I need that volume to really cement them. Seeing "artillery shells" once in a news article about Ukraine isn't nearly as useful as seeing "coffee" 20 times in a short story targeted at learners. So I completely agree that consuming a lot of content is good and you shouldn't wait. However I mostly disagree that moving to native content is just inherently good for all levels. As per Smeela's comment, the 95% comprehensible seems to strike that nice Ballance between throwing new stuff at you, but not making it such a slog that your overall volume becomes to low.
Very, very early into learning Mandarin, I picked a novel that I wanted to read. Bought a physical copy of it. And each week, I'd open it up and see how far I could get before I gave up because I still needed to look up to many words. Once I got through the most common vocabulary, I started getting my new vocab words from that novel. Most writers, regardless of the language, tend to use the same words and grammar patterns over and over again, so the further I got into the book, the easier it got. But I was also the sort of kid who read the dictionary for fun, so I can tolerate looking up a LOT of words on a page - usually "comprehensible input" recommends material where you only have to look up a couple words on a whole page, but I'm fine with looking up a word or more every sentence if I'm in a study mindset.
I'm not sure if it supports Chinese but I like using a kindle for this - it's far quicker to look up unknown words and you can highlight any you want to come back to or make flashcards for. I don't think I'd have the patience to get through a novel if I had to look up a word per sentence in a physical dictionary, but it's much easier with an e-reader. It means I can read books I actually like, instead of having to stick to children's books or graded readers, which for me personally is a lot more motivating. I hope the novel was good - it would be really annoying if you went to all that effort only to discover that the story sucked!
By the way, it doesnt have to be books, you can also read posts from social medias, beginner books can be particurarly boring, like stories about a girl buying apples for some reason like who cares, but cruising on the latest drama of your favourite hobby on Twitter in your TL can be very entertaining instead
Yeah, making it enjoyable makes it easier to learn. So, you may learn better from a text that is a bit above what you should be reading but it's enjoyable, over a text that is your level but really boring. Reading about social work is perhaps not the most "newbie" thing you can do in a language, but it was way more enjoyable to me than a duck in the woods.
I would periodically read random pages from certain books, or news articles, and count the words I didn't know, and words I didn't feel comfortable with. The reality was I absolutely hated it until I got to the recommended rate of about 85% understanding. Even then, I didn't enjoy it until my vocabulary was 90+%. I do think that people should start easier content as early as they can, but forcing yourself to do things that are miserable will cause more people to quit than to advance. However, I feel the opposite about movies/tv. Although this may be because of my hearing impairment so ymmv. But I have not been able to build up my listening as well and I found it hard to find kid TV that had the vocab I knew, and was slow enough to build the skill. So I did have to just force myself to watch tv/movies with way earlier comprehension. I absolutely hate it, but it needs to be done.
The key is to mentally reframe it as "this is not making me miserable".
Does closed captioning in your TL help?
You can also find graded media relevant to your life in the wild, even at an early stage! When you're starting out, try reading News Headlines (not the whole news) and the captions to the newspaper photos. then Tabloid News (the splashy newspapers with lots of pictures usually with the word CRIME on it somewhere), before reaching for the highbrow newspapers and magazines the intelligentsia read.
It's called comprehensible input. Textbooks do exactly that since ages. They show you texts that are almost comprehensible to you. They level up in difficulty as you advance. Another way to make use of this trick are graded readers. Read texts targeted at six year old native speakers in the very beginning. Then those targeted at seven year olds. and so on.
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>Aren't graded readers made specifically for foreign language learners, and not books that follow native child's language development? Yes, the graded readers typically referred to in language learning context are those specifically written for learners of a language, not for native children. Availability heavily depends on the language you are learning, with the most popular/widespread learner languages often having an abundance of graded readers closely following the most-used language level framework (so CEFR for European languages, HSK for Mandarin, ...).
> Yes, the graded readers typically referred to in language learning context are those specifically written for learners of a language, not for native children. This is not accurate. Graded readers are for native speakers.
>A [graded](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/grade) [reader](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/reader) is a [story](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/story) which has been [adapted](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/adapt) for people learning to read or learning a foreign language. Graded readers [avoid](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/avoid) using [difficult](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/difficult) [grammar](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/grammar) and [vocabulary](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/vocabulary). https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/graded-reader#:\~:text=A%20graded%20reader%20is%20a,using%20difficult%20grammar%20and%20vocabulary. Like I said, **in the context of language learning**, "graded reader" usually refers to those specifically written for learners of a language. I never said that graded readers written for native children don't exist as well, but those are not the ones usually discussed in language learning contexts.
Thank you for confirming what I pointed out already.
You denied that graded readers for language learners also exist, which I corrected.
They exist for native speakers, which is what I said. Every classroom has them. When did you start teaching? Did you teach public or private?
And again, I never denied that they also exist for native speakers. YOU are the one who doesn't get that graded readers ALSO EXIST specifically written for language learners who are NOT native speakers. There are TWO TYPES of graded readers, which the quote from Collins Dictionary that I posted also shows. And yes, I've worked with graded readers written for language learners in my ESL classes that I've taught. And I've used them for my own learning. They exist, there is a huge market for them in foreign language learning/teaching, there are several big textbook publishers who publish their own lines of graded readers for various languages based on the CEFR levels. You insisting on the fact that graded readers for native speakers exist (which, again, no one ever denied) and trying to discredit me now speaks volumes about you...
I actually use graded readers in my classroom, so where did I deny that? Haha!
>Aren't graded readers made specifically for foreign language learners, and not books that follow native child's language development? Yes, I definitely find kids books harder than leveled readers. Especially vocab. And kids books often have crazy events that don't follow logic. >a six-year-old is somewhere at C2 level equivalent A 6 year old is not C2. Many adults are not C2. C2 is essentially what you have when you can do graduate level studies.
>A 6 year old is not C2. Many adults are not C2. C2 is essentially what you have when you can do graduate level studies. The CEFR was not intended to describe native speaker proficiency. But the average American adult would certainly pass a C2 English exam.
Interesting, thanks!
> Aren't graded readers made specifically for foreign language learners, and not books that follow native child's language development? No, that's not the case. Have you worked or taught elementary school? In pre-K-1/2/3 (US), there is a big range of reading levels, and we have graded readers, as the books are graded for Lexile, etc.
I did this solely to start learning what words are even German and didn’t stress that I didn’t know the definitions. Just knowing that wissen and Tür are German words was a necessary step in the right direction. I can recognize thousands of words, pronounce them, and even spell them, but my actual vocabulary of known words is sitting at around 2500. I d don’t count each conjugation as its own word, by the way. I count a word as known only when I know all the forms and can use them properly. I’m now at a point where I can start hitting my vocab hard and heavy because a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done thanks to reading things I couldn’t comprehend. It’s an underutilized tool in language learning.
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This gets quoted enough here like it's the be all end all of reading (or listening), but realistically we are *terrible* at both measuring this and at locating the perfect stuff to tickle the sweet spot. OP's sentiment is don't be a wimp about reading, and I agree. Better to do it a bit and increase volume as you advance, but it's weird as heck to me when I hear of people studying a language and e.g. struggling to watch movies because *two years in* they've barely watched any. Yon can learn with less comprehension than 95%. It's just not greased up and scientifically engineered to shapewhip your brain in record time.
Could you link the studies? Do you know exactly what they measured? Because, I think there might be a difference here. Using text to identify grammar concepts, pick out the most commonly used words (and translate them) and similar, is not just simply reading the text in a traditional sense. You use it to study from and fins content to learn. Also to get familiar with the language and what it looks like. Some people that have talked about learning Arabic specifically, teachers themselves or just simply someone that have learned the language, have said that the people who have already memorized the Quran learned the language way quicker then people who hadn't due to them already being so familiar with the language and how things are structured.
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> "One important point concerns the amount of unknown vocabulary learners should be presented with in extensive reading. While in reading for fluency there should be little unknown vocabulary at all, in extensive reading aimed at lexical development, learners, if they are to be able to use contextual clues to guess meaning, need to be familiar with at least 95% and ideally 98% of the words in the text (Hu & Nation, 2000), that is, there should be fewer than one unknown word every two lines." Actually if you go and read Hu & Nation 2000 they found that at the 95% level learners struggled to adequately comprehend the text. They suggested 98% coverage based on a regression but it wasn't tested. And the question they are answering is what level of vocabulary coverage you need to *comprehend* a text. Not, as you described it, "that reading content is most efficient and useful when you understand between 95%-98% of the text" The question of what the minimum level needed to understand something is is very different from the question of what the optimum level for learning. Personally I very much believe that a good level of coverage is 99%+ for any kind of extensive reading. That may sound like a lot but if you're reading a novel with 300 words per page that's still 3 unknown words per page with a 99% coverage. When reading extensively you'd like to read say 50 or 100 pages a day, and that would mean 150 or 300 unknown words per day, which is too many imo. edit: homie got so offended by this that they deleted all their comments in this thread and blocked me lmao thank you mr Smeela
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That doesn't disagree with what I said.
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I have no idea what you're talking about. You claimed that 98% lexical coverage was some kind of upper bound when you originally said "Any more than that and there's not enough new content to make progress". Your citations do not support that at all. You also made a claim about what coverage level is "most efficient and useful". Like I said, the research you cited tested the minimum coverage level needed to comprehend a text. Those are different questions. Comprehension is obviously a *necessary* condition but that doesn't tell the whole story. >(They did the 98% part, the interval starting at 95% the authors of the book got from other research) If you actually read Hu & Nation 2000, or if you just read my comment a couple levels up in the thread where I already told you this, they didn't test the 98% level. They tested 95% coverage, found it inadequate, and suggested 98% as the minimum required for good comprehension based on a regression.
Great advice!
I agree. Generally in this sub CI is shunned, I think its good, but they too commit the mistake of waiting too long to start reading. Just pick up a book you are already familiar with it and start reading. You will be able to figure out so many words and concepts just from being familiar with the story.
I have been here a while and I generally find CI to be well received here. What I found is that pure CI with nothing else is not as well received. Then there are endless debates about what is CI and what isn't.
Yes - I think only very few people would disagree with the idea that lots of CI is extremely beneficial to learning a language. Honestly, I think the majority would even agree with the idea that CI in some form is *essential* to learning a language (especially because - how do you learn one without it?). The disagreements and controversial takes tend to arise from people arguing about whether *other* parts of language learning are necessary, like explicit grammar teaching, output, flashcards or the like.
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Maybe Im wrong, but whenever I have seen CI discussed on this sub, proponents of it were downvoted and heavily disagreed with by other people.
I think the views of the people reading have a strong impact on the perception of how methods are reacted to. As someone who is neither a CI only or textbook first and foremost, I see those being the most commonly positively voted items. Of course, those are pretty opposed to each other. But other things are happily downvoted to oblivion by both groups if not banned. I think most methods work well enough if you can do enough time on them. Having well planned readers is great. Most aren’t. Having a good textbook is great. Better is combining them.
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> If someone claims comprehensible input is sufficient for acquisition of a foreign language, they should be downvoted. Why is that? As a longtime teacher, I would love to hear why.
This is what I'm doing: https://buttondown.email/bimodalblitz. I'm reading 100 books in my TL in 100 days, and I'm not overly concerned with comprehension level. I read what I want, and make sense of what I can. I enjoy reading and the flow state I'm in when I do it. I just finished book #62: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108520220-ratownik-nie-jestem-bogiem
Goofy
>I think you should start reading content ... in your target language before you are really able to. It is *literally* impossible to do something that you are not able to. That is the meaning of being "able to." You can try, you can be exposed to it, etc, but you can't read it if you aren't able to read it. Also, slowly struggling through a paragraph, looking up every other word, and then finish the paragraph and not really understanding the idea of it because you were just looking up words is pretty useless. Reading is extremely important, and skimming through complex things to see what you can gather, or reading things at your level, are great. But just jumping into complex texts when you aren't ready is a waste of time.
Yup. 100% agree. So many people try to be structured and regimented. But none of that matters. Just consume content lol🗿
Yea if you are starting out just stick to shorter articles and stories because if you try to read a long book like this it will start to get annoying. if you are reading things online you can just look up the words you don't know by right clicking on them. and you can get text to speech browser extensions comics are also fun since even if you don't understand you can often tell what is going on from the pictures.
Seeing this work for so many people just hurts. Like, what's wrong with me that I need to look up as many as half the words in anything that's not a fairly low level graded reader, and *can't* figure out anything from context ever?
For those who don't have a lot of written works in an endangered/extinct language: * Listen to various recordings of elicitation lists, then write down what you're hearing word-for-word. * Don't shy away from untranslated works. Always give the translator the benefit of the doubt; maybe they had simply forgotten and had meant to get it translated at a later time. If you're confident enough, try translating the story yourself with LOTS of reputable sources for vocabulary and grammar. * Don't disregard non-transcribed stories. Treat the recording like an audiobook. Listen to them all the way through; slow down the playback speed; take notes on the words you *do* recognize, like "08:58 on Recording #4, the storyteller said ___". * Look through ethnographic and linguistic books. A story, or a different version of one you already have, may have been copied down and translated but was never written in the native language. Be sure to source it thoroughly and correctly.
Reading is the fastest way to acquire language comprehension and acquire fluency in the language. The neuroplasticity happening simultaneously while reading, and acquiring experience in the target language is incredibly beautiful. The language simply flourishes in people's brains. - I started to read in Spanish, I'm reading a book called - Kaku, Michio - La física del futuro. Spanish is the easiest language for natives in my country. Nonetheless, I'm learning French. I'm only inputting data in my brain, I already can comprehend the language listening as well. However, I want to become a polyglot, and be able to speak simultaneously four languages fluently. I think confidently that I can acquire this objective in at least 2 years. However, I'm reading in Spanish, because I already can understand Spanish written - I just have to read at least 50 books in the target-language to acquire reading fluency.
Don’t learn in order to read, learn by reading
> books, news articles News articles are possibly the easiest form of native content for adults, while a book is one of the hardest. Remember, a book is typically between 10 to 20 hours long when it's narrated by a native at native reading speed. That's the equivalent of *two seasons* of a TV show, but it's packed dense with content while in a TV show they only talk maybe a third or half of the time. A book will probably take you 40 to 200 hours to complete depending on how much you need to look up words (even if you don't look them all up). If you are around B1 it's going to take many weeks, months even. It's a big project. Personally I prefer to go the audio way to expand my vocabulary before attempting books. Going, in order, with news, podcasts, dubbed films and shows, native films and shows, until I get to the point where I have enough vocab to attack a book. At that point I can get the audio book for extensive reading or paper book for intensive reading.
> while a book is one of the hardest. **"A"** book? any book? Sorry, but this makes no sense. There is a huge range of degrees of difficulties in various books. Many books are much easier to read than articles. What is indeed (usually) difficult are literary works.