So for a long time, I’ve been learning English only by consuming media and expanding my passive vocabulary, and now, all the online tests are telling me I have an intermediate level of language, while my speaking and writing skills are on the floor; not to mention my “intuitive” grammar usage. I’m really glad I found this platform. Looks like it found me right in the nick of time. My New Year's resolution for this year is to improve my English and sound more natural.
I also recently acquired a reading habit and have already read several Stephen King books. I have a bad habit of learning every unknown word, but the procces of creating anki cards is so meditative and satisfying, I just can't stop. We’ll see where it takes me.
I started my reading journey with Misery and really liked it. The Long Walk had a good idea, but was a bit of a boring read. The Shawshank Redemption was great; Andy Dufresne is a really admirable character. I felt quite disturbed the whole time I was reading Apt Pupil, but really wanted to know how it ends. Its climax felt kind of abrupt, though. As for Carrie, I really enjoyed the writing style and learned that I like epistolary romance as a genre.
My current read is Salem’s Lot, and it’s the first book that gave me an understanding of why Stephen King is known as the King of Horror. Or maybe the fact that I chose to read his books at night added to the creepy feeling.
I’ll try to write a more extensive review in my next post. However, I haven’t decided what I'm going to read next.
Thanks for reading!
Welcome! Great post, so well written :) I used to love Stephen King books as a kid, I thought I read them all. I've not read Apt Pupil or many recent ones, though, so maybe I will pick one up soon - thanks for the inspiration! :-)
Thank you Gina! :) Apt Pupil is a second part of the collection "Different Seasons" and comes right after The Shawshank Redemption, so I naturally read it one after another. I was never really a fan of horrors or thrillers so I'm just now catching up on his works :) so glad I gave it a chance. Hope you enjoy your read!
Hi, I would like to provide my point of view regarding whether it is good or bad to look up every unknown word. Here is my personal experience: in general it is a good idea to look up every word (or ask about it, if you are talking with someone and they use a word you don't understand), even if it is an obscure word. And it is a fine idea to put it in Anki, even if you think you will never see it again. I have several reasons for believing this.
The first reason is simply that in the moment you are curious, and it always is enlightening to understand that one particular sentence, so go for it - enjoy it. The second reason is that the more common words are often a waste of time to put into Anki, because you will see them over and over in everyday usage, and so are really never going to be necessary to put into Anki -- real life will be your Anki deck for those commoner words, why waste your time with them, you will learn them soon enough.
The thing is, when you are first learning a language, you don't know which words you will encounter often and which ones are once in a blue moon. So at the beginning you just have to look up each and every word, which is exhausting, and which is why most people give up since it is overwhelming. And to enter each of those words into Anki would take forever. So to me, at the beginning, I just look up words and don't enter anything into Anki, because I know it will take too long and I am really on a data gathering mission - how many times do I catch myself looking up this same exact word? After let's say 10 encounters (each time forgetting, and each time searching in a dictionary) I generally start to remember the common words. These words I never put into Anki. Really, I want to save my effort with Anki so that it is just for uncommon words.
Also, I start getting a general sense of what word parts are common in other words (I encounter the word "man" in a bunch of compound words like "fireman", "policeman", "highwayman" so now I know that if I come to a new word and find that part of a word has "man" at the end, that I really only have to concentrate on the first half of the word).... which is why it is really important to me to always look at the derivation of the word (the word parts, and what language they came from and what those parts originally meant) because I will see those word pieces again and again in the future.
Ok, now that I have some sense of which words are common and which words are not common, then I start entering stuff to my Anki deck - and I do it with the rarer words.
I feel like they are a collection of unique, interesting things. And it is always fun when I do encounter those rare words again in places, and I give the definition to someone who does not expect me to know the definition - it is a game, a really nice game, and a lot of times you find that that word holds secrets that unlock other words, that only a curious mind would discover.
The more common words only help you to a certain extent. The rarer words open up a whole new world.
Ok, the exception is technical language. I really don't care about every disease and chemical combination. I don't need to know the name for certain items of clothing worn by certain classes of certain regions in historical times - it just is not interesting to me. If it is not a fun game to me, I do not play it.
That being said, I sometimes am curious about something technical, and Hell, if I am curious, I look it up. I once was fascinated with the Hungarian word for pancreas (hasnyálmirigy) when I encountered the word in what I was reading I was curious enough to look it up and then really spent some time on it, because it was funny to me: because it was made up of the parts: has (=stomach) + nyál (=saliva) + mirigy (gland). Let me tell you, has (stomach) and nyal (spit) are very common words - and they are funny words, that little children use, and they are useful to have at your disposal, and the whole thing made me smile...
Now here is a game I play as well - I find a website with a bunch of jokes in the language. I read the joke (usually just a few lines long) and see if there are words I don't understand. Then I do not allow myself to look them up until I have exhausted all other methods of figuring out what they mean, because I want to exercise my mind. I want to see if my knowledge of the word parts or things that are slightly familiar can give me clues as to the other parts. See, jokes are really useful because the last sentence is the punchline and it usually sheds light on the preceding part of the joke, and hints about the meaning, and the subject and the action. Sometimes you understand the punchline, and then you think backwards, so, what would have been happening, to make this punchline be something funny? It has a clues in it, and if the joke is about a pun, it really forces you to look at the word parts and at similar sounding words that might be confused with the words in the joke, and it helps exercise your recognition of the words and the word parts. Often, I still can't understand the joke, so I will go to sleep and look at it first thing in the morning, and am usually amazed that I can see words and parts of words that I couldn't see the night before when I was tired. Then, I start looking up words that I am certain are really rare, or maybe they are slang and all my text books have neglected to expose me to those words. Ok, so now I have a new set of words and then the next step is to understand the joke. At this point, the problem is that I am just stupid, or that I really have to understand an idiom or pun that is just impossible unless there is a native speaker to explain it. After doing all those exercises, then I reward myself by cutting and pasting the whole joke into a translation program, which sometimes translates it well, and sometimes is even worse than myself.
I mention the joke exercise because it is the only time I do not look up a word right away. I think that if I look up a word right away I will not exercise the pattern recognition and logic parts of my mind - but I only do that when I play the joke game. When reading anything else (books, articles, textbooks, etc) I look up every freaking word. I really think it is important to look it up and not to guess at it or to skip over it.
Anyway, I thought I would write about my latest experiments. I like your writing style, I think your reading has influenced your other skills (at least writing) and that naturally those other skill sets will develop to a nice extent as long as you practice and have fun.
Hi! I'm actually relieved to find a person with a similar point of view! So far I've only seen negative takes on that matter. "You might never see that word again" but I just did so might as well learn what it means. I personally think it only matters if you don't have much time so you need to choose where to put your attention. But I do it as a hobby and I feel like even if I never see the word again, knowing what it means adds to the feeling of language.
About words' derivations, it is a very good point indeed. I have to admit I sometimes blindly put similar words in different forms into anki, I guess it came from not knowing and not paying attention to formation of words. Since I've decided to be more conciencious in learning, I'll start on some workbook to fix it.
The joke exercise is so interesting! To be honest I'm not that patient to wait for another day to find out what the joke is about, but I get the mechanics of the method. It is very exciting to put new information in your mind and let the brain find connections with what you already know. I only used the method with programming tasks when couldn't find the solution and the next n-day it just pops up in your head. I'm excited to try it with words!
Thank you for such a thoughtful response!
Yes, programming is great for problem solving. It requires patience. It requires you to have faith in your own learning process. It also requires exact spelling and exact grammar. And it requires enjoyment in taking 24 hours to solve one tiny little aspect…. While other people might think that taking so long on one small thing is a waste of time and that it is easier to ask someone else to solve it (to skip it like a word you will never see again) … those people will never really understand the depth and fullness of the concepts that you are taking the time to learn… and how the knowledge and approach and experience will strengthen your abilities in the long run. Plus, with programming, it is really important to fully understand each tiny element and to constantly look up and research each command and structure and really spend time and attention and to see how things behave and test your assumptions.