In this post, I want to share with you my journey of starting to read books in a foreign language. I have come up with different strategies that have worked well for me, and I will share some tips for anyone who´s interested (but I realize this will be too long if I do it in this post, so I am going to post a Part 2). This story will be about when I first started reading books in Spanish, which happens to be the Harry Potter books! Enjoy!
So, I feel like I should start with this. A lot of people (youtubers for example) are very loud about how much they think you "need" to understand in order to actually get something out of reading a book in another language. I found this very discouraging and also not true. I would never be where I am today with my Spanish if I would have listened to that.
Okay, so let´s start from the beginning. I started studying Spanish in school. I didn´t really put in much effort or interest in it the first year (my life was also pretty messy at the time). Then summer came along and I found myself a bit bored. So, naturally, I throught "Hey, why not read Harry Potter in Spanish!". Obviously, no one thought I would actually succeed in doing that (or make it through the first two pages for that matter), especially not after only a year of some high school Spanish classes. So I did the only thing I could think of. I proved them wrong.
It would be unfair not to tell you that I have read the Harry Potter books before, in both Swedish and English, and I knew the story very very well at this point (I still do). This was part of the plan, and it helped me tremendously with my learning. When I first started reading the first Harry Potter book in Spanish, I only understood a couple of words per page. But my brain very quickly picked up common words, such as "glasses", "scar", "wizard", "owl", etc, etc. And with the most common words down, I could now understand a lot more of what was going on, which helped me to learn even more words, and even more after that. I finished the first Harry Potter book in Spanish in only two weeks! I was soo happy and proud that I made it, this was the first thing I ever read in Spanish!
I continued with the series, but when I came to the third book, I started to get discouraged. Summer vacation was over and school had started. It consumed all of my energy. Suddenly, reading the book felt like a chore. I took a break over a couple of months (I only read a little at this time). Then it started to get better again, and I finished the next books in the series very quickly (it took 2-6 weeks each, but they are huuge). It went better than I ever could have dreamed of.
When I was on the last book, it was early summer and I was lying in my grandparents hammock, reading about The Battle of Hogwarts, when I suddenly realised something. When reading, I didn´t even think about the fact that I was reading in Spanish! I didn´t notice I was reading at all, the story just happened and I was part of it. It was the coolest feeling ever, reading about the Battle of Hogwarts in Spanish, while the sun was slowly going down over the horizon.
I went from only knowing a couple of words on every page, to get everything of what was going on in the story. I am very grateful that I never gave up, because this journey laid the foundation on which I continued building on.
Thank you for reading.
Hi Chocolate_Frog, I had a similar experience when learning English. I just started reading novels at some point and with every new book I understood more and needed the dictionary less. It worked just fine, so I'll apply the same stategy to learn Italian. No matter what people on YouTube say =D
Just now I got so involved in what you were saying and your writing style was so natural that at moments I forgot that I was reading the work of a student of English. I'm totally impressed by your language abilities. Fantastic work!
@kathleen_s Thank you soo much for your kindness! I´ve been feeling really insecure about my writing skills in English, so this truly means a lot! I am sitting here smiling from ear to ear, haha :)
@Caro Cool to hear someone with a similar experience! Sounds like a good idea to stick with what works for you, even if there are people on youtube doubting it. Also, good luck with your Italian!
I do something similar with all of the languages I start to learn - the first thing I do in any language is to find a copy of Pride and Prejudice and import it into LingQ. I often know 0 words before I start, but reading a book you know with a fairly repetitive vocabulary will really get you a fair way!
So when you didn't understand something you were reading, did you keep going or did you stop and look up stuff? I'm curious about your process of reading in a foreign language.
It is amazing dude :) I will buy the first book tomorrow for improving my reading skills. I got less point from reading part in IELTS
I completely agree with your method. The first books I’m reading in German are the Lord of the Rings trilogy...
I did the same thing! I read Harry Potter in German and it was soooo helpful.
@WHall: it depends, when I’m lazy I look up unfamiliar words as soon as in come across them. When I want to be more thorough, I underline unknown words while reading. After finishing a chapter or a certain amount of pages, I look up all of the underlined words, write down those I want to memorise and then read the text again.
@MimmiCaro: That sound like a great approach. You get to maintain the flow of the story, but you still get the benefit of exposure to the new vocabulary.
@WHall Thank you for the comment! When I read the first Harry Potter book, I had no possibility to look up any words, so I just kept reading. It was actually pretty helpful in some ways, I could get into a "flow" without having to stop after every sentence. Later, when I read the others, I only looked up a few words (for example words that kept appearing very often and I still didn´t understand, or words I was curious about. I noticed that I remeber the words I look up much better when I only look up a few).
I am amazed that you were able to read all 7 books in the series! You inspire me to keep on pushing forward.