How to Develop Reading Abilities in Foreign Languages 

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Thanks for having me on, Professor Arguelles!

One of my favorite activities lately is reading while listening to audio books. there are some high quality Japanese audio books out there (mainly targeted for young adults) that have full casts of voice actors, not just a solo narrator.

Love watching these videos. I found one of the best methods for me was one that I found while in France. I was studying abroad for a summer and had bought a few books by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer who has a distinctly clear style, and was putting each word I didn’t know into Anki. What I found was that both Murakami and his translator into French had an idiolect that led to there being words which repeated decently often, along with constructions. By the end of the book (it was 400-500 pages I think), I could read it comfortably. I also wouldnt put each and every word into Anki. I had a frequency list I could search them in, and anything less common than the top 30,000 words I didn’t save, but kept the definition in mind. I found this really helpful. However, I was also at the point where I could mostly talk about anything in french with relative comfort, so not the same for someone just starting out.

Thank you so much for this video, Professor! It was lovely to listen to you and Robbie. For the 3rd stage I would add not just history books but also books on science or other scholarly subjects, but only if you are studying a closely related language or a new language from a familiar group, as scholarly vocabulary can often be very similar in these languages (though I would imagine that for say Hindi and Urdu the scholarly vocabulary would in fact be different owing to the histories of those languages). And I do love using multiple languages in my studies at the same time but it's very hard to find the right material in my target languages.

This was a nice overview. Reading English text while listening to Finnish audio helped me get over the gap from textbooks to general blog and news articles and to read easy readers more easily. It also really makes me slow down reading. I finally read all of the Lord of the Rings doing this and the process was just incredibly enjoyable. It was also fascinating that the Finnish helped me understand some more obscure English words like names of equipment or succor (of which I always forget the meaning). I also noticed an improvement in my general listening comprehension from this one book that was maybe 20 hrs? Finnish has an amazing thing called Selkokirja, which is its own genre of fiction and nonfiction for adults and includes abridged, simplified books of popular modern works. It's wonderful and much better than the usual graded reader.

I loved this video! Lots of valuable advice. I recognized some of the steps I already apply (because reading great literature in its original language is my main driver for language learning) but also some new things I'd like to test. Please keep on making this sort of videos where you give tips on how to achieve / improve polyliteracy.

This is great. Was just thinking of you today.

How's the book going?

Professor, would you share the link to the silver bullet post? I tried the one that's showing up in your browser, but it's not working. Amazing video, as always.

Could you tell me the title of the "piece on the history of the Catalan language"?

Would this process start at B1 level?