The Din in the Head
Posted: October 16, 2011 Filed under: Extensive Reading, Free Voluntary Reading, Reports, Second Language Acquisition | Tags: extensive reading, free voluntary reading, reports, second language acquisition Leave a comment »
The Din in the Head, first noted by Barber (1980), is an involuntary mental rehearsal of a language that occurs after we have had extensive comprehensible input in that language.
It’s happening!
There is a Czech din in my head and it’s becoming unbearably loud.
There is a bunch of disconnected phrases and words, whole dialogs, situations repeating in my head all the time, especially on the days when I read a lot. They sound Czech enough but still a little bit Macedonian (I desperately need to start listening too).
I have always been pleased with this phenomenon but this time I’m especially happy because it’s happening even if I don’t listen to the new language i.e. it’s happening as a result of the subvocalization in reading only.
Tip
If you believe in silent period then you don’t have to worry about how long it should last or is it going to end. At some point, depending on the quality of your comprehensible input, language difficulty etc, you’ll just have to start speaking. At some point your brain will start rehearsing, whether you like it or not. There is definitely no input only learning.
My problem with vocabulary threshold figures
Posted: October 10, 2011 Filed under: Extensive Reading, Free Voluntary Reading, Reports, Second Language Acquisition | Tags: extensive reading, free voluntary reading, reports, second language acquisition 8 Comments »
Today’s post has been a draft for many weeks. Have I decided to publish it earlier it would have been much less convincing.
Some scientific research:
- The percentage of vocabulary coverage necessary for L2 learners to understand written texts is 95% or around 3,000 word families (Laufer, 1989)
- The percentage of vocabulary coverage necessary for L2 learners to understand written texts is 98% or around 8,000 word families (Hu and Nation, 2000)
- The percentage of vocabulary coverage necessary for L2 learners to understand written texts is 98% or around 8,000-9,000 word families (Nation 2006)
From the list you can see that as the time goes by the figures are becoming higher and higher.
In practice, I find the total opposite. The more languages I know, the more I’m convinced that I can start free voluntary reading with much less vocabulary coverage than these figures claim.
Years ago, I started reading Italian with many thousands words under my belt. As the time (and languages) passed by I was trying and succeeding to start reading as soon as possible and with as less vocabulary as possible. In every next language I tried to start reading with less known words.
Now with Czech I’ve reached my all-time high (or low). I have started reading Czech with the least vocabulary coverage than ever before.
Timeline:
My first book was actually a collection of fairy tales (403 pages altogether) by the Brothers Grimm, Johann Wilhelm Wolf, Franz Georg Brustgi etc. I’ve wasted some of my reading time to analyze the texts and found out that I can actually read them with only 89% (88.7%) of known words.
My second book was “The Good Soldier Švejk” (799 pages). I don’t have the exact percent of known words for this one but it was HARD for the first 200 pages, I was lost in the dark many times and I’m sure that it wasn’t above 90%.
My third book was “F-Station” from Georges-Jean Arnaud’s “The Ice Company” series of books. I tried to read this one before “The Good Soldier Švejk” but without success. Than, after 800 pages of “The Good Soldier Švejk” this book seemed quite “easy”, definitely over 90% known words. Everything went smooth after this one, the other 30 books of the series certainly helped a lot.
Today, after many other books I have a high comprehension of Czech texts. I’m at the point of no return. Czech is a part of me. Few months ago, while reading those fairy tales I assumed that I can succeed in acquiring Czech with very small start-up vocabulary. Now, I’ve proved to myself that it’s possible.
What did it take?
- Good background knowledge at book one.
- Courage and Pitbull-like persistence at book two.
Heinrich Schliemann’s method
Posted: April 16, 2011 Filed under: Intensive Reading, Polyglots, Reports | Tags: polyglots, reports 16 Comments »Heinrich Schliemann (January 6, 1822 – December 26, 1890),
German archeologist and polyglot, more than 150 years ago said:
In order to acquire quickly the Greek vocabulary I procured a modern Greek translation of “Paul et Virginie” (a French novel – Schliemann already knew French), and read it through, comparing every word with its equivalent in the French original. When I had finished this task I knew at least one half the Greek words the book contained and after repeating the operation I knew them all, or nearly so, without having lost a single minute by being obliged to use a dictionary. Of the Greek grammar I learned only the declensions and the verbs, and never lost my precious time in studying its rules; for as I saw that boys, after being troubled and tormented for eight years and more in school with the tedious rules of grammar, can nevertheless none of them write a letter in ancient Greek without making hundreds of atrocious blunders, I thought the method pursued by the schoolmasters must be altogether wrong… I learned ancient Greek as I would have learned a living language.
I went through the same journey in Czech this week.
I’ve read the “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Douglas Bradbury, a 174 page novel that presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic and critical thought through reading is outlawed.
I simply read the English sentence on the left side than the Czech equivalent on the right side. At first I needed to read every Czech sentence few times to understand it but after some 10-20 pages I only needed one slower reading of each paragraph. I didn’t memorize anything. I didn’t care if I’m going to learn or forget some word or phrase.
Now, after 174 pages of bilingual text, I indeed understand “at least one half the words the book contained” like the famous polyglot once said. One week earlier I knew 7 
Czech words. I had a list of some 2000 Czech words, I’ve glanced through the first 100-200 and than I’ve lost it! It was SO boring.
—
30.05.2011
you can download the Heinrich Schliemann’s Selbstbiographie in German.
Hello World!!!
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: Free Voluntary Reading, Reports, Second Language Acquisition | Tags: free voluntary reading, reports, second language acquisition 2 Comments »Hello, this is my first post about language learning EVER! Hooray!
First of all: I don’t know ANY Czech. I’m starting from scratch.
This week I’m compiling a collection of Czech language learning materials and Czech literature.
So far I have:
- Teach Yourself Czech Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs)
- locallingo.com
- about 100 juvenile fiction novels downloaded from RoboVa stránka o knihách
- a collection of short stories in mp3 with transcripts meant for blind people: nevidomi.cz
I’ll organize the material this week and the experiment can start on Monday, 28 March 2011.
Good-bye until then!
