I talk a lot about vocabulary "input," which I've earlier described as "correct phrases and sentences in the local language.
" As a reminder, this description has three different parts.
They ought to be correct, they must be full of phrases and sentences, and they also have to be in a variation of the language that is truly native.
One of the largest challenges in learning a language, specifically when you're at the start of your journey, is obtaining a supply of language input that complies with these requirements, which you can recognize a minimum of some of, and that is exciting enough to you that you'll keep it up.
In this article, I want to talk a bit about one source that I've discovered that supplies all of this for me: English books translated into your target language.
Here's how I usually do this.
First, I think of all of the books that I've read in English, and find the favorite ones that I think I could endure reading over and over again.
Then, I find the edition of that book in my goal language (for me, it's been both Spanish and Turkish).
I've obtained books both on the internet at specialty websites, as well as book stores when I've been in the foreign country where they speak that language.
I particularly love to go to foreign language bookstores - it's fun to figure out what the titles of all of the books mean, and also to imagine all of the new education that will be open to me after ultimately understand the language.
Let's make this concrete: very early on in my studies of Turkish, I learned I would want a great method to obtain input.
The Harry Potter series is one of my favorite ones - one I could stand reading many times.
Back then, I was studying in Turkey, and so I picked up a copy at a Turkish book shop.
Here are several of the positives and negatives of this method: 1.
If you've picked the book appropriately, it will be one which is very fun for you to read persistently.
It will help make "studying" not feel like actual work at all.
This is nearly more crucial than every other factor - the 80% solution that you can stick with in the long term is going to give much better results than the 100% solution that you give up after two weeks.
2.
If you're familiar with the tale, you are much more likely to understand what is taking place.
In this way, you'll be able to put emphasis on the new words and phrases you are discovering.
3.
One disadvantage to this approach is that the language written in books like Harry Potter may be quite hard for a rookie.
You might have to have lots of patience (like I did) if you're intending to stick to it.
If you prefer something less complicated, you may start with childrens' books, which, whilst less intriguing, are penned at a less difficult level.
Happy studying!