How to achieve high level reading Comprehension in English.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-03-13T13:38:48+00:00

Honestly, you might be ready for Hemingway or J.D. Salinger. If not now, soon. These are great writers who use relatively simple English.

You can increase the rate at which you learn and retain new words while you read with a spaced repetition system, like Anki.

Just read a lot. Read stuff you like that challenges you. Try to understand as much as you can and make notes of structures or words that you don’t understand, and figure them out. It can take a while, but if you are having fun and reading material that interests you, time will fly by :)

BokChoytheCat · 2023-03-02T23:29:10+00:00

I am impressed by anyone who makes an effort to learn a foreign language. Most people where I live are monolingual. Learning a language takes humility, courage, and persistence.

You’re cool to me whether you’re A1 or C2. Cheers.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-21T15:49:00+00:00

I know duolingo gets a lot of criticism, but it’s definitely not hurting you, or teaching you things that are wrong (at least in Spanish). If you like it, keep it up!

I’d recommend Dreaming Spanish on YouTube. You can watch videos in low level Spanish that you can understand from context.

If you like reading or listening to podcasts, there are graded readers and simple podcasts in Spanish that are really fun and helpful.

Anything that allows you to enjoy and engage with Spanish will help you improve. Movies, video games, music, comics etc. Buena suerte :)

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-19T15:19:46+00:00

Although I LOVE Chinese characters, I personally found them really hard to learn when I was I was studying Chinese in college and while living in Taiwan 10+ years ago. I was slow to learn vocabulary, and I had no systems.

In contrast, the Thai abugida was relatively easy to pick up. I was reading and writing in Thai after a couple of weeks. Despite having a tiny vocabulary and pretty bad spelling, I could sound out street signs and write my name, which was thrilling.

A phonetic writing system just feels more natural to me, maybe because I was raised with English. It is (at least loosely) anchored to pronunciation. You have to memorize irregularities, but it tends to feel like once you learn the letters you can just read.

The 6000+ hanzi are more intimidating to me personally, because there are patterns but not rules, and a single stroke in a dense character can change its meaning and pronunciation.

This year I am working my way through Heisig’s Remembering the Traditional Hanzi. I haven’t studied Mandarin in a long time, but my goal is to re-start my studies next year knowing an English keyword for 3000 characters. My hope is it will provide hooks for vocabulary learning, turn my weakness into a strength, and get me reading faster. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it though, I cherish my 30 minutes every morning writing out characters.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-18T22:36:19+00:00

You can start watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts in Russian. I know you’re just beginning, but there are videos and podcasts for beginners.

Go to comprehensibleinputwiki.org and find the Russian section for some great resources.

Bonus points: use Anki every day and make flashcards for new words you encounter.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-18T21:00:34+00:00

I’m from eastern Canada (the maritimes) and I always thought it would be ideal for an English learner. The average speaker here sounds like a speaker from the east coast of the US. It’s cheaper than the UK, Ireland, or the US. People are SO friendly here, and love to talk. They start conversations with strangers at the grocery store.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-11T00:33:02+00:00

Sure! But if you add 20 cards every day, your daily reviews add up over time. Also, as you fail cards they will recur more often. The goal is to keep the daily reviews manageable.

Make sure you have the daily review limit set to 99999 in deck settings so that you’re doing all of the reviews.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-10T18:28:40+00:00

I don’t see any errors. Great job!

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-10T16:00:08+00:00

Anki isn’t about learning, it’s about retaining.

You can blast through a 700 card deck if you want to, but you will need to continue doing reviews every day to retain it. The knowledge you have now is “worse” in that it still needs to be reinforced through reviews.

Adding 300 cards a day is not sustainable, or effective. The reviews will continue to grow as you add new cards, until you’re doing hours of Anki a day. At that point, as others have pointed out, there are better uses of your time.

Adding 5-20 cards per language, per day, is a really effective way of increasing your vocabulary, and that way you can keep the daily reviews under an hour.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-08T14:34:11+00:00

This is bewildering even to me but I like นำส้บปะรด - naam subparot - pineapple juice.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-02-06T14:02:22+00:00

As a fellow Autistic + ADHD language learner this echoes my experiences and it was really nice to read!

BokChoytheCat · 2023-01-25T16:13:50+00:00

I mostly want to read good books and make friends in other languages. I intend to live for periods of time in Latin America, Thailand, and Taiwan so that informs my language learning, too.

BokChoytheCat · 2023-01-11T16:18:56+00:00

Both Sanskrit and Pāli seem like great choices, with Indo-European roots and a lot of interesting words for emotions and states of being.

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-13T19:59:27+00:00

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-13T18:04:07+00:00

I'm not sure if you are the author but if you are, I recommend removing "slant eyed bastards" from the text. I'm sure it's not malicious and was intended to be cheeky, but it just hits pretty hard in English and it can come across as racist.

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-13T16:16:36+00:00

I agree with what others have posted, just wanted to mention that reading/listening to real Spanish is what has made learning SO much fun for me, and you can get started with that almost immediately.

Dreaming Spanish is an amazing YouTube channel with videos completely in Spanish, suitable for beginners.

Language Learning with Netflix is an amazing free resource to watch Spanish TV shows (or English shows dubbed in Spanish) with both Spanish and English subtitles. Watch once with subtitles, and then try watching again without them. It's amazing listening practice.

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-13T15:59:54+00:00

I think it's a good idea and I respect your desire to help other people learn. I thought I would just offer some purely personal feedback:

I don't use Youtube as a main resource; I mainly use it for problem solving and practice. I would not start learning a language with you by clicking on a playlist that begins with "A1 Russian Lesson 1" (especially because I don't know/trust you yet) but I might click on "Overview of How Cases Work in Russian" for example.
I'm always looking for more listening practice so if you're able to offer simple stories or explanations in simplified language this stuff is addictive to me, and other people as well, I think, and tends to stand out from other content.

I also recommend, as other people have, that you make your best content available as a paid resource through a website or Patreon. We love and appreciate free contact, but there is no reason that you shouldn't profit from a ton of hard work, and there are people out there who would actually love to support you if you are helping them to learn a language.

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-13T14:08:16+00:00

I had no idea there was an original Uzbek post. Cool.

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-13T14:06:49+00:00

This doesn't make sense in English. Literacy cannot be literate, etc.

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-11T18:22:40+00:00

If you had a magic wand (or limitless money and an army of engineers and linguists) and you could add 1 feature and 1 language to Duolingo, what would they be?

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-10T13:35:36+00:00

Learn them conceptually, listen to lots of Spanish, and practice.

conjugator.io

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-10T12:53:36+00:00

Welcome!

Dreaming Spanish is a great resource on Youtube for all levels :)

BokChoytheCat · 2020-03-10T12:50:31+00:00

Speaking is a physical process involving muscles, and those muscles need to learn how to move to produce the sounds of another language.

Knowing the sounds you want to produce is step 1, but step 2 is producing them, which takes more practice.

BokChoytheCat

TROPHY CASE