How To Read In A Foreign Language - French Novels

hello and welcome back to another episode and today we are going to talk about this idea of reading in a foreign language and this is something that excites me quite a lot because i feel like reading a book first of all in your native language you know let it be english or spanish or french or whatever uh it's in a sense a process of opening up a whole new world you know fred leibowitz in her series pretend as a city uh she basically said that books are like doors you know it's a door that opens you up to like brand new sensations brand new people brand new experiences and i think one of the greatest pleasures of reading at least for me growing up you know i was reading a lot of goosebumps and detective novels when i was growing up and then gradually transitioned into you know more classical literature based readings um it was always a process of really exploring a brand new world out there it's always brand new process of trying to escape my little small town mentality it was always a process where you know i was bored in my room i was really you know i didn't want to go out to play soccer or anything and you know a great book on a rainy day that's probably one of the best things ever and i feel like i've carried that passion in my earlier childhood and an early teenage hooding to my adulthood right now and i am right now such an avid reader that you know books for me is an alternative way of living and it's literally another world that i can dip in and out of uh when i choose to do so so that's the pleasure of reading fiction for me and the process of reading in a foreign language at least for me is just like the process of learning to read again that's what's so exciting about it once you start learning a foreign language once you can read fiction in that foreign language it is exactly the process that you've been through as a kid when you first discovered the power of stories when you first discovered the power of like oh my god there's this whole new world out there that you can explore there's this whole new world of characters and a whole new world of like adventures out there that you can explore it felt exactly like that once i've learned how to read um right now my target language is in french once i've learned how to read in french this entire world opened up to me the world of philosophy philosophical insights the world of fiction um french literature and these great french authors that i've read in english before i learned french and now i can really appreciate these pieces some in the original language so in this video i simply want to present you guys with a few pointers with a few tricks and with a few summaries and with a few should i say with a few tip bits and tips on how to read in a foreign language because it is a process that takes a lot of commitment it's a process that's not that straightforward and easy it takes a lot of time and effort but i think you guys will reap a lot of great rewards from this entire process it is not an easy process it is not something that is should i say straightforward it's not something that you can get for free you know nothing in life that's worth your time and effort you can basically get them for free you can't get anything for free that's really worth their time so you're going to put any put in the time and effort and i am sure you're going to enjoy this process a lot so let's start from the very beginning which is that first of all you need a level of competency in this language you need a certain level of competency in this language to start reading to start comprehending the words in this language to start comprehending should i say the content of this kind of language that you're learning so my target language right now is in french so my target language if i want to read in my target language it makes sense for me to study uh this the grammar of this language it makes sense for me to study the tenses that are going to be used in the most frequent in this language and in french it just happened to be the literary past tense and a lot of older literature for example if you head back to you know gustaf or like um some older writers in french the entire french literary canon uh very frequently people wrote in the literary past tense and it is a way of describing a past in a literary narration voice and there are many different voices that french people wrote literature with but literary past tense i think it's for me personally the type of literature that i'd like to explore um the literary past has proved to be one of the more important tenses and what's interesting about learning how to read in french is that you don't necessarily have to place that much emphasis on the communication part or the speaking part of this language but nevertheless it's also very important to pronounce or should i say practice your pronunciation because you're going to be pronouncing other words in your head so it makes sense for you to practice the literacy the grammatical parts of this language that you're trying to read in and the speaking part of this language otherwise you're going to get all the letters wrong or get out of pronunciation around your brain and it's just basically doesn't sound as nice as it as it could be in your head so building up a competency in the language is very important and now is where i have to tell you a little a little bit about today's video sponsored lingoda so lingoda is a company that i've partnered up with to bring you guys a really wholesome language learning experience and with their sprint challenge this is basically a challenge offered by lingoda to all of you guys it's a two month launch challenge where over this course of two months you're basically taking over 60 language lessons in your target language so lingoda so far they offer a range of languages including spanish english business english of course french and in many other languages out there and this entire sprint challenge is going to challenge you to push you beyond your initial boundaries with this language so it's going to look like 60 lessons with qualified native speaking teachers from all of it all from all over france if you're studying french from all over the world these are qualified teachers so you're going to get the most authentic language learning experience in this very immersive environment and the classes are pretty small the classes are conducted in very small classes with no more than five students in each class and course material varies in each class and also you can cater these classes to your schedule and you can plan these lingoda classes schedule schedule the classes around your busy schedule around your commitments and also you can basically uh with the sprint challenge you can get all of your money back if you manage to complete the sprint challenge so lingoda for you right now for all you lovely people listening to this video right now is offering you a cashback reward challenge where if you've managed to complete all 60 lessons in the course about two months they are offering all your money back and if you sign up to this challenge if you want to learn french very intensively with native level speakers and with varied course material cater into your levels if you can choose levels based on your language competency so you're going to be basically grouped with students that are in that level so you can sign up right now and get 25 off of your deposit for the spring challenge for april in the description down below by following the link and the code and lingoda really enables me to make more content like this for you guys to offer more tips on reading in a foreign language and the joys of learning a foreign language so thank you lingoda for supporting this episode and check out the sprint challenge if you're interested but now let's move on to point number two which is a slight pointer on how to read a slight pointer on the nature of reading itself or a slight pointer on should i say this entire exercise of reading so if you remember anything from your high school reading classes or primary school reading classes is that there's a very distinct difference between reading a piece of thing uh reading a piece of literature or reading a book reading a piece of fiction there's a really big difference between reading things on a page word by word and actually comprehending the sentence so comprehension and reading or should i say comprehension and vocabulary there in a sense two different things in a sense comprehension relies on how you interpret the grammar structure what sense you make out of this sentence and what sort of meaning that you can derive out of this entire exercise of reading so i'd really consider reading or comprehension as a different skill level you know different skill set as mirror vocabulary and practicing grammar so it is something that's in a sense beyond grammar and vocabulary it is and so it is a practice in itself so if you really want to read in a foreign language once you've reached that certain level of competency with this language that you're learning reading in a foreign language becomes a two prop proc sort of like a two-part process so first of all you have to know the grammar rules you have to know the grammatical rules you have to know all of these rules on the back of your hand but then again you have to practice the act of reading you have to practice the act of deriving meaning out of a really really should as a sophisticated piece of literature you have to practice that kind of comprehension that's what even in your native language their comprehension tests that's when your native language sometimes you read a really difficult piece of literature it doesn't necessarily make make much sense because you're not at that level of comprehension yet it is exactly the same in a foreign language which means you don't actually have to translate every single word on a page you don't actually have to translate every single little thing on a page you don't actually have to look up every tense on a page but simply by the act of reading everything you know glossing over it or sometimes squashing over the words over the page yet you're still able to make sense of that sentence that's you practicing the act of reading instead of just looking up every single word because language is such a tricky thing it depends on contextual factors it depends on traditions it depends on so many other factors for you to make sense of a sentence that sometimes it actually doesn't make sense for you to look up every single word but the mere act of making sense of the expression making sense of a paragraph that's the act of reading whereas if you look up every single word that's just gonna slow you down when it comes down to practicing reading so i really want you to view this process of practicing reading versus you know practicing you know vocabulary and grammar as two different sets of practices reading is something that you do to comprehend to get a sense of meaning out of an expression and sometimes getting meaning out of a paragraph or a sentence doesn't necessarily require you to know at the meaning of every single little thing in that sentence so by practicing that you're practicing reading and comprehension and by practicing grammar you're in a sense assembling the building blocks so these two processes should be separate so practice reading instead of looking up every single word in a book in a foreign language and the last tip that i'm gonna conclude this video with actually i picked this up this tip up because for as a part of my french novel unit which is a part of my french major requirements i we basically have to read two french novels and i chose basically um madame bovary by gustaf flabel it is a very difficult novel at first and this last tip is going to help you to get through some of these books more easily or help you to comprehend this piece of literature more easily and should i say this is probably one of the most challenging books in a foreign language that i've ever read and this is i'm still grasping trying to grasp onto the guess instead of the narrative by no means is it a perfectly easy read and of course it's not and for the second part of my course i'm going to be reading serotonin uh the novel in it's in its original language i've yet to order the book but so far what helped me to get through half of madame bovary so far in french was to put on an audiobook in a background put out an audio book in the background and to put it at a speed that you're comfortable with put put it on the speed i wouldn't put you to sleep basically so what an audiobook allows you to do when you're reading in a foreign language is that it basically allows you to acquire the right ways of pronouncing these words in that target language it allows you deliberately to enjoy the process of letting the words gloss over you and the process of listening really closely listening in to how these words are meant to be pronounced how these words are meant to be received and it's really killing two birds with one stone here on one hand you're practicing your pronunciation another hand uh following through a book with an audio book in the background does make it easier for you to practice the act of comprehension of reading so because it does not let you slow down to look up each every each and every single little word that you don't understand it in a sense forces you to pull yourself through the narrative and even though you're understanding my behavior it does get better chapter after chapter after chapter so after each chapter i've read i feel like i can comprehend more things in this language i feel like i can read more i can understand more of it and in a sense an audio book forces you to practice point number two which is practice reading as a separate act in itself compared to grammar and building blocks and all those kinds of good things so if you really want to get through a book in your target language if you really want to consider this idea of reading in a whole new language it is in a sense it's going to open up so many doors to you and sometimes what i find in french is that the translations aren't necessarily necessarily that good in english for example with some of the books or with some of the papers that i'm currently reading for another unit of mine so we're reading a lot of foucault for this unit and as a part of my research there's a lot of articles that are originally in french yet sometimes the translations are so morbid are so circular and circumspect that they're difficult they're even in a sense more difficult to read than if i actually just learn the language itself and read it in the original so i really prefer to read this piece of paper or piece of writing or piece of academic writing in its original language and what i found is that once i've learned the language the descriptions are actually more lucid and clear in french than the english translation so in the movie patterson uh there's this basically this beautiful analogy by this japanese poet he basically said reading something in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on and i feel like that's the perfect analogy so if you want to take your raincoat off if you want to really dive into this world of learning in a new language if you want to dive into this world of comprehending things in a new language consider this path of learning the original language and reading in a language using the tips offered in this video and i hope you guys are enjoying your reading journey so far and leave me your favorite books in foreign language just down in the comment section down below i look forward to hearing from you guys and i look forward to gathering more you know more diverse space of literature from different languages and so i can actually read them and eventually comprehend them in their original languages and i look forward to your progress with reading seeing your progress with reading and i look forward to seeing you guys in the next video hope you guys have enjoyed this video on language learning and reading and i will see you in the next one take care

Channel: Robin Waldun

Views: 24,453

Keywords: how to read in a foreign language, how to read in french rules, how to read a book, rc waldun reading, how to read in a different language, how to read a book in a different language, how to acquire a language fast, language acquisition, language acquisition and language learning, language acquisition theories, rc waldun

Id: AS6AQ7zxJjc

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2022