Unfortunately, I am not good enough to attempt this, but I've always thought that it would be interesting to do audiobook and written book at the same time when reading in another language.

The more you read in that language, the easier it will be. There are so many levels of understanding, even in a simple text. Start with some easy reading that you already read in translation.

Unless you really don't understand what's going on, simply ignore the unknown words and phrases and enjoy the general gist of the story. It trains your tolerance for ambiguity, which studies have shown to be a highly predicitive marker for success in language acquisition, i.e. the more you can tolerate to not understand every tiny little detail, the better you are in learning the language. So it's not only much more enjoyable to not consult a dictionary every few minutes, you're also training an important skill. If you're reall struggling, maybe pick an easier text for starters and work your way up.

I am french and mostly read English or Americans books, and I only read in English - translations just doesn’t to it for me. I also read in Spanish when I find an interesting story. Reading a story in another language can be so liberating and challenging ! Don’t hesitate to look for words or expressions you don’t know, I promise it will not undermine the pleasure you get from it :)

It might just be me but dont be disappointed if you dont get the same pleasure from reading in a foreign language. I've read several hundred books in english and pretty much exclusively watch english tv shows and I still vastly prefer reading in my mother tongue.

I (English speaking American) did this while learning French. I would put on a Harry Potter audiobook on my iPod as I read along with the physical copy in French.

Very helpful in acclimating to the pronunciation and proper tempo of whichever language you’re trying to learn.

Start with reading something you love and know very well in your own language, that's what I did. I loved Eragon when I was about 15 and read it so many times over and over in my native language when I picked up the English version I just knew what I was reading even though I didn't understand every word.

I learned English in school, but I became good at English from reading. I think I was fourteen when I read the Lord of the Rings and Hitchhiker‘s Guide to the Galaxy without consulting a dictionary and let me tell you, it was rough.

I don’t think I understood more than 30% of Hitchhiker and it took me half a year to get through the first three hundred pages of LotR (which was also partly because there’s not that much going on for a long time at the beginning of the book, at least not stuff that’s interesting to a fourteen year old).

But then something happened and during one week I read the remaining 600+ pages. I had been a bad to average English student until that summer, but from that point on I always was best in class.

One thing I should add is that I had a really great English teacher in middle school. Basically from eleven years old I never learned a translation for new English words, instead we always looked up the word‘s English definition and learned that.

So if you take away anything from my slightly rambling comment: just read, don’t look stuff up while reading so not to stop your flow and if you really want to look stuff up, don’t look for the translation of the word but for an English definition.

I guess it's because doing stuff in your mother tongue feels like 'home' :)

Wow that's a big jump. From 300 pages in 6 months to 600+ pages in a week. I can see that your work and patience paid off. Hearing that really encourages me. And thanks for the advice.

Depends on your level. I personally have thrown myself in the deep end with reading starting from complex fantasy stories and have learned how to distinguish between words really useful and those I could leave out. I think this is the key to get over with a fact that it's impossible to pay attention to every detail and not get bore to death. Reading should be enjoyable and as long as you understand let's say 80% of each page, your are fluent-reader - as you come across some unkown expressions you will finally absorb them. Plenty of them are really unnecesary for daily life and even natives deem them weird or quirky.

Thats probably it. I just love my mother tongue and the growing dominance of english makes me a bit sad, tbh.

This is really important! To read for 'gist' and fluency. I think I read that this helps with syntax in the read language.

It can be hard but also having a pencil and notepad can be handy for words that repeatedly come up. I jot them down and at the end of a chapter or at a good break i look up those words. It takes discipline though to not start writing down every word!

When I started I didn't have Kindle yet, so I would just skip the words I didn't understand and try to guess it from the context. Then with every re-read of the same book I did (only the books I loved), I would learn something new. Sometimes I would realize I misunderstood it, but the characters in the book didn't care so I just re-learned and that was it 😅

Now when I have Kindle there are still sometimes words I hear for the first time and I just tap on the word and read in dictionary what it means. It makes it really easy. However, some phrases there are still unknown and I do the same as I did before - assume and then learn along the way when I see it in different contexts.

Just read. If you don’t understand something, keep going. As long as you can kinda sorta make sense of things, you’re good. Don’t stop every time you see a word you don’t understand.

I did this when I was learning English. At first I couldn’t understand a lot of what I was reading. The more I read, the easier it got and the more I understood.

I did the same with The Hunt For Red October, i also tried Harry Potter but couldn't wistand the fantasy words ( jumping straight to the 7th was a mistake, but reading the early ones as an adult is not a good experience ).

Recently I learned that we can look up words in Google Books too. But where I live English books are expensive and same with English Google books. I can't seem to understand tbh. Like why e-books are as expensive as physical books?

One suggestion I have is to search r/suggestmeabook for best or favorite short stories. Many short stories are available online. The plot structure is tight because of the format. You can find authors whose work you like and then read their longer books.

i love this question!

as many have already stated, just plunge in and accept that you won’t understand every word and phrase. tolerate ambiguities and uncertainties. it will be such a rewarding and memorable experience, and it will get only better from there.

it takes courage and hard work, but it pays off.

i read A Heart So White by Javier Marias in english when i was in high school and Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami in french at university when i was not proficient in those two languages yet, and now i count them among my favorite novels:). never reread in my first languages (am bilingual), no need whatsoever:).

I've read the Harry Potter books a bunch of times and decided to try to read it in German! Something fun about those books is each book is written at the same level as the age of Harry. So the first book the language and vocabulary is a bit more simple since he's 11 years old, and as the books go on and he gets older, the language/vocab gets more complex. For learning a new language, I found this incredibly helpful! Partially because I have a general idea of what's happening due to knowing the English books so well, partly because it's written at a level I can manage.

When my English teacher saw that I'm reading in English she gave me one tip "translate only that words you really don't know, or you cannot figure out what it means by the context" of course I was always checking if I understood correctly, but it really works. And I was always getting a confidence boost when I understood what certain words means

Exactly this, if you are at a level to understand most of the book in your target language then just carry on reading. I look up words only if they repeatedly come up in the past couple of pages and I’m still none the wiser so I quickly look it up. Even then, try not to look up a translation of the word, but look up the word in your target language so you get a definition, not a translation. My tip would also be to take your time. Initially, you might find that reading in your target language is slow and feels easy for your mind to wander and choose the path of least resistance… but keep at it and it goes get easier and starts to flow. You’re training your brain through native level exposure, so initially it will feel tough. Good luck!

The first couple of books I've read in English I couldn't get almost half the words but I got the sense of what was said. It helped that it was books I was familiar with already. Now I'm comfortable with everything.

Very true. I'd studied very little English before digging into The Silmarillion as a kid. Couldn't find it in translation locally. Skipping words and phrases where I was unsure. The whole was very nice and a great reading experience, even though it was vastly different from when re-reading the book a few years later.

I hope you don’t mind me saying that I have the opposite experience. Reading in my second language, French, which I learned in high school, remains really satisfying to me – I know that it’s a chance to read something that would never be the same in translation, and I also am a little bit proud of myself for reading in another language 😏 It’s definitely a different experience than reading in my native language— but different, not worse. For me.

Publishing companies have needed to do that in order for them and the authors to survive. Obviously the e-book should be much, much cheaper, but there’s also a point below which they can’t go and still pay the people who work at the publishing house and the author. It might be worth looking for books that are out of copyright? Standardebooks is a great site.

Another really good option is getting a library card for a library in the US and checking out e-books— NYC Public Library allows you to do this without being a resident of New York. If it’s a popular e-book, you might end up being on hold for it, but it’s free!

Wow I never knew that! I will check that out. Thank you!

Are you looking for title recommendations or something else?

My tip would be not to worry too much about the words you don't know. If you can still understand the sentence, just keep reading. Sure, your knowledge will increase by "this word means something like this" for a while and you can always look it up when it turns out it doesn't mean what you thought... but the best way to learn is through volume and repetition.

If there is something cultural you don't know, you can look it up on wikipedia after you are done reading. But the idea is to have as little interruption as possie during the reading time.

Plus also you'll become one of those people who mispronounced words because you only ever read them, never heard them, like "blackguard"

This is how I read Pratchett books when I was learning English all that time ago. Basically, if I didn't understand something, I assumed it was a cultural reference I didn't know or a pune or play on words.

I read a lot of history books now and I still have the same approach when it comes to names. If someone is important, the name will be repeated a few times and I know I should actually remember who they are.

No, I'm looking for book recommendations. Thanks for your advice! And for the last thing you said then I may consider using audiobook and physical copy at the same time :D (if I can get the audiobook of course)

I've struggled first time I tried to read in english but now it became easier, you can try reading with someone else, this one helped me so it may help you too

Also I can read with you if you want to*-*

What exactly do you mean by reading with someone else?

a book buddy I read with my friends sometimes

Like reading the same thing and then discuss?

yup.

Not at all :) I've read two books in french so far, have a little knowledge about multiple languages and a linguistics degree but for me personally nothing beats reading in german.

edit: and at this point I doubt its due to lack of english skills

This makes me think of a dude I know who learned Japanese by starting with memorizing studio ghibli movies. It didn't make him perfect, but he was able to go to Japan and slowly become actually fluent.

I've been reading in Spanish for a couple of years now. I started with Harry Potter, and now I've recently worked my way up to reading the novels of Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It's been challenging, especially because he writes in such beautiful but often complex prose. The main thing that helps is that I read them all before in English, so I know the basic story. Another huge assist comes from keeping the Lens (camera) feature of Google translate open on my phone so I can just grab it anytime I come to a word or passage that I can't decipher. I've needed to use it less and less as I go, but it has vastly increased my enjoyment of reading in Spanish (vs. having to type in words and sentences to translate them).

You know a lot more than I do, obviously, but I have the impression that in German writers actually can create words on a pretty regular basis, which I would think would make reading in it an incredibly interesting experience that isn’t comparable to English.

English does have compound nouns like grasshopper too! And I honestly dont really see the big difference between the constructs Wohnzimmer and its literal translation living room. Sure, you can create long new(ish) words like Kreuzworträtselleitfaden (crossword puzzle guide) but I guess thats not as exciting for a native speaker any longer. Sorry to disappoint

Read a book you already read but really loved. I started reading in english when I was like 12 (main language is spanish) and the first books I read were the hunger games. They were easy and it was easy to translate words I didn't know based on the context. It helped a lot and since I already knew I would enjoy the story it wasn't scary to start at all :)

I read L'Étranger by Albert Camus in college. I read the English version alongside. It really opened up my eyes on how much a language influences a story.

The discworld novels are a wonderful universe to explore 😀 I can only imagine how complex some of the references must have been as there is such a large universe to draw from.

And I like your approach to non-fiction and important people!

• Just pick up books that you are excited about.

• go look up books in your favourite genre.

• if you’re not yet super confident in reading English books try some YA.

I’m Dutch but read about 70 percent of my books in English. I prefer the original language when reading (if I speak that language off course). In the Netherlands Dutch books tend to be more expensive when bought new. So I hardly ever buy a Dutch book brand new. I either get them from secondhand bookstores or from the library. We have good accessibility to foreign books. So usually that’s where my money goes to.

Even books that are neither originally Dutch or English I will often get in English because of price and sometimes quality of the translation (bigger market so usually better translations - although not guaranteed).

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Be willing to go back and re-read a passage or section again. Patience and focus are key!

Also, you will often see a word or phrase you don't know. If you can figure it out from context, good. If you can ignore it and still understand the sentence/meaning, good. But, if it occurs many times, you should stop and look it up in a dictionary or translator etc.

I’m reading more in English than in my mother tongue and what gives real pleasure is books that I’m really interested in. I tried to read “clever” books in English, books relating to my job, advisory books about self-improvement, etc., like you said, for improving my vocabulary and other language skills. It was not so much fun…😃 Then I started reading what I’m really into, stories that interest me, love stories and other romantic fiction, stories from different perspectives, etc. I actually wanted to enjoy reading, so I’m searching for stories I can personally relate to.

I don’t look up each and every word but as others said, I try to get the gist of the story. I only check words that are repeating or, seem to be crucial to understand in the given context.

I find it more enjoyable to read in English this way than in my mother tongue.