Reading classics is probably not a good idea, you want something like young adult/teenage fiction, it's usually more digestible but can still be quite challenging. Things like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Animorphs or anything like that. I would recommend either reading on your PC with Deepl installed on your computer or with an e-reader. If you press ctrl+C+C then it will automatically copy the word into Deepl and show you the translation and an example sentence, which makes for a very efficient translation of difficult sentences or words.
The other option is to read on a Kobo or Kindle (I prefer Kobo) which has its own advantages. Firstly, you can read it like a real book, as in take it places such as the park, lie down on your bed and so on. However I think there's a second hidden advantage which is you learn to be okay with not understanding every single word and you let your brain sort of fill in the gaps.
As adults we are highly conscious of every word we don't know when reading a foreign language. We've forgotten when we were children, we would read books and you might not have even grasped whole paragraphs but you didn't really care, you just sort of tried your best and then kept going. That's the same type of mentality you should have as an adult reader. In fact, while reading in your native language, I bet you skip over many words that you still couldn't give the meaning of if asked but you sort of know what they mean within the context of a sentence and sometimes, you don't and you skip through it anyway.
The point is, I think reading an e-reader gives you the best of both worlds, you do get to look up words here and there but the architecture doesn't encourage it so much that you're looking up every second word or sentence to the point where it destroys your flow of reading.
devongreyboy t1_j9tcrc0 wrote
Reply to Tips on reading on a foreign language? by Frinnxy
Reading classics is probably not a good idea, you want something like young adult/teenage fiction, it's usually more digestible but can still be quite challenging. Things like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Animorphs or anything like that. I would recommend either reading on your PC with Deepl installed on your computer or with an e-reader. If you press ctrl+C+C then it will automatically copy the word into Deepl and show you the translation and an example sentence, which makes for a very efficient translation of difficult sentences or words.
The other option is to read on a Kobo or Kindle (I prefer Kobo) which has its own advantages. Firstly, you can read it like a real book, as in take it places such as the park, lie down on your bed and so on. However I think there's a second hidden advantage which is you learn to be okay with not understanding every single word and you let your brain sort of fill in the gaps.
As adults we are highly conscious of every word we don't know when reading a foreign language. We've forgotten when we were children, we would read books and you might not have even grasped whole paragraphs but you didn't really care, you just sort of tried your best and then kept going. That's the same type of mentality you should have as an adult reader. In fact, while reading in your native language, I bet you skip over many words that you still couldn't give the meaning of if asked but you sort of know what they mean within the context of a sentence and sometimes, you don't and you skip through it anyway.
The point is, I think reading an e-reader gives you the best of both worlds, you do get to look up words here and there but the architecture doesn't encourage it so much that you're looking up every second word or sentence to the point where it destroys your flow of reading.