Read

Reading Resources

• Read Lang - Learn a language by reading whatever you like!
• Librivox - Free public domain audiobooks
• Learn Practical Spanish Online - Practial Spanish

Different Ways To Approach Reading

(Approach #1)

This approach is a combination of what helps me personally and what I know from my own head about reading for a foreign language. If you prefer a more researched or formal example scroll down to approach #2.
1. Pick a book you’ve already read or choose from short stories specifically made for beginners. This is important because when you first get into reading you want to be able to understand what you’re reading. This will allow you to get the most out of reading as you will be able to focus on more specific goals and skills.
2. Read the chapter or short story all the way through. The point of this is to have a basic understanding of the chapter or short story. If you are an absolute beginner your goal would be to see how much you can understand. If you want to, you can circle any words you don’t know, but that’s one of the things we will focus on in the next step.
3. Read the chapter or short story again. Make sure to highlight, circle, or write down words you don’t know. If you want to practice and understand conjugations more; highlight in a different color, underline, or write down the conjugations you have never seen before. If you don’t understand why they are used like they are, write down either in the margins or in a notebook the conjugation and what you don’t understand about it. Later on, you can go back to your notebook (or wherever) to learn more about conjugations.
4. Some other things to look for on your second go-around is the sentence structure. Make note of how the words are structured and why they are written the way that it is. Paying attention to certain phrases and slang may be something else you want to look out for.
5. Summarize. Lastly, you will want to summarize what you just read. Whether you physically write it down or just think about it in your head is up to you. But make sure that you know what you are reading.

(Approach #2) ~ Copied Straight from Storylearning.com (I did not write any of this myself)

1. Read the first chapter of the book all the way through. Your aim is simply to reach the end of the chapter. Therefore, do not stop to look up words and do not worry if there are things you do not understand. Simply try to follow what's going on.
2. When you reach the end of the chapter, try to summarize what you've read – the characters, places, ideas, events, etc. You could make a few notes in the target language, maybe writing down some of the main characters and events.
3. Go back and read the same chapter again. If you like, you can read in more detail than before, but otherwise simply read it through one more time. As before, don't worry about understanding everything. It's a gradual process that can take time, and I call it “reducing uncertainty”.
4. At the end of the chapter, continue to jot down notes about what you've read. This can be whatever is in your mind – it's yet another way to help you process what you're reading.
5. By this point, you should start to have some understanding of the main events of the chapter. At this point you might like to continue to re-read the chapter, this time using a dictionary to check unknown words and phrases. Just remember – avoid the need to understand everything. Use the skills mentioned above to deal with words you don't know and focus only on the vocabulary you think is vital to the narrative.
6. Otherwise, if you feel you have followed the main events of the chapter, you should continue on to the next chapter, and enjoy the book just as you would in your mother tongue.

Advice & Tips

Best Practices

How to deal with unknown words (with the help of storylearning.com): The first thing you should do is see if the word is familiar. there is a possibility that the word may be the same or similar in a different language. Keep in mind that words that may look similar to ones in your native language (or another language you know) could mean something completely different than what you were thinking. Using the context from the sentence can also help you figure out what the word means. At the very least, knowing the context will help you to understand what is going on still, even if you don’t know what the word means. for more tips click the link above.

Tips are either from Fluentu.com or have been inspired by them

1. Split your time between intensive and extensive reading. Intensive reading focuses more on reading closely for deeper understanding. Extensive learning is more about reading itself and is generally faster and more of a leisurely activity. Basically, intensive reading is for learning and understanding, while extensive reading is for enjoying reading and just trying to grasp the overall point of the text.
2. Use focused reading strategies.Fluentu mentions a method called “re-re-re-reading”, which is when you read the text 4 times. Each time you would concentrate on something different. In the approach #1 reading approach, I have an example of possible things to work on like conjugations, sentence structures, or unknown words .*To know more about the “re-re-re-reading” method, click on the Fluentu link above.
3. Do timed readings If reading less slowly is one of your goals, then speed reading is a great way to refine your reading skills. You can either time yourself to see how long it takes you to get through a chapter or set a predetermined time that you want to complete the chapter in.
4. More reading tips. For more reading tips click here to go to the Fluentu website page.