People (and especially me) are talking about hours of listening, hours of watching television (yes, it’s not only listening that does the trick), numbers of sentences to do. All great of course, but what about reading? Hours of reading? Nah, that’s not really the measurement you want to use, as some people read faster than other people and some people need more time to analyse tricky sentences in books. But what about the ‘miles’ you read?
At the blog I had before this one I talked about one of my didactics classes where the professor proposed the ‘reading miles’-concept. The philosophy behind this is that the more you read, the more confident you will be in the end reading or reading out loud, and the faster you can read aswell. Of course this is exactly the same as watching more television, listening more radioshows/podcasts or listening more music, also called ‘input means output‘.
Although I have talked loads of time about watching more television, etc. I’ve neglected the reading part a bit, and with me loads of people. Doing your daily sentences is nice, but nothing beats a book where you (can) get sucked into. Besides, with languages like Spanish where you have a (nearly) phonetic spelling, it can assist your listening and speaking skills (because you get a broader vocubulary range and also a better feeling for the grammar).
So what kind of books do you need to aim for? It all depends on the level you’ve reached so far. Me for example, I just started reading La Conspiración of Dan Brown. Although it contains tricky sentence combinations, I feel pretty confident reading it. Besides, you don’t need to look up each and every unfamiliar word. Just look up a word or two if you don’t understand the meaning of the sentence.
Try out some books to see what work’s best for you. And please, avoid looking up everything. It takes away the joy of reading a book in Spanish.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Ha! That’s a very interesting concept. On my monitor your article is 120mm wide, and at about 28 full lines that makes it about 132.3 reading inches, or 2.09 milli reading miles. Just one problem – it wasn’t in Spanish
BTW, if you like Dan Brown, then you might also like Arturo Peréz-Reverte’s El club Dumas – it’s the book upon which the Johnny Depp film The Ninth Gate is based.
Hey Ramses! I like the new look you have here on wordpress.
As with most things, I stress the quality of the quantity OVER quality or quantity alone. So you’re right to say that you need to choose a book that more or less corresponds to your level in the language. For me, it helps to look up a few words every page just to make sure i’m understanding correctly the words and sentences i’m reading. In addition, I like reading out loud, as it helps boost my confidence in my Spanish pronunciation.
Thanks both
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Graham; I’ll have a look in the book section of Instituto Cervantes, probably next semester.
Jeff; reading out loud is something I’ll write about in the near future, but yes it does help really well
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I enjoy reading and I’m happy to see you promote reading in Spanish as a way to boost one’s Spanish.
Personally, I enjoy reading short stories in Spanish. It’s a good way to sample different authors and different styles without a big time commitment. Short stories by Julio Cortázar, Horacio Quiroga and Gabriel García Márquez are amazing.
I totally agree with you.
I think language learning can be more enriching if don,t limit it to text books. As well as speaking with natives and listening to music, reading foreign literatura helping you to increase your vocabulary and adapt your mind to other language, at least, that,s I done.
At first, can be complicated but over time you realise that don,t already search as many words as before because you understand the main idea of the text and, besides, you reading faster.
A really good blog Ramses!
PD: Sorry my mistakes, i’m not englishwoman
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Yea, I’ve found that reading a magazine that’s published here in the states (called Selecciones, kind of like Reader’s Digest in Spanish) really works well. It’s just got short, general-interest articles, and some interesting stuff, like passages pulled from a recent book or something. I get between fifty and a hundred words from one issue, which is a good number, especially if you’re me and have a vocabulary of only a few thousand words. I’m sure you can’t get it in The Netherlands (it’s even hard to find in the states, but subscribing should be easy), though it is online: http://www.rd.com/international/shared/?countryid=es#