Reading Spanish Literature
Hola!
I just finished reading "El Juego del Angel" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón both for enjoyment and to improve my Spanish, especially my Spanish vocabulary, and have just started reading "La Casa de los Espíritus" by Isabel Allende. Some of the time, I've done it with this site open to translate the many, many words that I didn't know, and some of the time I just guessed or ignored words I didn't know and kept reading. Does anyone have any suggestions of which approach is "best?" I mean, I enjoy learning new words, but after so many, it can interrupt the flow of the story. Thanks for your input ahead of time!
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Acabo de leer "el Juego del Angel" de Carlos Ruiz Zafón tanto para disfrutarlo como para aprender más español y mejorar mi vocabulario, y acabo de empezar "La Casa de los Espiritus" de Isabel Allende. A veces, leía al lado de la computadora para poder buscar palabras que no sabía, pero otras veces simplemente adiviné el significado según lo mejor de mis habilidades y seguía leyendo. ¿Qué opinan ustedes? ¿Cuál es el mejor modo de leer? Disfruto aprender muchas palabras nuevas, pero éso puede interrumpir la fluidez con que leo la historia. Gracias por sus consejos.
7 Answers
¡Leer es una manera buenísima de aprender más vocabulario! El año pasado descubrí lo asombroso que es leer novelas en español para mejorar mi vocabulario y creo que hay muchas maneras de aprender nuevas palabras. No se lo recomendaría a todos pues me volví media loca al hacerlo, pero hacer una lista de todas las palabras nuevas que se encuentren en el libro es una buena manera de aprender un montón de vocabulario. Ahora por la mayor parte sólo leo y busco palabras en mi diccionario sin escribirlas en un papelito porque yo sé que me volvería loca si creyera que tendría que aprender todas las palabras de memoria o algo por el estilo. He llegado a darme cuenta de que si me sumerjo en la lectura en español sin preocuparme de aprender todas las palabras, no sólo disfruto más la fluidez de la historia sino también nuevas palabras entran a mi vocabulario sin que me dé cuenta.
Reading is a great way to learn more vocabulary! Last year I discovered how amazing it is to read novels in Spanish in order to improve my vocabulary. I think there are many great ways to learn new words. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone since I almost went crazy when I did, but making a list of all of the new words that you find in the book is a good way to learn a ton of vocabulary. Now mostly I only read and look up words in my dictionary without writing them on a note card because I know I'd probably go crazy if I thought I had to learn all of the words by heart or something like that. I've come to realize that if I immerse myself in my reading in Spanish without worrying about learning all of the words, I not only enjoy the flow of the story more but also new words enter into my vocabulary without me realizing it.
I can totally relate to your situation, I know it's recommended that you just keep reading without using a dictionary but when I do this I'm often still left wondering about the word so my curiosity demands that I use the dictionary. The trouble with this is that if the work is fairly literary this means that there are quite a few words that I'm unfamiliar with and, as you mentioned, trying to look them up means that you lose the flow of whatever you're reading and with that a lot of the pleasure.
In the end what I did was make a note of any words I couldn't pass by without knowing, I could quickly note them down and then later I'd look up the whole list in one go. Still a little distracting but not so bad as looking each one up as I went along.
If you like Spanish literature, you might want to check out this site: http://yquemecuentas.blogspot.com/ There are dozens of short stories in Spanish.
Si le gusta la literatura española, podría querer comprobar este sitio: http://yquemecuentas.blogspot.com/ Hay docenas de cuentos en español.
I actually just recently finished reading the Spanish translation of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. This was my first book in Spanish. I have been studying Spanish for almost a year now. I used a dictionary for the first chapter or two, but found that it slowed my reading considerably, so I opted to just stop using it. I know enough that the occasional unknown word wouldn't stop my flow.
Eventually, it actually got to a point where'd I'd notice that I've read the same phrase multiple times in a chapter or even the book, and I'd think "Wow, I still can't actually translate that." So I'd log on here or get my dictionary and look it up, but only after reading the phrase a few times and still not quite knowing it. The main phrase that sticks out in my mind that this happened with is "darse cuenta de." The main benefit of this is that I got to see the phrase used so much, that I now know how to use it myself, without ever really learning it. I suppose it all depends on how you learn best as to whether you should use the dictionary the whole way through or just occasionally when it's convenient. Just my two cents, though. Sorry it's so wordy.
One thing that has been valuable to me is to buy the electronic version, and use an e-reader. (Kindle, ipad, etc). These have a spanish dictionary that you can access by highlighting the word in question. Very fast, and does not break up the flow of your reading.
I was reading Isabel Allende's, Ciudad de las Bestias and found a pdf file of the book and would import the content to LingQ.com and read it that way. Any unknown words could be looked up quickly and saved. I imported one page at a time but importing a chapter at a time would be less work. Non paying members can only import 5 lessons so you would need to delete previous lessons. Paying members can import an unlimited amount. ( $10.00 a month). It was kind of fun and you can import copyrighted material for your own use. Of course reading a book on the computer can be hard on the eyes.
Buy a college ruled notebook and write down the words from the book with the meaning next to it. Then slowly learn them.
