How to Expand Your English Vocabulary with Reading
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reading in a foreign language is great
but a big challenge related to reading
is that you often need a high level of
fluency before it gets really fun and if
a book isn’t fun then you’re not going
to want to read it the entire point of
sitting down with a book is to enjoy it
and have a good time being absorbed in
the story or learning the information
and that’s just not gonna happen if you
need to look up every second word it’ll
take you out of the story and it will
feel like a chore like an assignment
from school where you have to read the
book for a class but there is a resource
that you might not know about that can
really help your skills bilingual books
in this video we’ll look at how to
supercharge your vocabulary with
bilingual reading this is a simple
solution that will make reading
especially at the beginner levels easier
and fun these are books that have your
target language on the left page and
your native language on the right but
how do you use it well it’s all in the
name you read a book in two languages at
once the language that you’re learning
plus the language that you’re fluent in
there are a few different formats for
bilingual books but the most common one
is the one previously mentioned you have
a book that has your foreign language on
one side and your native language on the
other it’s also possible to find stories
that are presented bilingually paragraph
by paragraph the principle is the same
but the information is just in more
bite-sized chunks so your eyes need to
travel less to read both text the great
thing about bilingual reading is that
you can quickly switch between languages
and the translation is presented to you
so you don’t need to try to distinguish
between the ten variants of a word that
your dictionary offers which brings us
to the main advantage bilingual reading
is great for building your initial
vocabulary when you first try reading in
a new language you’ll probably find that
you need a relatively high level of
fluency before you can make a strong
connection with the words on the page
reading is a lot of fun if you already
know about 80 percent of the words as
you can guess the meaning of another 15
percent from context and then look up
the remaining few words you do not
understand
but if you’re starting out you might
know only 10% of the words
that’s where bilingual reading can help
a lot here’s a way to use a bilingual
book read a sentence first in your
target language see if you understand it
if you do think about the meaning of
some of the key words then quickly
glance on the other side of the page and
check the translation this way you’ll be
able to have fun reading and learn
contextual vocabulary at the same time
let’s look at why it works well if
you’re learning a language at home if
you’re taking language classes then your
teachers sometimes supports you in a
similar way to the translated page when
you’re reading a text with your teacher
you can ask them questions whenever you
do not understand something they’ll give
you a translation quickly and can share
other ways in which a word can be used
but if you’re learning from home you
don’t have that advantage
bilingual reading offers the same
benefits as you can quickly check the
translation of a sentence and see what
each word means the main goal of
bilingual books is to bridge the gap
between the beginner and intermediate to
more advanced levels they can help set
you up to read real books without any
translations some language purists might
recommend you read only stories that
were originally written in your target
language but any book you enjoy is best
to encourage your studies use bilingual
reading to improve your vocabulary and
reading comprehension skills until you
get so good that you don’t need it
anymore it doesn’t matter what language
you’re learning bilingual reading works
for every language the principles of
language learning don’t change only the
implementation does you also don’t
really need too much knowledge at the
start if you like a real challenge then
you could even start reading some simple
bilingual stories without any prior
experience in a language however just as
with other language programs and courses
the more people who speak a specific
language the easier it will be to find
bilingual books bilingual reading can be
a great addition to your normal study
routine and it can give you an idea of
where you are in your studies and what
goals to consider but for even more ways
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