Language Learning Tip #10

Problem

I read too slow. In fact, it is so slow, it is embarrassing!

Idea

Reading is a skill that is acquired in stages. At every stage, until you are quite advanced, I advise the same thing:

Practice reading aloud.

First, I want to say something that will most likely make no sense at first.

Many people read slowly because they are trying to read too quickly.

In the last message I talked about the stages of reading as decoding. There is, of course, much more to reading than decoding. Mental interaction with a text is crucial, but that’s another topic. When it comes to speed, decoding and processing is the key.

Question: How do I get the practice I need to move on to the next stage?

 Answer: Practice a lot of easy reading.

Practicing difficult readings may help your vocabulary and analytical skills, but it will not help you to increase your speed much. However, finding easy reading in Arabic is almost, but not completely, impossible.1 Nonetheless, you can do “easy” reading by re-reading texts, dialogues and stories that you have already learned in previous lessons. Read these texts aloud without looking up anything. Or, read familiar stories (childrens’ stories, Bible stories, etc.) Because, if you know the story already, your mind does not have to bother with trying to figure out the meaning. Certainly you will encounter words or expressions that are new. Don’t stop. Just keep on reading. The best texts to use for increasing reading speed would have about 95 to 100% of the words already known.

Why read aloud?

Reading aloud is one way of making sure you are actually reading with understanding. When you read aloud, your intonation, pauses and phrasing will give you immediate feedback regarding your level of understanding. When your natural phrasing breaks down, you sense immediately that you have lost track of the meaning.

Why read slowly?

If you are reading slowly enough to understand, you will be reading phrases instead of words. The meaning in a text (or in speech) is not found at a word level. Meaning is communicated at a phrase level and in “lexical chunks.” For example, “the” has no meaning by itself. “horse” is an abstract category of animals. “black” is a color. “big” is a size. But “the big black horse” is a phrase that means something in the context of a story. When you read aloud at a reasonable pace, your eye will read the whole phrase “the big black horse” and make sense of it. If you read “the big” and then work to decode “black” before you move to the next word “horse.” You lose the meaning of the phrase. Many people, in a rush to read faster and faster, are decoding one word at a time. They read and say a word before they even look at the next word; then they immediately try to say the following word without even thinking about the meaning or how the 3 words relate to each other. If you want to see how this phrasing works, take a familiar text and draw vertical dividing lines between the phrases. Then look at each phrase as a unit, and say it as a unit. This is how the mind reads most effectively.

And so what is the connection between decoding the written words and decoding meaning?

As your number of “sight words” increases, it becomes easier to group them into phrases. As your knowledge of vocabulary and grammar increases, you begin to anticipate what the next words could be. As the decoding of the words becomes automatic and subconscious, decoding meaning takes your attention. Efficient reading is by gestalt.2 This process is the same for reading in any and every language. It just takes more time and practice in Arabic because the writing system is different.3

 


 

  1. Believe it or not, the Kaliila wa Dimna stories we use are actually simplified. Your Al-Kitaab texts, however, are not simplified in any way. The tasks you are given in Al-Kitaab are sometimes simple, but the texts themselves were not created for people learning Arabic as a foreign language. This is done intentionally as part of their educational philosophy (one with which I disagree).
  2. “gestalt” — a structure, configuration, or pattern so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts.
  3. Further evidence of these phenomena is the fact that Arabic writing was first designed as a kind of short-hand. The letters were only written to remind the reader of things they already knew. That’s why early Arabic not only had no vowels, it had no dots either. Meaning was found not in decoding the text syllable by syllable (no vowels or dots means no written syllables) or even word by word (without dots a simple word could mean girl, house, between, distinguished, or nonsense sounds beeb, neeb, teet, teen, neet, yeet, neyyet, teyyen, etc …) Meaning is found in phrases.

Language Learning Tip #09

Problem

I read too slow. In fact, it is so slow, it is embarrassing!

Idea

Reading is a skill that is acquired in stages. At every stage, until you are quite advanced, I advise the same thing:

Practice reading aloud.

First, I want to say something that will most likely make no sense at first.

Many people read slowly because they are trying to read too quickly.

“What?! Then if I try to read slowly, will I read more quickly? And if I eat more, will I lose weight? And if I’m nasty to people, will I become nicer? You had better explain yourself, Tim.”

Alright, be patient, and all will become clear.
Consider reading as visual decoding. (Just as listening is aural decoding)

Observe the following stages of decoding:

  • Stage 1– Learning to associate sounds with letters. (b, c, k, l, . . .)
  • Stage 2– Learning to quickly decode the sound combinations to create word parts. This is reading at the syllable level. (ba, lo, ap, at, lip, pil, top, pit . . .)
  • Stage 3 — Putting syllables together to make words. (paper, radio, come, …)
  • Stage 4 — Whole word recognition for common “sight words”, (words you can read quickly without noticing the letters and syllables). (In English for example — on, in, you, never, like, to, would)
  • Stage 5 — Increasing your sight words from a few dozen to several hundreds.
  • Stage 6 — Increasing your sight words further while learning to see “chunks” (meaningful phrases of 2-4 words)
  • Stage 7 — Predicting the coming words and phrases before your eyes even see them.
  • Stage 8 — Reading whole lines at a glance. Your mind can be engaged in things other than reading. At this stage you can pronounce what you just saw (reading aloud) while your eyes move on to the next bit. You can evaluate and consider the words you read without stopping. You can interact with the thoughts expressed without stopping your reading. You automatically sense the emotions conveyed as you read.

You will notice from these descriptions that the powers of the mind in this area can be amazing. You may have also figured out that I do not believe you can skip any of the stages. It may seem that your classmates are at a higher stage than you are. That does not mean they skipped a stage. It means one of two things: 1) Their natural talents enabled them to get through a stage more quickly, or 2) They practiced the skill more than you did until they became proficient and were able to move on.1

So, two questions arise. How do I get the practice I need to move on to the next stage? And what is the connection between decoding the written words and decoding meaning? Those are excellent questions. In fact they are so excellent, I can’t answer them yet. But let’s think about the questions more and let’s bring what we know to them.

How can I learn to read quickly when everything I am supposed to read is difficult? Am I being asked to do stage 4 things when my actual reading level is only stage 2? What about understanding as I read? I can’t even read one line without using a dictionary. And Arabic is really different; it seems that English speakers can learn quite quickly to decode and read in Spanish, for example, without understanding anything of what they read.2 Are the stages really the same for every language? And finally, what is the connection between the advice in the first paragraph and these questions?

My answer: Sorry, I’ll see if I can address these matters next time.

 

 


 

  1. Of course, actually the stages overlap somewhat and one second you are back at stage 2 and the next you are processing at a stage 4.
  2. But without understanding they will grind to a halt somewhere in Stage 4.