Passive and Active Learning - Use Multiple Books

The other day, Steve had a(nother) post on the importance of input in language learning. This reminds me of the passive phase in Assimil - you read and do exercises but focus on soaking up, rather than producing, the language.

What I would suggest, however, is that while Assimil envisages a passive phase to start and an active phase to follow, a long-term language learner is actually going to go through many passive and active phases. Native speakers of a language can, of course, buy books to build their vocabulary, just like anyone else. But the best way to build your knowledge of a language is to read just a little above your reading level.

With both the Assimil and with other readers I've been using for Chinese, lately, what I've found is that when I know all the characters, it puts me to sleep. And when I know few of the characters, I get frustrated and put it down. It's when I know 90% of what's in a text that I take off. And because a second and third reading will be a challenge to make sure I've remembered the new characters, I'm more likely to re-read them. It would be nice if there were more and better readers on the market. Too often, they either spoon-feed or, more often, give a list of brand-new vocabulary for each reading, which doesn't give you the feeling of getting progressively further into the language.

One thing you can do, though, to simulate the feeling of getting progressively into the language is to use several beginner books. Most language textbooks take similar but not identical approaches to language learning, and teach similar but not identical vocabulary. An experiment I've been meaning to try because I carried out part of it by accident is to take, eg, A Teach Yourself Beginners' book paired with the comprehensive course, and go through the chapters in sequence. (I've done this with the Assimil and a Chinese reader for English speakers that has characters only, doing a bit of Assimil, then going to the reader till it gets too hard, then doing Assimil again for a while.) The result will be that you've got easy stuff around the corner when you're doing the hard stuff, and that you've got challenging stuff around the corner when it feels like you're coasting instead of learning new stuff. I'm not saying, of course, that this is the perfect approach. But it is another thing to try when your learning stalls.

(For more on input, passive learning and setting up your learning program, check out this essay by Konstantin - found at Tower of Confusion).