(this is more of me expressing out my discouraged feelings, i suppose).
i keep on hearing people say "Harry Potter is great for language learning! you should read Harry Potter, even if you're at an A2 level!".
i only recently got to the point where i can watch (with subtitles) :
- children's tv shows, and
- easy non-fiction tv shows (ie, journalism / documentaries / interviews)
in these media, a fairly limited set of vocabulary (compared to, say, fiction or newspapers) is used; and they always articulate their words clearly. even so, it was only recently that i improved my French that i could watch these shows without too much mental fatigue. before, when i would watch these shows, so much mental processing went into parsing the sentences, and into trying to make meaning out of very little vocabulary, that i would get tired quickly. but now, i am familiar enough with grammar patterns and vocabulary, that i'm actually understanding enough meaning that i enjoy myself, instead of getting headaches.
i just finished reading the first few pages of Harry Potter (book 1). grammatically, i can parse much of the text. but there is so much unknown vocabulary (and literary verb tenses!) that the book felt so, so far beyond my current level. (i have not read any Harry Potter in my native language before).
i'm feeling like i must be stupid: all these other people in the language learning community sing praises about how useful and good Harry Potter is, and how you should read it. they make it sound like it's a method that should work for everyone. no one seems to say that it's a difficult book .. so maybe it's not a dificult book, but i'm just stupid?
i guess i've always known thati was slower at most people at learning languages. i was proud of the progress that i had made recently, but i'm discouraged now for having so much trouble reading a book that everyone else says is so useful and so appropriate, even for people at an A2 and B1 level. maybe i have to accept that i really am much slower than the average person at learning languages?
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via Learn Online English Speaking
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