Reading Familiar Contexts in French and Spanish
- gregstignani
- Feb 11
- 4 min read
As you get the hang of reading with the three-pass method and other practice, one thing you should seek for building vocabulary more easily in the beginner or lower-intermediate level is reading in a familiar context. Reading in familiar contexts allows you to figure out what a French or Spanish text is saying because you already know about the situation it describes. While you could probably find other topics you’re used to for this technique, I recommend reading about U.S. history in French or Spanish on Wikipedia; of course, this assumes you’re far enough along in your education that you’ve learned about this in English already.
Whether you are about to brush up on your American history and geography, or you prefer to find a different topic, here are three fantastic reasons to practice reading in familiar contexts:
- Reading about a familiar subject in a foreign language uses knowledge you’ve already learned to help you increase your target language vocabulary
- Reading about topics that interest you will both help you to stay motivated in your language learning and help to build your foreign language reading endurance
- Reading a large volume of articles in your target language will help your brain get used to imagining the context when you read or listen to other media in the language
Increase your target language vocabulary
The way to make your target language “easy” is to practice reading and listening consistently: regularly, with good focus, moving on to new material frequently. This results in acquiring a large vocabulary in the language as well as acclimation to its sentence structures. While reading is a must for learning the sounds of the language and can be started either before or after you get into reading, reading is going to help you more with growing your vocabulary, as you can ingest the text at your pace and take time to look around the surrounding sentences for clues about a new word’s meaning; listening to the language usually doesn’t give you the time to do this before moving on.
Stick to the same routine as recommended in earlier posts: focus on making your process a sustainable one that you can count on yourself to complete day after day. Twenty minutes of reading in your target language each day will be plenty of (fun) work and you’ll learn a lot in a handful of weeks. Remember that learning a foreign language simply doesn’t happen overnight, and you should set an expectation for yourself to complete a reasonable process every day, not to become fluent quickly. If you are consistent and diligent in performing your process each day, the growth of your target language vocabulary will sneak up on you! 😊
Tips for using foreign language translation tools when you need them:
- Thoughtfully try using context or the word looking familiar to guess what it means before turning to a dictionary
- Translate entire sentences or passages if the dictionary, Bing/Google Translate, or other translations of a word seems odd
- If reading online, keeping your translation tool of choice open in another browser tab can make it quick and easy go back and forth to translate unknown words as you go
Stay motivated and build endurance
Keep reading about topics that interest you! Don’t force yourself to read about a boring topic just because you feel obligated or someone said you “should”, as this will make language learning something you don’t look forward to anymore. In addition to helping you better understand what you’re reading in your target language, reading in familiar contexts can keep language learning fun because it’s reinforced by other interests you have.
Another way to stay motivated is to save hyperlinks to other pages you want to read later. If you find a link to another page you’d like to read later, pause long enough to set up a favorites folder to bookmark pages in French or Spanish that you’d like to read later. Then, get back to what you’re on now and keep plugging away, trying your best to read through the whole article for as long as it’s keeping your interest.
Learn to imagine the context of what you read
After practicing enough reading in your target language, you’ll be able to recognize enough words to start imagining the context of what you’re reading. Mastering this skill by reading familiar contexts is a great way to use “training wheels” of familiar context to build your vocabulary to the point where you can start imagining contexts of unfamiliar contexts that you have to figure out! Getting to this stage will give you a great feeling sense of mastery over the language; you’ll still have lots left to learn, but you’ll also feel like you’ve really gotten somewhere. It will feed your motivation and sense of accomplishment, and you’ll probably get curious about whether you can figure out the context of something like a podcast episode (or its transcript) on something you haven’t yet read about or listened to in your target language.
Conclusion
Reading about something you already know is a great way to enlarge your foreign language vocabulary. Understanding what is going on in general provides clues about the meaning of those one or two words you aren’t already familiar with. Choosing reading material about topics that interest you is a good idea for keeping yourself excited for daily language learning, instead of coming to view it as a chore. If you enjoy reading, you’ll do more of it, and that will lead you to increase your foreign language reading endurance. And by reading a large volume of material, along with increasing your vocabulary base and reading endurance, you’ll develop the ability to catch on to the context of more and more materials about less familiar topics.
To try this technique of reading a familiar context, here are the links to the articles about the United States in French and Spanish on Wikipedia:
If you enjoy reading about the United States in French or Spanish on Wikipedia, you might try reading about some of the topics hyperlinked in these articles as well!
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