2K words, that’s something like 20+ pages on an e-reader.
If you don’t get a chance to talk German with someone every day, but you’re familiar enough with proper pronunciation, then if you’re reading 20+ pages anyway, I think it’s a good idea to read out loud.
Even if you don’t understand every single word or expression that you’re reading, I think it’s a good idea to read through the same number of pages several times. (You can always highlight words or expressions as you go along and set aside a separate time for expanding your vocabulary.)
I’m sort of doing this with Dutch right now. I have an e-boek for which I also have the audiobook.
My base vocabulary is enough now that I don’t have to concentrate as much on learning new vocabulary and can just listen to the story.
- So first I listen to a chapter (12 minutes on average), no reading.
If a different word or pronunciation really pops out at me, I pause and jot it down or make a mental note.
- Then I listen and read along silently (22 pages on average) and highlight words.
Sometimes they are words I have read but not heard before and was unsure about how they were pronounced. Then again, completely new words I have never read or heard before really pop out at me. A few words that popped out today were wispelturig, bondig and stuurs.
I seem to get most tripped up on words that are identical in English, but pronounced completely differently in Dutch. Words like alibi and escapades and I can remember being really surprised the first time I ever heard the word enthousiast. I guess because these words are so hard-wired that it’s hard to get accustomed to the Dutch pronunciation, despite knowing enough about pronunciation rules to guess the correct pronunciation, but also because some words are borrowed, so they’re not always pronounced the way you might expect.
- Then I read out loud and practice my pronunciation.
Right now I’m concentrating on words that end in -en because I’m really bad about pronouncing the N, which native Dutch speakers rarely ever do. They drop the N. So I’m going through and highlighting all of these words (which is quite a few, but worth the extra effort for me) not because I don’t know them but because I want to pay particular attention to the pronunciation.
But also the opposite. The N is dropped everywhere, but there are instances where the Dutch add an extra N where no N exists. For example, “Waar heb je het over?” tends to be “Waar heb jen 't over?” So anywhere that that extra N comes in, my ears really perk up. So I highlight these sentences as well.
One listen and two read-throughs takes about 45 minutes.
- I set a completely different time aside to work on expanding my vocabulary.
It takes more effort to get words like wispelturig, bondig and stuurs into my working vocabulary. Or expressions like ‘Dat staat als een paal boven water’ (which my dictionary tells me is Dutch for “There’s no two ways about it.”)
