I probably have a higher tolerance for not understanding individual words and just reading on than many; and I find that it seems to be reluctant or unpracticed readers who look things up the most. I started reading long-form noves in English at a time where yes, we spoke a little English at home, I occasionally watched a film or TV episode, and I'd read children's books and horsey magazines, but when I first started reading novels, my fluency in English was slightly lagging behind my German vocabulary, so I encountered a lot of unknown words at first. If I'd stopped at every one, I would never have finished the stories.
Then again, I've grown up on Karl May, who'll throw obscure phrases in eight different languages he didn't speak at you, along with the cultural details, and if you're not willing to just keep reading knowing that there'll be stuff you won't understand, again, you'll be stuck on page thirty and never get to the rest of the adventure.
I love how the Lord Chancellor looks like any of the other random flavour details in paragraph 1, and then we read the end of the excerpt, and we know why he was in it in the first place, or how even the question of 'when is the end of Michaelmas term' is answered. Sentence-by-sentence reading REALLY does not work here.
Those students were set up to fail, which makes me angry.
I hadn't made the connection between telegraphs and a shortened style; but it makes sense. I wonder how much newspapers as a whole contributed. And yet my biggest surprise of this year was to actually look at Hemingway (not just his reputation): He's using very short sentences and very plain words. (If you'd given me the dogs/horses segment and asked me who wrote it, Dickens would not have been high on my list, and the only reason I would not have said 'Hemingway' is that Hemingway wrote about cars, not horses.) But it turns out that you can be poetic with plain language,, too; it's all about the rhythm.
no subject
Then again, I've grown up on Karl May, who'll throw obscure phrases in eight different languages he didn't speak at you, along with the cultural details, and if you're not willing to just keep reading knowing that there'll be stuff you won't understand, again, you'll be stuck on page thirty and never get to the rest of the adventure.
I love how the Lord Chancellor looks like any of the other random flavour details in paragraph 1, and then we read the end of the excerpt, and we know why he was in it in the first place, or how even the question of 'when is the end of Michaelmas term' is answered. Sentence-by-sentence reading REALLY does not work here.
Those students were set up to fail, which makes me angry.
I hadn't made the connection between telegraphs and a shortened style; but it makes sense. I wonder how much newspapers as a whole contributed. And yet my biggest surprise of this year was to actually look at Hemingway (not just his reputation): He's using very short sentences and very plain words. (If you'd given me the dogs/horses segment and asked me who wrote it, Dickens would not have been high on my list, and the only reason I would not have said 'Hemingway' is that Hemingway wrote about cars, not horses.) But it turns out that you can be poetic with plain language,, too; it's all about the rhythm.