Read for pleasure and super‑fast language acquisition
The Readlang Method for Learning Vocab
January 21, 2016 by Steve -
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I found vocabulary to be the most intimidating part of learning a foreign language. I’m an engineer at heart, more at home with math & physics, where you learn a small amount of things, from which everything else can be derived.
The other aspects of Spanish such as pronunciation and grammar seemed to offer a set of rules which could be learned, practiced and internalized given a reasonable amount of studying. (I particularly like Michel Thomas and Duolingo for this.) But I had no handle on how to learn vocabulary. I’ve never been a fan of rote learning, and hence never developed skills to learn vast quantities of unrelated things. It seems to take somewhere in the order of 10,000 words to read comfortably in a foreign language. It may as well have been infinite. How on earth do you approach learning 10,000 of anything?
An Instapaper For Language Learners
December 10, 2015 by Steve -
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Readlang was originally designed for reading novels, but it was clear early on that I needed a more accessible source of free content for people to read, and what better source than the internet! For this reason, Readlang has a web importer, allowing you to import a plain text version of a web-page, a la Instapaper*. The original importer was a hastily coded affair, which included far too much cruft from the source web page and has long been due for an overhaul, so here it is…
Introducing Shelves
November 16, 2015 by Steve -
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This one’s a biggie, and has taken a while to implement.
Earlier this year I added some improvements to My Texts. But after receiving feedback from some of the most prolific sharers of content on Readlang, it was clear that more organization was required.
Spanish Immersion Homepage - Chrome Extension
November 9, 2015 by Steve -
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Have you ever felt that Chrome’s new tab page is a massive productivity sink? It tempts you with your most visited pages. Facebook, Gmail, Reddit – procrastination central. It wastes your time with watching innane viral videos and derails your train of thought. This extension takes over the new tab page to encourage browsing the web in Spanish. If you’re going to be distracted, don’t fight it, use it to your advantage!
Get the Spanish Immersion Homepage extension on the Chrome Web Store
Keep your books, articles and videos organized
October 14, 2015 by Steve -
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If you read a lot, you’ll appreciate the need to keep your language learning library in order. Readlang helps you by organizing your texts and videos into the following categories:
Speaking mode
October 6, 2015 by Steve -
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Speaking and listening skills are an extremely important for learning a language. Readlang already has plenty of YouTube videos for you to practice listening. Songs have proved to be a favorite:
To complement this, you can now enable Speaking Mode. This provides automatic text-to-speech when you click a word or phrase in any text, and when reviewing your flashcards, Readlang will pronounce the word or phrase as it is revealed.
To translate or not? Monolingual mode arrives
September 30, 2015 by Steve -
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There are few topics more divisive among language learners than the question of translation. Is translating a bad habit? Should learners stop as soon as possible? Whatever your opinion, Readlang can now help.
From today, you can disable translations and access monolingual definitions.
New Activity Monitor to encourage a daily language learning habit
September 10, 2015 by Steve -
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The main reason people fail at learning a language is not showing up to practice every day. Effective language learners manage to incorporate the language into their lives on a regular basis, they form daily habits. Having a job where you must speak the language is ideal, but most of us need to find other ways to squeeze practice into our busy lives.
Turn your favorite novel into a motivating and effective language learning tool
July 5, 2015 by Steve -
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If you enjoy reading novels, and wish to learn a second language, then you’re in luck, since reading can form a highly motivating and effective way for you to absorb the grammar, vocabulary and culture of a language.
Learn a language while you surf - training wheels for browsing the web in French, Spanish, German + 50 other languages
June 5, 2015 by Steve -
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The best way to learn a language is to form productive habits, and what easier habit to form than browsing the web? Turn your addiction into a powerfull learning tool with the redesigned Web Reader.
- Install it as a Chrome extension (recommended)
- Install it as a browser bookmarklet (for Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and mobile browsers)
Chapters and Rich Formatting
April 15, 2015 by Steve -
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Based on your feedback, Readlang has become a fully fledged eReader with the addition of chapter navigation, as well as bold and italics:
Auto Highlight Words As You Read
March 17, 2015 by Steve -
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Context is key when learning language. Wouldn’t it be nice to access previous contexts you’ve seen a word in every time you encounter it in a new text?
Based on popular demand, I’ve added the ability to auto-highlight words you’ve previously translated as they appear in new texts. Clicking on any of these underlined words will trigger a pop up showing the translation along with previous contexts.
New Translation Glossing Mode
March 8, 2015 by Steve -
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Readlang’s main feature is inline word and phrase translation, as seen here in the Web Reader:
My Favorite Tools For Learning Spanish
November 28, 2014 by Steve -
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The best way to learn to speak Spanish is to just speak Spanish. Ideally with native Spanish speakers. But there’s also a lot you can do completely independently, and these are some of my favourite methods of self-study.
By the way, although I’ve focussed on Spanish, these methods are applicable for many languages.
1. Michel Thomas
This is a great place to start. It gives you a really good feel for the grammar, getting you to construct quite complex sentences from the very start, which really gets you motivated with the feeling of rapid progress. The format is unusual in that there are two other students on the CD who are learning alongside you and who will often fumble through an answer to be corrected firmly by Michel. It sounds strange but it really works. As with most language learning CDs, it’s best to actively participate, pausing after each question and speaking the answer aloud, or in your head, before listening to the student’s and Michel’s responses.
After finishing this course you should have developed a really good intuitive feel for the structure of the language, but will still have a very limited vocabulary.
8 Reasons You Should Read More (includes waffles)
May 28, 2014 by Steve -
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Selfie of myself reading at the lab. Note the professional Readlang logo in the background ;-)
I’m already addicted to reading in my native language of English. As a child I would read computer magazines cover to cover, as a teenager I started reading novels like The Andromeda Strain, and now as a guy who works at a computer all day long, even when working I’m habitually reading blogs, forums, wikipedia articles, news sites, you name it! So when I decided to learn Spanish, it was only natural to make reading the foundation, and reading in Spanish is now my core daily language learning habit. Here are 8 benefits: