Using Parallel Texts

Once you've reached a certain level in your language learning - a level where you can somewhat start reading in that language (real texts, not texts from textbooks which have been specifically formulated so that you can read them with ease), a good way to improve your vocabulary and also improve the speed of your reading is to use parallel texts.

Parallel text readers are those books which have been made such that one side has one language, and the other has another. So for example, the one I'm using now for French is this one:

New Penguin Parallel Text: Short Stories in French (Nouvelles en Français), edited by Richard Coward

As I read the texts, I underline the words that are new to me and then immediately I can find out what the words mean and how they fit into the sentence by looking at the translation on the next page.

These books are a really handy way of learning vocabulary, without having to look up each word in a separate dictionary :) It's also helpful because it provide real-life usage, rather than just getting the meaning in the dictionary which can often be out of context.

Please feel free to leave me any comments or questions regarding this post below :-)

Céline xx

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