Wednesday, October 19, 2005
(8:58 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Vocabulary
If you are trying to build your vocabulary in a foreign language, I highly recommend the Mastering [Language] Vocabulary series published by Barron's. I acquired the French version shortly after I finished my class, once I reached the point where I felt like the grammar was no longer an obstacle, but my limited vocabulary was really holding me back. Yesterday I went shopping for a similar book for German, having reached a similar point, and I did some comparison shopping at the Europa Bookstore, which you should all visit the next time you're in Chicago.The other books all sucked in the same ways. First, the English word was listed first, followed by the German; in the Barron's, the order is reversed, which seems better to me in terms of getting you to think in the foreign language. In addition, the Barron's often groups together words that are etymologically related in the foreign language, which may well be the case in the other editions, but is de-emphasized through the use of English words as the organizational principle. Second, the "themes" were overly specified through excessive headings. The Barron's has many short sections with closely related words, but they are not labelled, forcing you to do the work of coming up with the common thread and, in my opinion, thereby allowing you to create your own mnemonic device.
Overall, the Barron's format seems less likely to lead to the common pitfall of American-style foreign language instruction -- still trying to speak English while using the other language's words. (A possible side-topic for discussion: Could one reasonably suspect that the American approach to foreign language instruction is specifically designed to prevent people from learning that particular language and to convince them that learning a foreign language is impossible?)
These Barron's vocabulary books are available for Spanish, French, German, and Italian -- collect 'em all!
