I am sleepy, so I sat in my big chair without a selected reading and pulled one off the shelf. It was the Latin translation of the first Harry Potter book. I read that book in both English and Spanish over a year ago and so was familiar with the opening bit, the first page. As I read the Latin with the help of my prior knowledge, I realized I was truly in i+1 territory and felt the Latin seep into my bones. That is a nice experience. I pulled a science fiction collection in Russian off the shelf the other day and did the same thing, though the Russian is much easier for me with very few unknown words; nevertheless, it helps cement words into my brain when I can read whole passages because it is not with ease that I read them: there is a degree of effort that goes into it, a bit of the monitor, if you will.
Having pushed my way into my Urdu Newspaper Reader, I realize now I must go back to earlier readings and reread them in order to cement that vocabulary in. The same is true for my initial work in Norwegian, Greek and Kweyol. I need to reread everything until each word is completely familiar to me. That doesn’t mean I’ll grasp the word immediately when in a new context, but that’ll work with most of the words.
Soon I should have my two Norwegian mystery novels. Do I start on them at i+10 or just plug away at the basics for now?