The importance of reasonably interesting reading is shown by my recent experience going back to a textbook I wanted to review in preparation for plunging into other reading. I found myself bogging down and getting fatigued. I went to another textbook that was a series of stories and found myself able to keep at it, needing to know ‘how things turned out’. A combination of the two textbooks is best b/c the boring one has excellent resources on translating the letters into pronunciation and its vocabulary set up is quite professional while the more interesting book is somewhat scattered in tracking the vocabulary presented and is inconsistent in its notice on pronunciation; it also uses an early 20th century orthography.
I have several other beginner’s books on the language but I like these two. It just struck me how important it is to ‘tell stories’ even in an elementary textbook; I’m not sure I’m ready to ‘find a hotel with a room facing south’.
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
