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Episode 26: Children’s Books & Reading for Vocabulary Growth

Show Notes

The Mandarin Companion blog has concise & helpful information about Extensive reading (ER) and 98% known language. This post also describes why children’s books are not necessarily suitable for second language learners:

https://mandarincompanion.com/7-mistakes-about-extensive-reading/

Intensive reading & extensive reading compared in a concise post by Mandarin Companion: https://mandarincompanion.com/reading-pain-or-reading-gain-reading-at-the-right-level/

The podcast “You Can Learn Chinese” also has several episodes related to extensive reading, intensive reading, and other information about learning (particularly) Chinese with a lot of relevance to learning any language: https://mandarincompanion.com/you-can-learn-chinese-podcast/

Narrow reading:

Krashen, S. (2004). The case for narrow reading [J]. Language Magazine, 3(5), 17-19. https://sdkrashen.com/content/articles/narrow.pdf

Renandya, W. A., Krashen, S., & Jacobs, G. M. (2018). The potential of series books: How narrow reading leads to advanced L2 proficiency. LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network, 11(2), 148-154. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1225871.pdf

English language TV shows used for language learning – some examples:

10 US or UK TV shows and ideas for learning English from them: https://www.bsceducation.com/blog/best-tv-shows-for-learning-english/

The Office (US version of the show) https://diziyleogren.com/en/tv-series/the-office – However, Reed & Diane think it’s more important to understand meaning in context than to memorize the long lists of vocabulary provided. The definitions are sometimes also full of specialized vocabulary. Ex: Season 1, ep. 1 lists “berry” as a fleshy fruit from one ovary… that is a very technical definition for a botany student rather than daily life!

Intro & outro music selected from "23 Light Years" by CavalloPazzo

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