A week ago, I came across a webpage for Japanese students learning English. I do not remember the teacher's name, but his hints were absolutely incredible, and have helped me in leaps and bounds in learning Russian. Here is what you do. Two steps. 1) Learn the characters of the language, if it is a character based language. Learn how to pronounce the characters, dipthongs, etc. 2) Start reading. That's it! The way you read is: Pronounce the words as best you can, in your mind, *not* under your breath, *not* out loud, *not* moving your lips. [this is hard at first]. You strive to increase the speed that you are reading until you reach about 500 wpm, which should take 3-6 months according to that website (and I believe that it is possible). Read twice a day, 10 minutes at a time. Or, if you have the time, do it 30 minutes at a time, without stopping. You are not reading to comprehend or to understand. You are reading to increase the speed of your reading. [ie

A week ago, I came across a webpage for Japanese students learning English. I do not remember the teacher's name, but his hints were absolutely incredible, and have helped me in leaps and bounds in learning Russian. Here is what you do. Two steps. 1) Learn the characters of the language, if it is a character based language. Learn how to pronounce the characters, dipthongs, etc. 2) Start reading. That's it! The way you read is: Pronounce the words as best you can, in your mind, *not* under your breath, *not* out loud, *not* moving your lips. [this is hard at first]. You strive to increase the speed that you are reading until you reach about 500 wpm, which should take 3-6 months according to that website (and I believe that it is possible). Read twice a day, 10 minutes at a time. Or, if you have the time, do it 30 minutes at a time, without stopping. You are not reading to comprehend or to understand. You are reading to increase the speed of your reading. [ie - it is mechanical] If you like,
you can look up words that appear frequently in the text in a very basic dictionary. If the word isn't in the dictionary, just ignore it for now and move on. [ie - in English, words like "a", "the", "and", "this", "that", "is", "was", "were", etc] Reading for understanding can be done at other times, as can grammar work, sentence writing, etc., but this exercise is single-purpose. If you have native language copy of the text as well: 1) first read in target language 2) then read in native language and, if you like, re-read in target language again. And I can tell you - it works! I found a copy of the Hobbit online in Russian. At first, I was only able to read 2 pages in 1/2 hr. Next day, 3 pgs in 1/2 hr. Day after that, 4 pgs in 1/2 hr. Now, after a week, i can read 10 pages in 1/2 hr (a whole chapter). Not only has reading speed increased, but words that start to 'bug' me, that keep cropping up and I don't know them, I mark while I'm reading, and look them up afterwards, writing the new word on a
n index card that I take with me the next day to work for review. It's not a magic bullet, but it's certainly enjoyable, especially if the text is on a subject that is fastinating. Today, I was quite exciting to receive a 4 page short story in email in Russian, and I printed it out and read it at lunchtime. I was actually able to understand most of what was going on in the story, including the twist ending! Without having any English version to compare with as I have with The Hobbit. It's also proven to be good for me, in that it gives me something that is easy to do, with a simple goal, which is wonderful on days where I can't seem to get my mind around a sticky grammar point, or new vocabulary words. Just passing it along - hope it helps!