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I've been studying Spanish to a medium-to-high intermediate level, and I find skimming something in Spanish to be very difficult. This is probably because my re

I've been studying Spanish to a medium-to-high intermediate level, and I find skimming something in Spanish to be very difficult. This is probably because my reading speed can average 1/10th of it would be in English (depending on the difficulty). I think we take for granted the ability to skim an article in our native language. When we skim, our brain is probably taking advantage of so many fast "pattern recognizers" and models to make sense of the whole, sampled in parts. Perhaps skimming effectively like "being able to go to a comedy show in that language and actually laugh" is a true test of language proficiency. My Spanish teacher who is pretty competent with English agrees that skimming is something that she cannot just do either.

pergadad 8y ago
English is not my mother tongue, but I can skim it easily, maybe not easily than my native German. A lot might also be about writing style: English has developed a very anecdote/story- heavy style. Try to find an article by an author with English as mother tongue - they breast universally use this approach. E.g. article about tax law starts with one story, article about politics goes in depth on some specific scene or encounter, etc etc. There is often much mention of 'unimportant' detail that fill the mental picture, and English language media often repeat and stretch out information (rather than strive for information density). In comparison of DE-EN-FR I even find this in more in-depth documents like textbooks, not universally but much more than in the other languages. Of course fluency plays a major role. But i can skim a french-language fluff piece or story or recounting of an event, even if that's not exactly a strong language for me. At the same time I can't skim an in-depth description of this or that political conflict or technical report in EN or DE if I want to understand the course of events or details. So it's at least to some degree (at least for me) a matter of the writing style - stories read easily, and non- English media is much less story-heavy. For an English native you might be able to compare yourself skimming an Economist article or something academic vs e.g. guardian or independent and see if it feels different. In a twist, I find it sometimes harder to read a FR language fluff piece closely/carefully - they tend to use words that are more slang/informal and which i won't know as well how to interpret them in the context. But getting the gist of easy. This might be particular to foreign language reading though.
- wallflower 8y ago
  Interesting. I think you are discounting your talent for skimming in any language though :)

pergadad 8y ago

English is not my mother tongue, but I can skim it easily, maybe not easily than my native German. A lot might also be about writing style: English has developed a very anecdote/story- heavy style. Try to find an article by an author with English as mother tongue - they breast universally use this approach. E.g. article about tax law starts with one story, article about politics goes in depth on some specific scene or encounter, etc etc. There is often much mention of 'unimportant' detail that fill the mental picture, and English language media often repeat and stretch out information (rather than strive for information density). In comparison of DE-EN-FR I even find this in more in-depth documents like textbooks, not universally but much more than in the other languages. Of course fluency plays a major role. But i can skim a french-language fluff piece or story or recounting of an event, even if that's not exactly a strong language for me. At the same time I can't skim an in-depth description of this or that political conflict or technical report in EN or DE if I want to understand the course of events or details. So it's at least to some degree (at least for me) a matter of the writing style - stories read easily, and non- English media is much less story-heavy. For an English native you might be able to compare yourself skimming an Economist article or something academic vs e.g. guardian or independent and see if it feels different. In a twist, I find it sometimes harder to read a FR language fluff piece closely/carefully - they tend to use words that are more slang/informal and which i won't know as well how to interpret them in the context. But getting the gist of easy. This might be particular to foreign language reading though.

wallflower 8y ago
Interesting. I think you are discounting your talent for skimming in any language though :)