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That's interesting. A technology like this was predicted, on theoretical grounds from reading research, in the book Reading in the Brain[1] by Stanislas Dehaene
by tokenadult 13y ago
That's interesting. A technology like this was predicted, on theoretical grounds from reading research, in the book Reading in the Brain[1] by Stanislas Dehaene (which I highly recommend as a very good read).
For years 500 words per minute (approximately one printed page per minute) has been my baseline speed for most of the material I read in English. I read slower in my second languages, of course. Back in my college days, when I wanted to make sure I wasn't being slowed down in my studies by a too-slow reading speed, I read a lot of books from the university library about reading skill improvement, and several jointly suggested that improving vocabulary improves reading speed. I took a course about English vocabulary based on Latin and Greek word roots, and that did seem to help for years afterward in both reading speed and reading comprehension.
[1] http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm
AFTER EDIT, TO REPLY TO QUESTION:
In this context, "second languages" is a quite normal designation for language(s) acquired after one's native language(s) were acquired. My user profile lists most of mine. I read best in Chinese and in German, besides English.
- evli 13y agoHow many second languages can you have?
- chad_oliver 13y agoEthnologue states that there are 7105 languages in the world[0]. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that you can have x second languages, where x is any number between 0 and 7104. [0] https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics
- levosmetalo 13y agoNo, you can have only one second language, and then possibly third, fourth, and so on.
- gojomo 13y agoNot true in idiomatic English. Any language other than your 'first' can be called a 'second language'. As a common example of this usage, courses to learn English for non-native speakers are called "English as a Second Language (ESL)" - no matter how many other languages the students already know.
- levosmetalo 13y agoThen I guess only native English speakers can have many "second" language. In many other countries there are 1st foreign language and 2nd foreign language classes in the school. And those books are called "English as a foreign language" (Englisch als Fremdsprache).
- Guvante 13y ago[A second language or L2 is any language learned after one's first language.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language) Otherwise you introduce ambiguity, if I learned 50 words in Spanish and then mastered French, does that mean French is my third language?