The first book in a foreign language Hi. One of the most effective methods of learning a foreign language is reading books. What was your reading level when you first held in your hand a book in a for

rose

The first book in a foreign language Hi. One of the most effective methods of learning a foreign language is reading books. What was your reading level when you first held in your hand a book in a foreign language? Do you remember the first book you read in a foreign language?

May 26, 2018 1:23 PM

Comments · 25

The second book in the Artemis Fowl series, "Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident".

I had already read the first book in Russian by that time but couldn't find the second one (maybe it hadn't been translated yet?). I was dying to know what was next, so I went to an internet café, found the book online, copied the text to Notepad, saved the document to a floppy disk, bought a ream of paper (went completely broke after that), went home and printed everything using my father's printer. And then I read the book - with almost none text formatting thanks to Notepad - for a few days, using an English-Russian dictionary (a real thick book) for every second word. Sounds like a complete nightmare and a perversion of the very concept of reading, but my crush on this series was so strong that it wasn't even too tiring. Of course, I omitted a lot and probably didn't get a lot of things but it wasn't too bad. But there was one thing I remember very well,

"CMNDR ROOT. TRBLE BELOW. HAVN OVERRN BY GOBLNS. PLICE PLAZA SRROUNDED. CUDGEON + OPL KBOI BHND PLOT. NO WPONS OR CMMUNICATIONS. DNA CNONS CNTRLLED BY KBOI. I M TRPPED IN OP BTH. CNCLTHNKS IM 2 BLM. IF ALIVE PLSE HLP. IF NOT, WRNG NMBR."

...I don't even want to tell you how much time it took for me to translate it back then.

May 26, 2018

I do remember, actually. It's a short novel adapted from the Disney series, Lizzie McGuire, titled 'The Rise and Fall of the Kate Empire', haha. I was 12. I think I probably understood only 20% of the book - I just guessed my way through, but I had so much fun reading it.

May 27, 2018