When I read a a difficult text for a second, or third time, I find myself looking up again words that I looked up the first and second time. Right now I’m on my third reading of Horace’s Ars Poetica, nearly 500 lines long. Sometimes I think, “Darn it, I looked this up before, and now I can’t recall the solution!”
Is there any recommended length for re-reading? Suppose I decided to re-read until I no longer had to look things up. Is there an optimal length? Or is this so relative to the individual that nothing can be said about it?
I imagine that five lines are too few. But are five-hundred lines too many? Would it be better to do, say, fifty or one-hundred lines at the time, moving to the next installment when the present one is mastered?
Just a thought but maybe you could organize your rereading based on the number of words you had to look up the first time. This would mean dividing the text into vocabulary lists of similar length instead of number of lines, which could ease the strain on your memory and improve retention of new words.
Did you try making summaries of the content for the different sections? That usually helps because you will remember the meaning of some words based on context, and the summary will help you creating that context. I would also suggest producing literal translations for the more difficult verses.
I was introduced to a certain method of rereading that I find incredibly useful. Read as far as you can read with little toil (this doesn’t mean you remember every word) and go a little bit further. Then when you hit a wall restart all the way from the beginning. Repeat until you can read the whole text with ease. It usually takes me a three or four read-throughs before I consolidate the vocabulary.
One solution might be to use the Perseus vocabulary tool to generate a list of all words appearing in a specific section of a text. You could then import the list into a flashcard program like Anki and drill key vocabulary before reading.
When you first look up the word, put it on an index card and study the cards (using something like the Leitner system) as part of your regular Latin learning process. You’ll soon find you have to look up fewer words.
Make a word list for each author. Every time you come across a new word, write it down with its definition. Simply writing it down helps you remember it. Quickly review the entire list each time you add a new word. If you come across a word that’s already on a list and you forget the meaning, add a tick beside the word on your list. Somehow, this helps to remember it.
If you read a lot, you’ll eventually develop the ability to remember a new word after seeing it only once or twice and you won’t need such techniques.
Many thanks to Shenoute, superconductor, truks, and nomen for posting responses.
Here are extracts of the different replies. The question concerned how to speed up the process of learning new words when you find yourself looking up the same word again and again. These all look like good ideas, and probably any one of them would work, if applied systematically.
Shenoute:
Just a thought but maybe you could organize your rereading based on
the number of words you had to look up the first time. This would mean
dividing the text into vocabulary lists of similar length instead of
number of lines, which could ease the strain on your memory and
improve retention of new words.
superconductor:
Did you try making summaries of the content for the different
sections? That usually helps because you will remember the meaning of
some words based on context, and the summary will help you creating
that context. I would also suggest producing literal translations for
the more difficult verses.
truks:
One solution might be to use the Perseus vocabulary tool to generate a
list of all words appearing in a specific section of a text. You could
then import the list into a flashcard program like Anki and drill key
vocabulary before reading.
nomen:
When you first look up the word, put it on an index card and study the
cards (using something like the Leitner system) as part of your
regular Latin learning process. You’ll soon find you have to look up
fewer words.
And here is one from my daughter Laura, fluent in her second language.
Her suggestion, my words: Each time you look up a word, pencil a little dot next to the entry in
your printed dictionary. This helps identify the problem words.